‘Are you sitting down?’
I looked around. This was years before Teams or Zoom normalised video calls. As with most of my conference calls, I was dialled in on my phone, headphone cable wrapped around my neck like a scarf and pacing nervously.
‘Should I be?’ I asked. Genuinely curious, and now even more nervous.
‘Yes. Because this is going to be brutal.’
Three months earlier…
I had my line manager to thank for the opportunity. He had constantly supported my career throughout the past couple of years and I could sense his excitement from the moment he slid into the chair next to me.
‘They are interviewing all of the management level as part of an HR baselining exercise and I’ve got you an interview,’ he said.
Numerous questions tumbled through my mind, foremost being whether this was actually an opportunity for promotion. Or just an opportunity.
‘There’s no role available. But it will be great experience. And give you good visibility with the senior leaders,’ he said, immediately answering my unspoken question.
There may not have been a job on offer, but I recognised how fortunate I was. The next step on my career ladder was a single nudge up the Alphabet from G to F-band, but this would be management level, a significant leap in both responsibility and renumeration. And regardless of the context, I knew that getting this time with our leadership team would be an important step in any potential journey upwards.
The interview was with an HR contact and our functional lead – a pragmatic and straight-talking leader who I admired and looked up to. The format was simple: a presentation and QA, then a series of competency based questions. I was nervous, but confident. It felt less pressure because there was no role, but I also knew that this was an opportunity for me to demonstrate my capability to an influential senior leader. And I didn’t want to mess it up.
I thought the interview went well. It was a good presentation. I answered all of the follow up queries and my examples for the competency based questions demonstrated a broad range of experience whilst highlighting some of my core strengths.
So, two weeks later, when I jumped onto the call with our functional lead, I went in expecting praise. Recognition of my potential and some clear indicators about the next step to management level. I could not have been more wrong.
The feedback was brutal.
But it was also clear. Concise, specific and at times, too detailed. It was the absolute opposite of what I was expecting.
My first reaction (beyond the initial shock) was to defend myself. I wanted to tell him why he was wrong. To provide the context that he was missing. To fill in the many gaps that he had in his hastily formed opinions. But I didn’t. I listened. I accepted. I absorbed. And then I reflected on what he said. Which was probably the best decision I’ve made in my entire career…
This reflection changed everything. I took the feedback away and after the initial anger and embarrassment had cooled, I looked at what he said. I began to see it. I began to understand it. And then, I decided to act upon it.
Eighteen months later I had the opportunity to apply for a management level role. The person interviewing me was my functional lead. The same one who had provided my brutal feedback. And I felt like someone had just given me the answers to an exam.
I walked into that interview armed with his feedback. I weaved it into my responses, highlighting the actions I had taken from his direct feedback and the growth that I had demonstrated. I could bullet point each and every item he had raised and demonstrate action I had taken. I have never been as confident during an interview as I was in that one – and I got the role.
His feedback, his brutal feedback, made that possible. Without it, I simply wouldn’t have seen the blind spots that were holding me back, and from that point onwards, I have embraced the positive power of feedback.
“Challenging people is often the kindest thing you can do for them.” Radical Candor: Kim Scott.
Although I recognise and actively champion the benefits of feedback, my journey to share this knowledge has not been an easy one. Because there is one thing that I have learnt through bitter experience: the only thing harder than receiving feedback, is giving it…With this in mind, here are four key rules that I always follow when sharing feedback with colleagues:
- Ensure it’s coming from a good place. Feedback should come from a singular place: a desire to help others. Your intent, your absolute purpose, is to provide an insight or knowledge that you hope an individual can use for growth and personal development. If there is any other motivation, then pause and reflect before proceeding…
- Ask first. It’s a simple rule but I always follow this now. Before providing any direct feedback, I will ask for permission from the individual. We don’t know what others are going through and it may be that they are simply not in the right mental place to receive feedback. Or simply don’t want it from you! Either way, it is their right to refuse.
- If you can, make it about you. This sounds counter-intuitive, but is one of the most critical elements of providing feedback. If you position your feedback about the individual directly, they are much more likely to take it as a criticism or an attack on them directly. If you re-frame the feedback about how you felt in the situation, it encourages empathy and allows the individual to consider how their actions impact others. EG: instead of saying, ‘You never listen to my ideas during meetings,’ you could say, ‘I feel unheard when my ideas aren’t acknowledged during meetings.’ This shifts the focus from accusing the person to sharing your own experience.
- Be specific. Be clear and strive for clarity. Provide examples. Remember, your intent here is to help others and provide information they can act upon. If all you have is a vague sense or feeling about a person or situation, then keep it to yourself.
It’s never easy. But if you follow these simple steps, they will go a long way in helping you embrace the positive power of feedback, and maybe even changing the course of someone’s career…
