Retraining Your Brain to Cope with Negative Feedback

Have you ever become incredibly stressed and anxious after receiving negative feedback?  Have you spent more time worrying than actually addressing the corrective actions you might take in light of the criticism?  David Rock and Chris Weller have written a useful article for Fast Company about coping with negative feedback.   They offer some helpful tips.   Rock and Weller argue that your brain moves into a "threat state" when you receive negative feedback, and that mental state prevents you from moving forward constructively. They write:

The stress we feel during and after a negative feedback conversation is a form of a threat state—in particular, a threat to our sense of status. The brain senses danger, so it shuts down precious cognitive resources and diverts energy toward worrying about our standing and reputation. Cognition and threat, therefore, work as a kind of seesaw. As one is high, the other necessarily is low.

Rock and Weller argue that you may need a quick break (a walk is helpful) to calm down if you are feeling extremely anxious.  Then, you should assess the situation and engaging in practices they call labeling and reappraisal.  Labeling entails naming the emotions that one is experiencing and that might be getting in the way of thoughtfully considering how to improve based on the input one has received.   Then, they encourage people to "reframe part or all of the negative situation in a more positive light. For instance, if you’re given feedback that you don’t speak up enough in meetings, instead of feeling embarrassed or dejected, can you reappraise the situation as a positive in that your manager respects your opinions?"  

Having reappraised the criticism, individuals can examine why their performance led to the negative feedback.  Perhaps some obstacles have gotten in the way of doing good work.  Or, perhaps you became sidetracked and fell into some bad habits.   To develop a corrective action plan, individuals should imagine what improvement looks like.  What will success look like?  How will they behave in the future if they have addressed these concerns?  What changes will they have made to their work habits? How will others perceive them if they have undertaken a set of corrective actions?  Imagining a better, more productive self can help one move past the negative emotions that crowd out learning and self-improvement in the face of unexpected negative feedback. 

How to Seek Constructive Feedback: 3 Questions to Ask

Source: Pixabay

We all appreciate praise and recognition.   Constructive criticism?  Not so much.   It's like spinach.  We know it's good for us, but we aren't eager to cook it for supper.   Of course, some managers aren't very effective at delivering feedback either.   Thus, have a particularly thorny problem: leaders who don't provide feedback in a constructive manner, and team members who don't seek it or are not willing to listen. In a recent Fast Company article, leadership expert Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic points out that many of us also falter when we do seek feedback.  Why?  He argues that we don't ask the right questions when soliciting feeback from others.  Here's an excerpt:

Since it’s often unkind to criticize others, especially when you care about them, you need to make it easier for people to do it. This means asking the right questions. Don’t ask people whether they liked what you did or how you do something, and don’t ask questions such as “Was this okay?” or “Did I do a good job?”  Instead, ask

• “What would you have done differently?”
• “What are the two things that they didn’t like so much?”
• “If you can change one thing about X going forward, what would that be?”

Tell them you won’t take it personally, and then don’t take it personally. Tell them you value their opinion and are struggling to find people who help you get better, so if they want to help you, they need to improve your ability to identify blind spots and key areas for improvement.

Then, be thankful. Feedback is always a gift, and there is no bigger gift than constructive critical feedback because it is daunting and risky to provide it. There is a higher cost to honest negative feedback than fake positive feedback, but the former makes you much better than the latter.   

The three questions suggested by Chamorro-Premuzic are right on the mark.  They provide an opportunity for concrete, actionable feedback.   They solicit input that is specific, not generic.   They look forward and focus on what needs to happen differently in the future, rather than only dissecting past conduct.  

Advice for our Younger Selves

Source:  Pixnio

Christian Jarrett reported recently in BPS Research Digest about a new study by Robin Kowalski and Annie McCord, published in the Journal of Social Psychology. The paper is titled, "If I knew then what I know now: Advice to my younger self."  The scholars examined what advice people above the age of 30 would give to their younger selves. Jarrett explains the findings:

Their findings show that people’s advice to their younger selves is overwhelmingly focused on prior relationships, educational opportunities and personal worth, echoing similar results derived from research into people’s most common regrets in life. Moreover, participants who said they had followed the advice they would give to their younger selves were more likely to say that they had become the kind of person that their younger self would admire. “…[W]e should consult ourselves for advice we would offer to our younger selves,” the researchers said. “The data indicate that there is much to be learned that can facilitate wellbeing and bring us more in line with the person that we would like to be should we follow that advice.” 

The two studies followed a similar format with the participants (selected to be aged at least 30 years) asked to provide either three pieces or one piece of advice to their younger selves; to reflect on whether following this advice would help them become more like the person they aspire to be or ought to be; whether they had actually followed the advice later in life; to consider a pivotal event that had shaped them in life, especially in light of the advice they’d chosen to give their younger selves; and to reflect on what their younger self would make of their current self. Participants mostly gave themselves advice around relationships (“Don’t marry her. Do. Not. Marry. Her.”), education (“Go to college”), selfhood (“Be yourself”), direction and goals (“Keep moving, keep taking chances, and keep bettering yourself”), and money (“Save more, spend less”).

I enjoyed digging into this paper because I think it has important implications regarding the value of self-reflection.  Several years ago, I heard former Baxter Healthcare CEO Harry Kraemer, now a professor at Kellogg, discuss his nightly routine of self-reflection.  Each night, Kraemer takes a few moments to think back to how he conducted himself throughout the day, both in his professional and personal life.   Kraemer has developed a set of useful questions to use during this reflection time:

1. What did I say I was going to do today in all dimensions of my life?  What did I actually do?
2. What am I proud of?  What am I not proud of?
3. How did I lead people?  How did I follow people?
4. If I lived today over again, what would I have done differently?
5. If I have tomorrow (and I am acutely aware that some day I won’t) and I am a learning person, based on what I learned today, what will I do tomorrow in all dimensions of my life that are important (as a father, as a leader, as a son, as a spouse, as a spiritual person, etc.)?

I cannot say that I have Kraemer's discipline for daily self-reflection, but I have taken to trying to take some time every few weeks or months to consider these questions.  While I would benefit from pondering these questions more often, I do think that even the occasional time to reflect has been extremely helpful.  This research certainly bolsters Kraemer's argument and makes me want to try to make more time for reflection on a more frequent basis.  

Encourage Your Workers to Reflect on Their Work: Their Performance Will Improve!

Scholars Francesca Gino, Gary Pisano, Giada Di Stefano, and Bradley Staats have published an interesting new working paper titled "Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Aids Performance."  The paper describes a series of experimental studies conducted by these researchers.  In one study, they conducted a field experiment at Wipro, an outsourcing firm based in India.  The scholars worked with employees experiencing a multi-week training program.  They broke the employees into three groups.  First, they had a "reflection" group.  They asked these workers to spend the final 15 minutes of each day reflecting on what they had learned.  Second, they had a "sharing" group.  These employees spent 15 minutes reflecting, and then they shared their thoughts with a peer for approximately 5 minutes.  Finally, the control group did not engage in any closing activity at the end of each day's training. 

What were the results of this field experiment?   The employees in the reflection group performed 22.8% better than the control group on a test administered at the end of the training program.  The workers in the sharing group experienced a similar advantage over the control group employees. 

The results should not surprised you at all.   Some of you are probably wondering why we needed an experiment to prove the obvious!  However, think for a moment about the work that you and your colleagues do in your organization.  How busy is your typical day?   Have you set aside 15-20 minutes for reflection and sharing from time to time?  In many cases, we don't allocate time to this important activity.  Yes, we do it informally, perhaps during a drive home from work or while working out at the gym.   In many instances, though, we get so busy in the day-to-day work that we allow far too many days to pass while we are not reflecting and sharing appropriately. 

Learning from Our Success and Others' Failures

Scholars KC Diwas, Bradley Staats, and Francesa Gino have conducted a new study about how we learn and improve (or fail to do so).  They examined Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery procedures.   Their research shows that individuals (cardiac surgeons in this case) learn more from their own success than the success of others.  Moreover, they learn more from others' failures than others' successes.   What explains these findings?  The scholars argue that we attribute our own success as well as others' failures to internal factors rather than external conditions.   When we succeed, we attribute it to our own effort and capabilities.  When we fail, we often blame "unexpected external factors or pressures."  On the other hand, when others fail, we tend to attribute the outcome to some deficiency on the part of that person (poor effort, planning, skills, etc.).  Finally, the study demonstrated that, "Individuals may be more open to reflect on their own failures and learn from them when they have greater experience with success."