We need it in order to improve and grow, yet it’s hard not to feel stung when we hear something “negative”… These real women share how they learnt to accept criticism, take the right advice and benefit from it

The ability to receive feedback well is a desirable trait in the workplace. Sheryl Sandberg cites it as the number one skill she looks for in a new hire as it indicates they can learn and grow quickly.  We’re all wired to want feedback to help us grow – and yet we’re also wired to feel threatened when we receive some. In her podcast series  How’s Work? , psychotherapist Esther Perel explains that as humans we are constantly straddling two fundamental needs: the need for growth and adventure, and the need for security and stability.  The good news is that getting comfortable with feedback isn’t a skill you’re either born with or not. It’s more like a muscle that needs to be developed and then kept in good shape through regular use. I teach how to develop this muscle in my online course, The Art of Receiving Feedback.  When asked about the biggest lesson she’s learnt as a leader, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern – arguably one of the most admired leaders of 2020 – replied, “I’ve learnt how to filter things; how to take on board criticism and listen to it when I needed to, or otherwise say, ‘Well, actually that person’s just coming from a very different perspective.’” This ability to be discerning both in the moment and with subsequent reflection, helps to ensure we aren’t too quick to discount advice that may prove to be really valuable for us and at the same time that we don’t end up immediately taking on board feedback that would be better disregarded.  We spoke to six women about their best “worst” feedback – those challenging conversations that took place early in their career, and their ability to filter through and channel that into growth opportunities… 

Kelsey, 31

One of my first managers gave me a hard piece of feedback very early in my career: that I react too quickly. I wasn’t expecting it and the way she delivered it was very poor, by screaming at me in the street after a client meeting. Because her timing and delivery was so bad, I brushed it off as I didn’t think that what she was saying was accurate. I was able to take it on board a few years later, though, after the personal sting and feeling of being attacked wore off. It’s honestly made me a better team member and employee because while I still work quickly, I now give myself more time and pause before submitting projects or ideas. It has also made me more empathetic as a manager because I’ve had team members who naturally advance at a slower pace and I can see they have a different, complementary value to my style of working. 

Amy, 41

I’m a chatty and smiley person by nature and in one of my earlier roles in a very corporate office I got told, “You need to smile less as it comes across as if you’re not busy enough.” To hear feedback like that felt to me like, “Uh oh, my personality is going to be a problem here.” A few months later we had an external agency working with us and they took me to one side and said, “You’re a square peg in a round hole here.” That helped me to reflect that while I may have been right for the role, I was just in the wrong company. I was never going to be able to build my career there.  I do question whether I might have otherwise changed my personality to fit in eventually. But I recognised that it wasn’t the company for me. It can be hard to find the right balance sometimes, especially being an extrovert, but workplaces that encourage you to be yourself also bring out the best in their employees. As I’ve grown, I have had to learn how to build up other sides of myself and get a balance with my personality. If I were to be just enthusiastic and sociable, I’m not sure I could have got to a director role without being able to prove to the business that I can also deliver results.

Andrea, 37

Earlier in my career, I was working as a production manager for a documentary, which meant booking film crew, flights, equipment and making sure everything happened on time and on budget. My only problem was that I was a perpetual loser of things – the office keys, my phone, my company credit card. After infuriating my boss by losing the card for the umpteenth time I told him it was a personality trait that could not be helped. He sat me down to tell me that I had the choice to change my behaviour if I decided to take myself more seriously and actively worked to change the habit. I thought he was being ridiculous – this was just who I was. It wasn’t until years later, when the government offered me a final warning that if I lost my passport again that they would not reissue another one, that I took his advice. He was 100% correct – it was within my control if I decided to take myself seriously enough. Being structured with where I put things helps me every single day. I think I had to wait until there was significant pain for me and the consequences of not doing something were greater than doing something. The feedback definitely changed my life.

Rosi, 27

My boss told me he wasn’t happy with my performance and wasn’t seeing the results he had hired me to achieve. During our one-to-one he said I spent too much time worrying about what people think rather than actioning things and that he hired me for my ability to work and deliver results.  Initially, I took it very personally. I thought he was telling me that I had to change my personality in order to succeed within my career and role at the company and that I had four weeks to prove myself or I would be fired. It really pushed me to relook at what was holding me back in moving things forward. I put everything into bettering my work and hitting the target he gave me – and did so within two weeks. When I next caught up with my boss, he told me what impressed him most wasn’t that I had hit the target, but it was my ability to take on board the feedback he had given and put it in to action.   

CeCe, 34

My first “dream job” was at a big ad agency on Madison Avenue. The nature of these large organisations is quite traditional and hierarchical. I was frustrated that the position I was in wasn’t more strategic or using the skills I thought I had to offer. I kept receiving feedback that I had to “pay my dues”. It was my first position and I felt like I needed to succeed, so I didn’t question the feedback. Instead, I felt continually underused, and my work suffered. I ended up leaving that job before the year was out, feeling like I had failed. The next company I worked for and the managers I had get a lot of credit for rebuilding my confidence and guiding me in directions where I could flourish. It taught me that how you work, collaborate, enable and lead within a workplace has as much, if not more, merit and weight as the quality of your work. Ultimately, when I think about that first job, it taught me that feedback should be a dialogue. It’s beneficial when there is understanding of why the feedback was given. Think deeply about why you agree or disagree with the feedback and address it accordingly.  

Lucy, 30

My manager told me in a review that I needed to work faster. It was difficult to hear and hit home, and at the time I agreed with it. I had felt frustrated with myself for not being fast enough at turning things around at work, but I didn’t know how else to do it.  Over time I’ve been able to understand that what they probably meant was find ways to be more efficient so that you’re able to cope with the workload and specifically work on your perfectionism. I’ve also realised that just working faster doesn’t help anyone, it only makes you frantic and overworked because you never know how to say no . I’m disappointed that I wasn’t helped to get to the point of being able to work faster through more constructive advice. I now feel more confident looking at feedback I receive in different ways, in asking questions about what is meant and asking for the support I need to learn and develop. 

5 Top Tips For Taking Feedback

1. Cultivate A Safe Space Feedback conversations are notoriously uncomfortable and stressful. Research has shown that participants’ heart rates can jump as much as 50% during one. This physiological stress zaps our ability to be our best selves in the moment by triggering our sympathetic nervous system into fight, flight or freeze mode.  Tip:  Take a couple of deep, calm breaths in and out. This will trigger a signal within your nervous system to slow your heart rate, lower your blood pressure and decrease the cortisol that’s racing around, putting you back on your A game.  2. Confirm A Shared Understanding  It can be really easy to take feedback at face value, that is to hear just one word or a throwaway phrase and focus purely on your interpretation of that. Often, we believe that the more ubiquitous a word, the less detail or explanation is required. When in fact, these commonly used words and phrases are the ones we need most clarity on.  Tip:  Use “what?” or “how?” questions to query the feedback you’ve just received. Former FBI hostage negotiator and author of  Never Split the Difference  Chris Voss recommends using open questions that feel less accusatory than ones that start with “why?”, and result in more helpful answers than closed questions that require only yes or no.  3. Challenge Your First Draft  Our minds are sense-making machines that create stories to help us understand what’s happening. These stories inform our emotional reactions to situations and that in turn drives our actions and behaviours. We often do this so fast that we don’t fact-check the story that we tell ourselves for accuracy. Research professor and author Brené Brown cautions that as a result, we can end up with a really potent “shitty first draft” (SFD) that then drives our emotions and behaviours. Tip:  Before you get swept up in your first reaction to the feedback, get your SFD out of your head and gently challenge it. Use the prompt “the story I’m telling myself is…” to either write it out in a notebook, type it up into the Notes app on your phone or share it out loud with someone you trust. Hear yourself out, then question the accuracy of your story before you allow it to drive your emotional reaction and subsequent actions.  4. Channel A Growth Mindset  Professor Carol Dweck has spent her life researching the power of our mindsets and in her book,  Mindset , discusses how there are two different ways we largely perceive ourselves, through either a fixed or growth mindset. Believing our skills are set in stone is known as having a fixed mindset. This makes it a lot harder to embrace feedback as it can come across as feeling like criticism of who you are Tip:  Reassure yourself, “It’s OK, I’m not there… yet.” A growth mindset means you see your capabilities as able to be continually developed. This means you are more likely to embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, see effort as the path to mastery, find inspiration in the successes of others and learn from feedback.  5. Curate Your Takeaways Ultimately, what you do with the feedback you receive is up to you. The aim here isn’t to 100% take on board every bit of advice you receive – but rather to actively engage with it so that you’re in a position to be able to decide what to do with it. In their book  Thanks For The Feedback , Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone refer to this as the “process of sorting and filtering”. Tip:  Try each piece of feedback on for size and be prepared to take it on board, but equally to discard it – you want to ensure you’re not missing out on a really valuable piece of feedback, but at the same time that you’re not taking on board something that isn’t for you. Ask yourself, what could I do here and what are the consequences of doing/not doing this?  Tee Twyford is a millennial leadership coach at  Hustle + Hush . She empowers millennial leaders to hustle smarter and hush deeper through one-to-one coaching, workshops, peer mentoring circles and online courses on topics such as  The Art Of Receiving Feedback .

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