Confident Performance Reviews.
Feedback is ‘data’.
Feedback doesn’t happen ‘to us’. Instead, we can choose to see it as data we can select to help our career take a step forward.
An upcoming performance review can bring up all sorts of feelings. What if one of them was confidence?
Why we feel defensive during feedback conversations.
It’s natural to feel surprised or even defensive when receiving feedback you don’t expect.
Many of us have experienced sub-par feedback in the past. Unhelpful feedback focuses on character instead of skill, criticism instead of clarity on what ‘great’ looks like. As a result, it can take time to reframe and let go of feedback that we haven’t enjoyed in the past. As a result, you might feel on the ‘defence’, well before the actual performance chat!
It is a very common experience. Why? We instinctively feel defensive when we feel our integrity is under threat. If we interpret feedback as an ‘attack’ on our character, it can be almost impossible to see any type of feedback as helpful in any way, shape or form! There is another way.
Great feedback is specific, kind and helpful.
Great feedback focuses on what you do well, and what behaviour will help you succeed.
When we start looking at feedback as data to drive our career forward, we can start looking at those insights from a completely different view. A view where information has the opportunity to help us soar to success and it’s within our control what we choose to activate or take on.
When we go into a conversation with the intent to ‘find’ the data in someone else’s perspective a really neat thing starts to happen. We shift from a fear zone into a curious zone. From this zone we protect ourselves. Instead of feeling an ‘attack’ on our character, we can be reassured that we are not in question, but rather, that we have an opportunity to discover what pieces of information may be helpful in our career. From there, we can choose what to activate and what to accept.
When we approach all feedback as data, regardless of what ‘package’ it comes in, we can lean into our inner ‘detective’, searching for helpful clues. When we remove the feeling of feedback ‘happening to us’, and replace it with the idea of ‘seeking clarity’, it helps us see feedback as evidence, helping us get to know ourselves and how other people experience our behaviour and actions.
Feedback is D.A.T.A.
Knowing how to see the ‘data’ in the feedback is key. Research tells us 98% of employees fail to engage without feedback, and a driving factor is uncertainty and fear on ‘how’ to source helpful feedback.
Applying the D.A.T.A Framework has helped hundreds of employees shift from uncertainty to clarity come performance review season. Let’s dive in.
Depersonalise
Instead of asking for ‘any’ feedback, ask for feedback on a specific skill you’re keen to develop in. To prepare for this, check out our guide on giving yourself feedback, or dive into our Achievement Audit, outlined at the end of this blog.
Ask for specific feedback
Getting specific on what types of feedback you need to help you grow helps the other person feel comfortable being succinct and direct. When you give someone permission to focus on an area you’re keen to develop in, it becomes much easier to converse. For example, if someone says ‘be more confident’, you can ask for specific examples of people who showcase the skill well and what in particular they do well, so you can draw your attention to what the other person is seeing. From there, you can reflect on what you can do differently, or emulate, or open a discussion to learn more.
Test assumptions
It’s okay if you don’t understand at first. Which is why testing for clarity that you’re on the same page can help you understand what the other person is asking of you. For example, if someone says, ‘get stakeholder feedback’, you can ask whether stepping through a specific example would help the other person give an example of what you could do differently next time.
Agree
Great conversations end with an agreement on what will happen next. So often, when we get feedback we can feel flustered and then - leave the conversation not being sure what to do as a result. Instead, why not try, ‘lets agree on what that could look like’, so you and your manager can make a game plan and share specific examples.
If you find making an agreement ‘too many steps’ on the day, it’s also helpful to remember you never need to make an agreement in the room if you’re not ready to. Instead, you can say, ‘you’ve given me a lot to think about, leave it with me and I’ll ponder on it and come back to you.’
Additionally, if you leave a conversation where you don’t feel you’ve been in your ‘green zone’, you can start a conversation with, ‘I’ve been reflecting on our last conversation. With the gift of hindsight, I think I’m in a better place to understand more now.’
Practical tools to get started.
Here are three practical tools you can use to set yourself up for success.
Identify what ‘zone’ you are in during your feedback conversations.
If you find yourself getting defensive during feedback conversations, you might value learning more about the Traffic Light Framework. This tool asks you to reflect on when you feel green (most in control), yellow (less in control) and red (out of control).
It then asks you to clarify what the circumstances are that cause you to have those experiences. From that place, you are in a brilliant place to design your own Circuit Breakers: ways to bring yourself to a sense of safety, confidence and grounded-ness to be present in the room.
Practice giving yourself feedback.
Ever gone into a conversation and thought ‘this is too vague?’. The tool to help you take control of those conversations is creating your own reflection practice so you can confirm what you believe you do really well and what you’re curious to learn more about and develop in your role.
To tune into your inner feedback muscle, we recommend creating a reflection practice to give yourself feedback regularly, from a place of comfort and in your own personal space. This practice directly helps with defensiveness as you are used to ‘self-guiding’ yourself, and thinking about what you do well and what you might do differently, given the chance.
Reflection also helps you learn about your patterns of behaviour. Studies have shown that when we reflect, we seperate our sense of self-worth from our behaviour: critical for seeing feedback as data!
Complete an Achievement Audit.
We feel confident when we play to our strengths and have examples of our success. Completing an Achievement Audit gives you a boost of confidence during times of change, when you feel on the ‘edge’ of your competence, as you develop a new skill or mindset and - in feedback conversations!
Showcasing your achievements is a critical way to demonstrate the impact you've made. Not only in your role or team, but towards the goals of your organisation.
At Happiness Concierge, we have a simple framework that will help you to reflect on this as you begin to map out your expertise and experience with others: the Achievement Audit.
Here’s how it works.
Achievements: Reflect on what you have achieved in the past year, week or month. What have you achieved that you're proud of? What are achievements you might be surprised by?
Impact: Outline what that enabled you to have, feel or achieve. What was the result? What was the impact?
Learning: What did you learn as a result? What became clear to you? What did you wonder, as a result?
Pop a shortlist together of achievements relevant for your upcoming work discussion. What could make a cameo in your upcoming pitch or performance review worthy of mention? Review your goals / KPIs and reflect on which achievements have shifted the dial on those goals. In what ways can you align your accomplishments to that criteria? If you are new to the organisation, reflect on what you know about expected behaviours, outcomes and goals for the business unit.
You can also share your list of achievements with your leader and ask, ‘which of these are the most valuable to your view of success’? That feedback will enable you to focus your impact statements in the conversation.
In our Giving & Receiving Feedback Programme, we teach these lessons.
We cover how to open a feedback conversation, manage defensiveness, and land on an agreement.
The result is that people have more productive feedback conversations.
What could your leaders and individual contributors achieve at work if they got regular, empowering feedback?
Giving & Receiving Feedback Programme.
For leaders and individual contributors.