On the surface, each of these myths appear to make sense, but dig a little deeper and you discover that they have a tendency to undermine feedback conversations and personal growth.
The Six Myths
- Myth #1: Feedback Has to Be “Constructive” to Be Helpful
- Myth #2: Feedback Has to be Accurate to be Helpful
- Myth #3: The Key to Helpful Feedback Conversations is to Eliminate Discomfort
- Myth #4: There is One Best Way to Deliver Criticism
- Myth #5: You Must Diagnose Before You Prescribe
- Myth #6: How Well Someone Delivers Feedback is Indicative of How Much they Care
Feedback Myth #1: Feedback Has to Be “Constructive” to Be Helpful
The first problem with this notion is that everyone has their personal definition of the word “constructive”, and when the feedback giver fails to meet the receiver’s unique standards, the receiver feels justified in setting the criticism aside. The oft-repeated claim, “I’ll accept any criticism as long as it’s constructive,” is rarely anything more than an escape clause.
Can you imagine someone saying, “I’ll accept any pay raise as long as it’s impressive.” That would be absurd, and self-defeating. Yet that’s exactly what many people do every day when feedback isn’t delivered the way they define the word constructive: they throw away the keys to their growth and future success.
The message we drive home in our “Winning with Feedback” workshops is that the power of feedback to transform our lives depends less on the ability of others to give it well than it does on our ability to receive it well.
We don’t control how others choose to give us feedback: we only have control over how we receive it. So when we cling to the misguided notion that the value of feedback is determined by the giver, we place our destiny in their hands—a very dangerous place to be. But when we, as receivers of feedback, fully accept that we determine the value of the feedback others give us, we assume control of our own destinies.
Feedback Myth #2: Feedback Has to be Accurate to be Helpful
We need to disabuse people of the notion that feedback must be based on accurate information to be helpful. If you are competent, honest, and committed to your work, your career is more likely to be derailed by inaccurate perceptions of your behavior and performance than by accurate perceptions.
While we do not have to agree with inaccurate perceptions, we do need to understand them. Unless we fully understand these misperceptions, what they are and how they came to be, we are powerless to change them. And they will keep coming back to bite us in the rear end—until we take the time to figure out how these misperceptions are being created. On pages 17 & 18 of The Feedback Breakthrough, we provide an example to explain the paradox that feedback based on misperceptions may be more important to your career success than feedback based on accurate perceptions.
In our “Winning with Feedback” workshops we teach people how to keep calm when dealing with distorted or blatantly false perceptions; and then we give them the skills to mine those misperceptions for self-empowering insights. We also teach givers of feedback how to deliver more accurate feedback, how to give feedback when they the facts are unclear, and what to do when they are challenged on their version of the “facts”.
Feedback Myth #3: The Key to Helpful Feedback Conversations is to Eliminate Stress and Discomfort
Research has clearly shown that stress and discomfort are features rather than bugs in the mental wiring of humans. Stress and discomfort, if understood and managed, can become catalysts for growth, innovation, and achievement.
If you were to examine feedback conversations in most organizations today, you’d find that much of it is vague, confusing, and what is best described as “wishy-washy.” And why is this? It’s because feedback givers are so afraid of the potential blowback from the recipients that they beat around the bush, drop hints, and sugarcoat the truth. These efforts by feedback givers to eliminate discomfort, for both themselves as well as receivers, are not doing anyone any favors. People don’t learn. People don’t change. And problems aren’t addressed.
In our own research we asked thousands of people to identify the most helpful feedback they’ve ever received. We then asked them to identify the emotions that accompanied that feedback. More than 80 percent of our respondents recall strong negative emotions. Apparently, the gift in that feedback was found not in spite of the discomfort but precisely because of it. The discomfort (and even pain) drove people to reflect on the criticism long enough to discover new and empowering insights.
If personal growth, creativity, and excellence are your goals, then getting comfortable with discomfort, both as givers and receivers of feedback, is the key to your success. In our “Winning with Feedback” workshops we teach people to lean into their discomfort by using a technique called cognitive reappraisal, a technique proven to help people rise rather than fall in the face of discomfort and stress.<1,2,3,4 You can find more information about cognitive reappraisal by reading our blog, “The Power of Identifying the Gift”.
Thankfully, significant discomfort does not have to remain the moving force behind learning from criticism. When an individual comes to view candid feedback as a blessing rather than a curse, criticism loses much of its sting. Over time, gratitude and the desire to improve replace pain-avoidance as the primary motivators for change. And while the discomfort associated with criticism will never totally disappear, this mindset change enables people to push through their discomfort—especially when the feedback giver is misinformed, unfair, or motivated by ill-intent.
Of course, too much discomfort and certain forms of discomfort will do more harm than good. For example, blaming someone, shaming them, or threatening them, will trigger a destructive level of discomfort and stress that undermines learning, confidence, creativity, and resilience.
Our goal in dealing with discomfort is not to eliminate it, but rather to use it as a tool to help people succeed. In our “Winning with Feedback” workshop we teach leaders how to talk about “natural consequences” to create a form and degree of discomfort that leads to success. For example, when the receiver realizes their current behavior will lead them away from achieving things that are important to them, such as gaining new clients, they may feel uncomfortable, but it’s a healthy form of discomfort that drives positive change.
Another key element of what we teach is how our brains are wired to process feedback. Just being aware of the neuroscience behind our automatic mental defense mechanisms equips us to catch those emotions sooner than we would otherwise. When we understand where our discomfort and defensive responses come from, we can deal with them without getting flustered or allowing them to derail our difficult feedback conversations.
In summary: We need to remember that feeling a little discomfort when criticized is a feature rather than a bug in our mental wiring: discomfort is a primary catalyst behind most personal growth, innovation, and performance breakthroughs. Consequently, we need to normalize discomfort in our feedback conversations and learn how to push through it—both as givers and receivers.
(To learn why the “nicest” leaders may be hazardous to your career, click here.)
1 Webb, Thomas; Miles, Eleanor; Sheeran, Paschal (2012). “Dealing with feeling: A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation”. Psychological Bulletin. 138(4): 775–808.
2 Scherer, Klaus R. (November 2009). “The dynamic architecture of emotion: Evidence for the component process model”. Cognition & Emotion. 23(7): 1307–1351.
3 Buhle, J. T.; Silvers, J. A.; Wager, T. D.; Lopez, R.; Onyemekwu, C.; Kober, H.; Weber, J.; Ochsner, K. N. (1 November 2014). “Cognitive Reappraisal of Emotion: A Meta-Analysis of Human Neuroimaging Studies”. Cerebral Cortex. 24(11): 2981–2990.
4 Jamieson, J.P., Peters, B.P., Hangen (Greenwood), E.J., & Altose, A.J. (2016). “Reappraising stress arousal improves performance and reduces evaluation anxiety in classroom exam situations.” Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7, 579-587.
Feedback Myth #4: There is One “Best Way” to Deliver Criticism
Our research with clients has clearly taught us that no two individuals will have the identical preferences when it comes to feedback.
For example:
- The “tactful” approach that some people prefer will be seen as “beating around the bush” by others.
- Some people want complete honesty: “Get to the point and skip the sugarcoating.” For others, that level of directness would be seen as aggressive and threatening.
- For some the words “constructive criticism” mean agreeing on a concrete plan to move forward, while for others those same words mean the tone of voice, body language, and choice of words need to be non-threatening.
- For some the words “be respectful” mean choose your words carefully, but for others it means, “I’m an adult and not a child—so be straight with me. Unlike a child, I can handle the truth.”
- Some people want you to start by giving them the context for your feedback. Others lean towards, “Get to the point. If I need more context I’ll ask for it.”
Given the diversity of preferences when it comes to feedback, Fdbk HQ has developed a proprietary process for addressing this issue and creating a feedback culture within teams and across organizations. In the “Winning with Feedback” workshop we give leaders and teams some easy-to-apply tools to figure out the optimal way to tailor feedback to each individual. These tools and processes are also explored on pages 173-183 of The Feedback Breakthrough.
(To learn more about the keystone of a feedback culture, click here.)
Feedback Myth #5: You Must Diagnose Before You Prescribe
It seems to be common sense that one should get to the root cause of a problem before looking for solutions, but when it comes to giving feedback, one has to discard conventional wisdom and follow a more counter-intuitive approach.
Research involving hundreds of managers across three continents (North America, Asia, and Europe) found that as soon as feedback givers talk about the causes behind the weak performance, minor disagreements “… turned into major ones” and “… the major disagreements were not about what happened, but about why it happened.”1
Why would that be? The answer is simple: human psychology.
When you ask someone, “Why didn’t you meet your targets last month?” they have two ways to answer that question. One way is to identify the mistakes they made or the things they failed to do—the things that reflect poorly on them. Another way is to identify things that were out of their control—the things they can’t be blamed for. And given human nature, the response will be the one that shifts the blame and protects their self-image. And once their brain goes down that path, it picks up momentum. And here’s the kicker: the researchers found that by the end of the conversation the feedback receivers had become even more entrenched in their view that it wasn’t their fault. This backfire effect is alive and well in many of today’s workplace feedback conversations.
On the plus side the researchers found that the more the feedback focused on next steps and future actions, the more likely the recipients were to both accept the feedback and then act on it.
In our “Winning with Feedback” workshop we teach leaders how to use the discussion of next steps and future actions to indirectly uncover the causes of failure while (1) avoiding the backfire effect, (2) diminishing disagreement, and (3) building ownership for tailor-made solutions.
1 Jackie Gnepp, Joshua Klayman, Ian Williamson, and Sema Barlas, “The Future of Feedback: Motivating Performance Improvement through Future-Focused Feedback,” PLOS ONE, 15(6): e0234444. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.023444 (June 19, 2020)
Feedback Myth #6: How Well Someone Delivers Feedback is Indicative of How Much they Care
How someone delivers feedback is not a reliable indicator of how much they care. Consider this: the more someone cares about you and values their relationship with you, the more stressed they may be that their feedback might hurt you or their relationship with you. We know from both personal experience and the latest research in neuroscience that high stress levels significantly reduce one’s capacity to think clearly. This in turn undermines one’s ability to deliver feedback in a helpful way—despite the best of intentions.
On the other hand, someone who doesn’t care one whit about you and is motivated by bad intentions may experience zero stress when giving you feedback, and consequently, they might be flawless in their delivery. So what is one to do? In “Winning with Feedback” we teach that since you can never be one-hundred percent sure of a feedback giver’s motives, your interests are best served by treating their feedback as a gift and assuming they are acting in good faith.
We are not naive: some feedback givers won’t act in good faith, but by giving them the benefit of the doubt you maximize your ability to find some value in their feedback. Should you choose not to give them the benefit of the doubt, you are almost guaranteed to overlook the hidden value in their feedback. Never discount the value of an antagonist revealing their hand by telling you “their truth“, even if it is not “the truth” or “your truth“. We fully endorse the counsel of Benjamin Franklin: “Love your enemies. They will tell you your faults.” This is how a perceived enemy becomes an ally.
Some of the best mentors we have met have gruff exteriors. And their delivery may leave something to be desired, But they don’t leave you in the dark by sugarcoating the truth. They don’t avoid difficult conversations by dropping hints and hoping you’ll pick up on them. No. They’re direct. Sometimes even blunt. But they are committed to giving you information about your behavior and performance that will empower you to accelerate your learning and achieve your goals.
Think about it this way: who cares about you more? Is it the leader who lets you flounder in the dark because they think you are too weak to be told the truth. Or is it the leader who takes the risk to tell you the truth, even when they know it might make them less likeable or popular.