You get constant feedback from others about your performance at work. A customer can be happy with his interaction. A colleague can run away from a upset of a meeting. You will receive comments about a report that you have written, an e -mail about a presentation or thoughts about how you deal with colleagues.
In the best worlds, the feedback you get is clear and easy to understand. Good feedback has three characteristics.
- It specifies the behavior in which you are concerned.
- It offers a clear and accurate assessment of the consequences of that behavior.
- It suggests actions that you can take in the future that are better suited for the occasion.
The further the feedback you get deviates from this formulation, the harder it can be to understand the feedback or to recognize how it applies to you and what you should do about it.
When you receive feedback that you do not understand, it is often valuable to get more information to ensure that you can learn and improve from experience. I will dig how you can tackle the three components of good feedback in an instant, but first a word about asking questions regarding feedback.
It is important to start questions by pointing out that you request clarification. Do not adjust that the feedback was not justified. There is no simpler way to ensure that you never get more feedback than your time spends trying to convince someone that you have done nothing wrong in the first place.
1. Ask what went wrong
Sometimes the feedback you get is difficult to process because it is not clear about what you have done wrong. That can happen because someone assumes you already know.
However, it happens more often because someone criticizes your motivation instead of your actions. They will talk about your attitude or intention. Usually, when people try to assess your motivation or intention, they are wrong, and so the description of the feedback does not sound true for you.
Instead of arguing about your motivation or the situation, you ask for a clearer description of what you did. To the extent that you believe that your motivation or intention was different from what you were described, it is fine to clarify your motivation, but you must start with a sentence like: “I can see how you would think that I am trying …” When discussing your motivation, so that you do not try to give the other person the feeling that he has completely wrong.
2. Ask for the impact
Sometimes – especially early in your career – understanding the consequences of an action can be the most important part of the feedback you get. You may have done something that you thought would lead to a different result, but you get feedback that was clearly not the case.
In addition to understanding the consequences of your action, if you talk to a more expert colleague, it can also be useful to get their feeling why the action had the impact. To get better in predicting the impact of your actions, it is important to understand the relationship between what you do and what happens next.
3. Ask for the future
You may have a clear picture of what you did and what happened as a result, and the feeling still has that the feedback has not given you no knowledge of what you should have done instead. Sometimes the person who gives feedback is simply not clear about their recommendations for future actions. Other times the person you give feedback does not know what should have been done instead.
If you are confused about what you should do differently in the future, you can go back to the person you have given feedback for advice. However, you can also find a trusted mentor to revise the situation and help you by walking other ways in which you could have treated it. Often someone can further remove the details (and perhaps someone with more experience than the person you have given feedback) give you clearer advice on better alternatives to the future.
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