Getting Beyond Feedback
“Feedback is a gift” is an expression with the right intention but maybe too passive of an outcome. Because when we receive gifts, we accept them but we don’t really take an action because of them. If you hear “feedback is an insight,” it should signal more of a data point that you’ll do something with.
The end of June marks the midpoint for the calendar year. And it is often a time for those feedback insights to happen. Feedback itself has become more on-going and real-time for most employees. People managers don’t wait for a mid-year point to tell you how you’re doing. But it is still the time that companies calibrate development and advancement and capture more standardized inputs from people managers.
And with that in mind, it’s a good time to take stock of feedback and what you’re doing to get beyond it.
People managers who leverage feedback for coaching tend to give someone real-time feedback around a specific situation to illustrate a better way to resolve something or to reinforce an approach that worked well. This is mostly a great thing because it’s easier to hear feedback when the timing is current. And it’s easier to improve a skill or approach when the setting and the topic are specific.
But the more general impression of you and your brand within an organization can get lost. You get less feedback on personal brand unless you ask for it specifically. And you should ask for it – once or twice a year.
How do you ask?
Brand feedback and impressions are less about a specific moment and more about impressions that have settled in over time. In talent reviews, people leaders talk about impressions. They use specific examples to validate or to diffuse impressions that have taken hold.
And you gain those insights by asking for them.
Some people managers offer it without prompting. But if you don’t know the impression of your brand within your team or organization, you should ask for it. Because while feedback may not have been shared, the impressions are always there.
Here’s what you want to know.
Baseline of your brand: You should know how your manager describes your brand. “If someone asked you to describe me, what are the three attributes that come to mind or that you might have shared?” If you work for a people manager who has been great with feedback overall, share back the general impressions that they’ve given you over time. “At the start of the year, you told me my strengths were ___________. Has that stayed consistent or has anything changed?”
Reach of your brand: From internal peers, clients, or cross-functional teams, you should know how others describe your brand. Ask your manager, “How do others share impressions of me or describe my strengths and opportunities?” If your manager shares this, it’s likely to be consistent with how your name has come up in a talent discussion. Or if your manager doesn’t know, it tells you that they’re not promoting your brand or strengths within the organization.
Visibility of your brand: Do you know who your champions are within the organization and are you working to build them? You need to. Not overnight but certainly over time. Ask your manager, “As I work to grow within the company, who besides you should I consider a champion for my development?” If you don’t have champions beyond your manager, ask if it matters. Again, it’s not so much the answer itself but the insight it offers on the visibility of your brand today.
Once you have more general feedback or insights, what do you do with it? Hopefully, you feel terrific about the impact you’ve having and how you’re perceived within the organization. But if there are some unintended impressions, there are three steps that can move you beyond the feedback.
Understand the feedback: Always let feedback sit before you respond to it. Ask questions to understand it, not challenge it. Don’t jump in to debate it or solve it. Feedback rarely has an answer; it’s an insight. But you need to understand what’s behind it, what’s reinforcing it and how consistent it is.
If you want a manager or leader to work with you to get beyond impressions, make it easy to give you feedback. If the feedback is current and specific, it’s easy to talk it through in the moment. If it’s broad and nuanced around impressions as noted above, you need time to absorb it. And if your manager is open to it, it may be best to hear it, understand it and then circle back to talk through what you’re going to try and do about it.
Improve the skill or behavior: While a manager owns the delivery of feedback, it is up to an individual to embrace it and think through how to move beyond it. A manager can be a great coach on how to strengthen a skill or modify a behavior. Sometimes, it may mean just more opportunities for people to experience you. The hardest part of working on feedback is to look ahead, not back. We all want to rehash what happened in hopes of someone seeing our perspective on it. But the reality is you’re not trying to reinforce your perspective…you’re trying to change someone else’s. Focus on the next experience.
Diffuse the impression: If all impressions take hold over time, resolving one and setting a new one also takes time. Be intentional about your efforts but give others a chance to experience a change and buy-in to a difference. It’s not trying harder one time; it’s always over time. Every situation is different, and timing can be as well. But at the right point, usually four to six months, you circle back and ask for feedback on the impressions that worried you. Your manager is the person to ask. But always ask for the impressions of others and whether you should talk to others to close the loop.
Feedback is both a gift and an insight. And the real value of feedback is what you do with it once you receive it.
If you’d like to understand more about how to get feedback on your brand, set up a verbal assessment where we gather the feedback and leverage it into a coaching engagement.
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Also Read: When Feedback is a Setback
