Why It’s So Hard to Hear Negative Feedback and important too

When we’re confronted with it, Adam explains, we have a physiological response: We tense up, our breathing gets shallower and our ego becomes so threatened it begins to limit the information that is let into our brains. We regulate to avoid taking in harsh critiques.

In fact, a 2017 working paper from researchers at Harvard and the University of North Carolina said we sometimes go so far as to reshape our social networks in the office to avoid people who tend to give us negative feedback.

Why do we react this way to feedback that is ostensibly supposed to help us?

Essentially, it’s because all of us are so awful at delivering negative feedback. It’s a self-reinforcing vicious circle that trains us to avoid what would make us better at work and in life.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because a few months ago we talked about seeking out people who will give you unvarnished, honest and, most important, genuinely helpful feedback.

The solution to this problem on both sides — whether you’re receiving the feedback or giving it — boils down to trusting that everyone is participating in good faith.

When you’re delivering negative feedback, do so honestly and openly, and frame the conversation as a difficult-yet-necessary means to an end of improving the receiver’s performance (and mean it!). Don’t sugarcoat it, either. Those “praise sandwiches” in which we surround a bad review with halfhearted, superficial compliments don’t help either side.

If you’re receiving the feedback, frame it so it will ultimately lead to self-improvement. Yes, it can be tough to take. But imagine that on top of being judged on your job performance, you’ll also be judged on how you act on the feedback.

So the next time you receive harsh feedback, acknowledge that it can be hard to hear, but don’t sulk and shut down. Even if you’re given a C for performance, you can still earn an A for improvement. And eventually, like one C.E.O. whom Adam interviews in his podcast, you can retrain your brain to actively seek out that feedback so you associate it not with anxiety, but with opportunity.

By Tim Herrera, New York Tmes 2018, March 26th