How you respond to feedback can determine how honest people are with you next time.

A few weekends ago, I caught up with a couple of my oldest and closest girlfriends. And as you do, we got talking about what’s happening in our lives, our families and our work.

One of my friends, who is a team leader, mentioned that the organisation she works for had recently run a feedback survey on the senior leadership team.

The results had come back, and apparently some of the feedback wasn’t particularly easy to hear.

Two of the leaders from her division sat down with the team leader group to talk them through it. They told them they were disappointed with some of the feedback because there were things people didn’t see or understand about what they did, how hard they worked and why certain decisions had been made.

They said they had taken the feedback on board and would be putting some actions in place to address it.

One of those actions had already happened. The two leaders would no longer sit together because the feedback suggested that people felt uncomfortable approaching them when they were sitting together.

My friend was really disappointed with the way they had responded to the feedback. In fact, she said, “Nobody’s going to be honest with them next time there’s a survey. Why would we bother? They’re clearly annoyed with us, and now people are worried they’re going to make our lives harder because of what we said.”

And she has a point.

If our response to feedback is to defend ourselves, explain it away or make people feel like they shouldn’t have said it in the first place, why would they feel comfortable being honest with us next time?

It’s not always easy to hear

From the leader’s perspective, I really do get it.

When you work damn hard, care about what you do and then receive feedback that doesn’t reflect that, or feels unfair, inaccurate or relates to things outside your control, it can be really hard to hear.

And I think most of us have a natural urge to explain the context people might not know, to defend our intentions, and sometimes even to point out why some of the feedback isn’t quite right.

But if we respond in that way, we risk creating the conditions where people think twice about being honest with us or giving us feedback again.

Your people, or the people who report to the leaders in your organisation, won’t just be paying attention to what you do about the feedback. They’ll also be paying attention to how you receive it.

When you receive feedback that’s hard to hear, what do you do?

Here are three things I encourage the leaders I work with to do:

1. Acknowledge and own it

Name what you’ve heard and acknowledge your contribution to it. That doesn’t mean taking responsibility for everything that has happened or agreeing with every comment. There may be organisational issues outside your control, context your people don’t have or feedback you simply don’t agree with. But resist the urge to immediately explain or defend it. There will be time for context. First, make sure your people know you’ve heard them.

2. Involve your people 

Rather than deciding what needs to change on your own, get curious. Ask questions. Test whether you’ve understood what people are actually telling you. Find out what sits underneath the feedback and what would make a meaningful difference to them. You might think you know what needs fixing, but the people who gave you the feedback may see it differently.

3. Act and follow through

You don’t need to create a list of ten actions because ten things appeared in the survey. Choose one or two meaningful things you can do something about. Let your people know what you’re going to do, make the changes visible and keep coming back to them. And please don’t announce a list of actions and then allow them to fade into oblivion as the next priority takes over. If there are things you can’t change, be upfront about that too. You can still explain what you can influence, what you’ll raise elsewhere and what you’re going to focus on yourself.

I’m sure you’d agree that what you do with feedback that’s hard to hear will tell your people a lot about you as a leader.

So, this week, I encourage you to pause for a moment and ask yourself, or perhaps ask the leaders in your team or organisation:

• How well do you receive feedback when it’s hard to hear?
• What do you do well, and what could you tweak or elevate a little bit more?

I trust this has been helpful and got you thinking in some way, shape or form.

Until next week, be well and lead well.

Kylie