Welcome Negative Feedback
“Every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration. Constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought.” ~ Margaret Chase Smith
“Working at Pixar you learn the really honest, hard way of making a great movie, which is to surround yourself with people who are much smarter than you, much more talented than you, and incite constructive criticism; you'll get a much better movie out of it.” ~ Andrew Stanton
“I like constructive criticism from smart people.” ~ Prince
The positive role of negative feedback
Feedback is invaluable to every successful enterprise. Our largest improvements occur in the light of negative feedback.
In other words, short term losses are a fundamental ingredient to long term success. We learn more from losing than from winning. So, we seek out losses which are cheap to incur, yet provide immensely valuable insights.
Elite performers in every field utilize a similar approach by continuously searching for, and incorporating constructive criticism. In this way, failure drives optimization, if we’re keen enough to learn from it.
To see how Elon Musk approaches this topic, check out minute 2:02 of this clip.
Principles for managing feedback
We’ll discuss five principles for effectively managing feedback, which are:
Perspective
Intent
Receptivity
Curiosity
Execution
Each principle builds upon the next to help you receive and implement constructive feedback in your professional remote career.
Perspective
Our enterprises runs on a high-volume of feedback, and our growth comes from deep insight born of continuous testing. We utilize these insights to make tough-minded business decisions.
Such growth wouldn’t be possible if we weren’t honest about what’s working and what isn’t. Negative feedback is often the most useful type, because it highlights opportunities for growth and improvement. Therefore, we embrace negative feedback and recommend that you do, too.
Intent
In spite of an organization’s best intent (ours included), there’s always the possibility that negative feedback gets delivered in a disengaging manner.
When this happens, keep in mind that, despite its poor delivery, the feedback was likely provided with the intent to improve your performance.
This can be particularly difficult when the message is one that's hard to hear. However, if you are to be successful, you should make every effort to understand the feedback you’re given, in the spirit in which it is intended.
Receptivity
What separates the professionals from the amateurs is their ability to receive and incorporate feedback.
Less professional workers tend towards knee-jerk reactions, while pros are willing to consider feedback from any good source. In other words, pros don’t let their egos stand in the way of their own improvement.
When receiving feedback, make effort to listen more than you speak. Deep insights are gained from deep listening, and the more receptive you are, the more value you receive.
Curiosity
When receiving negative feedback, it’s not enough to simply hear out your critics. You must also inject genuine curiosity into the process.
Root-cause analysis requires us to ask “Why?” no less than five times when seeking solutions to customer problems.
For example:
The customer is unhappy. ~WHY?
They didn't receive their product on time. ~WHY?
The product didn't pass final QA and was sent back for rework. ~WHY?
An upstream team failed to meet the external quality bar. ~WHY?
The regular team is off-duty and the substitute team is unfamiliar with the most recent process changes. ~WHY?
The recent process changes have not yet been documented and added to the knowledge-base.
Proposed solution: Document the new process and add it to the knowledge-base.
As you can see in this example, if you had stopped asking WHY? after the 2nd or 3rd step in the process, you might not have ever discovered the root-cause of the issue.
Your willingness to seek out the truth, wherever it may be hiding, will drive actionable insights, add value to the customer, and ultimately improve your personal performance.
Execution
Great business leaders know that there is no substitute for execution.
The shelf-life of feedback is usually fairly short. This means that, even if you're great at receiving and clarifying feedback, you still face the challenge of implementing it.
To best leverage the insights gained from negative feedback, you should implement them as soon as possible. Time is of the essence. And if you fail to integrate the needed changes, you'll continue to deliver subpar results.
Pushing Back
Is this to say that every piece of feedback you receive will be well-founded? Absolutely not. If you receive feedback that you know is off-base, its your duty to push back.
However, to push back effectively, your performance and your position should be strong. If you’re not 100% convinced of your position, consider accepting the feedback, for now.
Push back too quickly, or too often, and you may develop an undesirable reputation for being feedback-averse.
The change curve
The purpose of negative feedback is to foster change. However, change can be difficult. The Kubler-Ross change curve shown below is a model that describes the natural phases people go through when they experience meaningful change.
Not everyone goes through every phase of the change curve, or at least not consciously. If the principles of some or all of the phases don’t resonate for you, that’s ok.
The key is to remember that most people go through a similar process (by any name) when they are required to undergo meaningful change.
Great communication and support throughout the change event will shorten the initial and middle phases in order to achieve integration as quickly as possible.
Empathy and your customers' shoes
Sometimes, interactions with your customers (or teammates and managers) can be difficult. When this occurs, it's easy to become defensive, or over-explain yourself.
However, this type of response usually only escalates the situation. Instead, you should make every effort to control the urge to respond defensively.
When you encounter an angry customer (or teammate or manager), first attempt to understand exactly why they are unhappy. Put yourself in their shoes in order to see the circumstance from their perspective.
You, yourself, are a customer of many products and services, and you've probably called customer support on multiple occasions, so, you can easily adopt a customer's perspective because you are one.
When you're able to empathize in this way, you'll quickly realize that your customer is most interested in having their problem solved, rather than hearing you defend your position (however right it may be).
Make it a habit to consider your customer's perspective, and you'll solve their problem faster, with less interactions, and both of you will be happier.
Conclusion
Elite performers in every field continuously search for, and incorporate, constructive criticism (aka negative feedback) to achieve enterprise goals.
Feedback adds incalculable value to our enterprise, and our largest improvements occur in the light of negative feedback.
Utilize the principles for managing feedback - perspective, intent, receptivity, curiosity, and execution - to ensure continuous improvement of quality and performance.
Further reading:
Assessment
Make sure you use your company account for taking the quiz.
Last updated
Was this helpful?