I was facilitating a leadership workshop when our conversation turned to feedback. One participant said something remarkably honest: “I take it personally.”
I appreciated the admission because most of us probably don't announce that reaction out loud. Instead, we defend ourselves, explain what really happened, point out what the other person doesn't understand, or quietly dismiss the feedback because we don't agree with it.
I sometimes joke that one of the easiest ways to get honest feedback is to send an anonymous survey. Of course, that's also one of the easiest ways to receive feedback you don't particularly enjoy reading.
The challenge isn't simply getting feedback. It's deciding what to do with it when what someone says about us doesn't match how we see ourselves.
Our first instinct is often to determine whether the other person is right or wrong. A more useful starting point might be, “What part of this could be true?”
Maybe 90 percent of the feedback feels unfair, but there's 10 percent worth examining. Maybe your intention was good, but your impact was different. Maybe you disagree with the person's conclusion but can still recognize a behavior that contributed to it.
And sometimes the most important question is whether you've heard some version of the feedback before.
One of the principles behind my Leadership Compass work is that leading yourself starts with understanding yourself. Your values, strengths, tendencies, and intentions matter, but so do the things about yourself that are easier for everyone else to see than they are for you.
That's why they're called blind spots.
A coachable leader doesn't have to accept every piece of feedback as truth. Some feedback is incomplete, lacks context, or may say as much about the person giving it as the person receiving it. Being coachable doesn't mean agreeing with everyone.
It does mean being curious enough to ask a few more questions before becoming defensive. What am I not seeing? Have I heard this before? Could my behavior be creating an impact I didn't intend?
The participant who admitted, “I take it personally,” had already done something important before we discussed a single strategy for receiving feedback better. She noticed her own reaction and was willing to say it out loud.
That's where self-awareness begins.
The goal isn't to become a leader who never feels defensive. It's to become a leader who notices the defensiveness, gets curious about what's underneath it, and decides whether there is something useful to learn.
Sometimes you'll decide the feedback doesn't fit. Other times you'll discover something about yourself that everyone else could see before you could.
Either way, you learn more by getting curious than you ever will by immediately getting defensive.
