Why We Hide from Feedback

It’s that time of year again – annual performance review.

If you’re receiving one, you’re nervous. You think you’ve performed your job well, but you’re concerned that your boss might throw you a curve ball. What if she suggests you’re not succeeding at something you’re doing well? What if she lets you know you’re not nearly as successful as you thought you were?

If you’re giving feedback, you might worry about upsetting your employee, making them more defensive about accepting your critique.

Many people hide from giving and receiving feedback for these very reasons. 

“People are generally afraid of feedback because, most of the time, they have had a negative experience with it. A typical situation is when an employee didn’t do something well, so you give him or her feedback about it. People often get defensive and hurt feelings when they receive negative feedback,” suggested an article from The Competent Leader.

What are our deepest-rooted concerns about feedback? 

Some people are concerned that they overlooked something in themselves that is hindering their performance. Others might be concerned that their superiors would offer nasty critiques or use a less-than-stellar performance to prevent our promotions or raises – or even as a justification for termination. 

Some people may even worry about getting defensive in the face of suggestions about how to improve. 

By the time we are promoted into managerial roles, then, we might have ingrained concerns about accepting feedback and offering it to our employees. So, what are the most effective strategies for giving feedback that won’t make your employees hide from feedback? 

Here are a few ideas. 

 

☑️ Realize that you’re not well-equipped to assess abstract qualities.

We might think we’re able to be objective when providing feedback, but we’re actually woefully inadequate at identifying and assessing qualities like tenacity and creativity. Specifically, our own biases make it nearly impossible to see other people (and ourselves) clearly. 

“This is why, despite all the training available on how to receive feedback, it’s such hard work: Recipients have to struggle through this forest of distortion in search of something that they recognize as themselves,” said Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall for Harvard Business Review.

So, when you receive feedback or give it, make sure you’re taking the comments with a grain of salt. Another reason that you should seek feedback from multiple channels – the more overlap you find from multiple assessments of your performance, the more accurate picture you’ll get.

 

☑️ Feedback is more effective if it focuses on their strengths, not on areas in which they should improve.

If you find that you’re receiving or giving mostly negative feedback, you’re not actually helping the recipient improve. We’re much more likely to benefit from descriptions of our strengths rather than a focus on our failures. 

In a science experiment, one group of students was given positive feedback about their dreams, while another group was given negative critiques of their homework. With negative critiques, students’ sympathetic nervous systems – fight or flight – lit up.

“Your brain responds to critical feedback as a threat and narrows its activity. The strong negative emotion produced by criticism ‘inhibits access to existing neural circuits and invokes cognitive, emotional, and perceptual impairment,’ psychology and business professor Richard Boyatzis said in summarizing the researchers’ findings,” said the same HBR report. 

 

☑️ Your feedback sessions shouldn’t feel more like critiques than conversations.

Whether you’re asking for feedback or giving it, create space for conversation, not for a lecture. Sometimes, we’re given feedback that isn’t helpful to us, but we can make the feedback we receive more useful by asking questions about the kind of feedback we want. If you’re giving feedback to an employee, take the time to ask them about their goals and what they would need to be supported in the achievement of those objectives. 

 

☑️ Normalize accepting feedback by making it a more regular process.

Anticipating feedback is much less stressful if it happens regularly rather than only once or twice a year. 

“Expecting an individual to wait for any extended period of time to receive word on how they are doing is a recipe for resignation, cynicism, and potential absenteeism. This is an easy fix; look at providing feedback as a daily opportunity and occurrence versus an ‘event’ which, although it may still take place, doesn’t have to wait due to process but rather acted upon due to principle,” said coach Joshua Miller. 

 

How to Make Sure Your Employees Don’t Hide from Feedback

 

We hide from feedback primarily because we’re afraid of the unknown. We’re worried that we’ve overlooked negative qualities that might hurt our success in our role. 

But useful and helpful feedback is possible – and even necessary. 

“They will tell you that their most valuable feedback has been difficult to hear but has produced outstanding results. The feedback may have caused them to plan more carefully, communicate more openly, or become more assertive. They now make better decisions, inspire more commitment from their employees, or take well-reasoned risks that have catapulted their organizations to new performance levels,” said Charles Rogel, VP of consulting services at DecisionWise.

So, whether you’re giving feedback or receiving it, remember that our ability to rate others on their abstract qualities isn’t wholly accurate. What’s more, when you’re asking for feedback or giving it, you’re better off focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses in order to encourage growth. Finally, make sure you solicit and give feedback regularly and in conversation so that it feels productive rather than nerve-wracking. 

Want to know how to ask for feedback from someone with whom you don’t have an established relationship? Read “The Ultimate Guide to Getting Feedback After Your Interview.”