Finding growth, not fear, in feedback
My response to a squealing microphone was the best part of The Bryan Gentry Duo's performance.
A few years ago I stepped out onto a stage and introduced my band, The Bryan Gentry Duo.
The group roster included only me, but I explained, “Duo — that’s short for do-over, and I might need one of those.”
The scene was a small college variety show, and students had packed the auditorium to see quirky performances by faculty and staff.
“Tonight I’m sharing a song that’s close to my heart,” I explained, my voice echoing off the walls, “because I sang this song to my wife on our first date!”
The audience erupted in a sweet “Aww!” until I added, “And she married me anyway!” Then I launched into a love song parody I’d written in college:
How can you blame me for falling in love
when you wear that perfume?
I always start to swoon when you walk into the room,
I’m in love with the way you smell!
The crowd’s laughter put me on cloud nine. But when I started the second verse, the room filled with the violent squeal of microphone feedback, like fingernails scratching deep into a chalkboard.
The laughter stopped. People covered their ears.
I stopped strumming and singing just long enough for the squeal to fade away.
Then I leaned forward and shouted, “Sorry, I got my start in a heavy metal band and old habits die hard!” Those words from an acoustic guitar-wielding nerd in a Ninja Turtles T-shirt turned the uncomfortable noise into a roar of laughter as I continued the song. In fact, some students later told me that my response to the feedback was the best part of my performance.
The same may be true about our careers. The way we respond to feedback — not the squeal from a microphone, but the input from others about how we’re doing in our work — can be the best or worst part of our performance. Our response to feedback determines whether we learn or falter.
But feedback can be hard to swallow.
A colleague of mine recently told me that she’d noticed her boss’s feedback made her bristle. It put her on the defensive. She asked me, “How can I get more comfortable with receiving feedback?”
Why we see feedback as a threat
I think the answer lies in the thoughts and emotions that our brains cook up when we get feedback — and what we do with those thoughts and feelings.
When I started my first full-time newspaper job, it was my first time receiving frequent, instructive feedback. It nearly crushed me.
My editor rolled a chair to my cubicle and said, “Bryan, let’s read this together.” My heart seized up. She’d go through my story line by line and talk about ways to make the language more vibrant. She’d ask me to get more information. We’d pay attention to the length of sentences and the cadence of language.
I felt like I was in remedial freshman English, not a professional newsroom. I knew it couldn’t go on forever.
I started to tell myself a story: I decided that the newspaper was so desperate that they hired me so I could write some articles until they found someone better, at which point they’d fire me. I lay awake at night panicking about losing my job, flunking out of my writing career and default on my student loans.
Guess what? I was wrong.
Several months later, I realized that we hadn’t had one of those sit-down editing sessions in months. Because we didn’t need them.
That’s when I realized my editor didn’t want to fire me. She wanted to teach me. And I had learned.
Our brains lie about feedback
Years later, I learned about cognitive distortions. These are automatic thoughts based on fears, prejudices, insecurities, wants and needs rather than reality. We’re wired to see the negative so we can deal with danger. But when we’re not really in danger, our survival circuits cause more harm than good.
When it comes to feedback, cognitive distortions can take several forms. Here are just a few:
Mind reading - “She regrets hiring me and is really disappointed in my work.”
Fortune telling - “They’ll fire me, probably about the time I sign a lease on a larger apartment.”
All-or-nothing and (related) Overgeneralizing - “All my work is terrible! I can’t do anything right.”
Emotional reasoning - “I feel really nervous about meeting with my boss today. I guess it’s going to be bad. Maybe I should call in sick.”
A Harvard Business Review article has this to say about cognitive distortions and feedback: “Because we seldom test these reactions for accuracy, our thoughts quickly spiral to a place where they are no longer useful.”
Fortunately, in those early months at the newspaper, I listened to and learned from my editor’s feedback, but not without wasting mental and emotional energy in those miserable weeks. I wonder how much more I could have learned if I had relaxed and seen feedback differently.
How to get better at receiving feedback
When cognitive distortions hijack our thinking, we can choose what to do with them. There’s a kind of counseling called cognitive beahvioral therapy that focuses on helping us examine our thoughts and feelings, evaluate them, and choose what to think instead.
The major principle of CBT is to help us think about our thoughts and find better ways to deal with them. We make them less sharp and more accurate.
The HBR article mentioned earlier provides several examples of a CBT approach applied in business feedback settings. “Using these tools to press the ‘reset’ button on our thoughts and feelings helps us gain perspective so we can see others’ intentions and reactions for what they really are,” they write.
In the newspaper business, my self-confidence grew so that edits didn’t threaten my self esteem. In fact, I started to appreciate it when an editor marked mistakes in my work or asked me to rewrite part of a story. These changes made my articles better and helped me become a better writer.
When I participated in a leadership development program, my friend Christine Kennedy taught me the phrase “Feedback is a gift.” That rings true to me, and I try to make it true when I receive feedback.
When you have feedback for me, it means I have an opportunity to learn from a real, live person who can bring a new perspective to my work. That is a gift.
Do-over
When The Bryan Gentry Duo got some harsh feedback in the form of squealing speakers, I could have responded in any number of ways.
Cognitive distortions could have taken over. I could have gotten angry and shouted something at whoever was running sound. I could have run from the stage and hid my face in embarrassment. I could have gotten timid, playing the rest of the song quietly. I could have played the perfectionist and started all over.
None of those responses would have made for a great show.
We all need a do-over from time to time. Feedback is a gift that gives us the chance to try again and do better.
P.S.
Speaking of feedback, do you have any? Or would you like to suggest some ideas to link in a future newsletter? Please leave a comment or email me. And if you found this post helpful, please share it.
P.P.S.
It’s true, I did sing “I’m in Love With the Way You Smell” on my first date with my wife! That was just a few minutes after she opened a button-covered coffin. Will the full story ever make it into Idea Link? You’ll have to subscribe to find out.
I appreciated this article on Feedback. I recently received some at work and it has had me up at night worrying about how others are judging me and not thinking about how much people around me want me to succeed. I need to think of Feedback as a Gift.