Reframing Feedback: A Practice for Receiving Criticism Well

Negative feedback can feel like a punch in the gut - but what if you could shift your mindset to see it as useful data instead of personal failure?

Most of us cringe when we hear “I have some feedback for you.” But learning to receive feedback well is one of the most powerful skills you can build for collaboration and growth.

In this episode of Practicing Connection, Jessica and Erin talk about how to prepare your mindset, identify which feedback deserves your attention, and turn even tough conversations into moments of learning. 

Erin also shares a practical approach you can use the next time feedback catches you off guard - helping you respond with curiosity instead of defensiveness.

Listen in to find new ways to make feedback feel less threatening, and more like an investment in your growth.

We have a special handout that goes with this episode, to help you put these mindshifts and methods into practice. You can find it here:

Reframing Feedback: Receiving Criticism Well handout

LinkedIn Practice:

Think back to the last time you received negative feedback.

What helped you respond productively—or what would you do differently next time?

Can you reframe one piece of criticism you’ve received lately as useful “notes” instead of judgment?

Share your reflection in the comments.

Links and resources from this episode:

• Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/ 
• Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org 

Transcript

[00:00:00]

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Hi, thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I'm Jessica, my new co-host is here as well. Today we'll be talking about how to receive negative feedback, and Erin's gonna be sharing a practice with us. Hi Erin, how are you?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Hi Jessica. I'm having fun!

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Great!

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I wasn't expecting to be this excited to actually be recording things, so this is kind of fun. Plus it's finally sunny again here in Wisconsin, which is a treat. We've had a string of all of the temperatures in the negatives. We had an exploding tree watch warning from the weather people recently, so no trees exploded in my neighborhood.

I am very relieved, and I'm very relieved that it's a little bit warmer, and that we have sunshine again.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, that is very good. I have been hibernating, reading a lot more than I [00:01:00] have in the past several years. I'm just chewing through the books and that's been awesome. Both reading fiction and nonfiction as well. It's something I used to do a lot more of and I've picked it back up again, and that has been really feeding my soul lately.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Oh, that's wonderful. I love when you can kind of return to something that was joyful that you fell out of the habit of, that's such a fun thing to be able to do.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, we'd love to hear what's inspiring you. So please drop us a line at practicingconnection@oneop.org. We see and respond to every message and can't wait to hear from you. 

- break -

So let's learn more about how to receive negative feedback. Erin, can you tell us a little more about what you'll be sharing and the practice you're going to be sharing, and why you chose it?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Well, I'm gonna start with why I chose it. It is, for a lot of [00:02:00] people, performance evaluation season.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So while not everybody does performance evaluations in January, a lot of people do. So, I wanted to kind of share it in a timely manner. Also I am new to a job, so I'm getting a lot of feedback, and I've had to spend some time thinking about how do I - don't make that face, Jessica, it's not all bad! 

But I have been getting lots of feedback and so I've been thinking a lot about, “How can I use this well?” And so I wanted to share some of that with you today.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: One thing I'd love to say though, that's such a good point. Sometimes it's just hard to receive feedback, period. Whether negative or neutral, or even positive sometimes. And I think any feedback at all can feel negative sometimes. I mean, unless someone's like, ‘you're wonderful, great job,’ or whatever. That doesn't feel negative, hopefully ever. But I mean, any like neutral feedback, or collaborative feedback, [00:03:00] it can feel negative even when it's not.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, I think especially if you're really fatigued or overwhelmed, sometimes feedback feels like just one more thing you have to carry and process and manage. And it's like a little straw on your camel back and you're like, “I don't know how many more of these I could take.” Yes, this is exactly why I wanted to talk about this today.

So, I don't really enjoy negative feedback. I don't think I know anybody who does, but I have been able to see how changing how I respond to negative feedback can make it go from ‘one more thing I have to manage’ to an opportunity to build connection with the people that I work with, especially when I'm on teams, especially when I'm collaborating.

If I'm able to respond well to negative feedback, it can build trust, which I find really exciting. 

So today I want to talk about how do we think about negative [00:04:00] feedback mindset shifts, and then I'll walk you through a practice. And I think of it as like a standard script that I can use if I'm surprised, because sometimes you know you're going to get feedback, for example a performance evaluation, and sometimes it comes completely out of the blue. They don't ask your permission, they don't tell you they want to talk to you. It's just, someone comes up to your cubicle, “Hey, I wanna talk to you. You shouldn't do this thing.” And you're like… 

So I want to give you a plan for how you're going to respond to surprise, negative feedback, so that in the moment you don't have to decide how to respond.

You've already kind of pre-thought about, ‘here's a thing I can do,’ and sound professional. And it can be trust building and collaborative, even if I'm having a bad day. So that's my hope. So that's where we're heading today.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, I'm really glad that we're talking about this. You know, finding ways to positively respond to negative feedback has helped mea lot. Even [00:05:00] though I'm not always still good at it, I have figured out a couple things that I can do to help. 

So like just listening for what values are surfacing while the person's giving you feedback or reflecting on that interaction and thinking about what values we're surfacing.

Or just allowing myself some time to consider the feedback before responding when you can, right. Like you just said, sometimes you're just getting it in the moment, you're getting the feedback in the moment or, you know, the person said, “We need to meet.” Period. And you start anticipating what that might be.

So getting negative feedback can be awkward and uncomfortable, but it's also an opportunity to make meaningful changes.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes, that's exactly why it's worth doing a little bit of work. So I actually encourage people to do prep work before you're in the moment of receiving negative feedback.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Like right now.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. Right now. Okay, I mean maybe once the podcast is over, but [00:06:00] schedule time now before you’ve even worried about getting negative feedback, to think about how you respond to feedback.

And this is one of those, ‘think about thinking’ things, that is so annoying, and it's like, ‘I have to have a task where I think about how I'm thinking.’ 

And yes, yes you do. It will be so helpful. I promise it's worth it. There are several things that I found helpful and we're going to talk about one of the mindset shifts first. And this is helping yourself getting out of all or nothing thinking.

I see this in myself often when I get negative feedback. I think if there's negative feedback about one thing, it means every single thing that I've done is terrible. And that's very, very rarely the case. There's almost never where someone's like, “We need to throw out this entire thing. There is nothing worth keeping here.” Most of the time, it's like a couple of tweaks, or maybe up to like 20% of a thing needs tweaking or changing, or, “Oh, we gotta mash it with this thing over here.”

So it is [00:07:00] really easy to hear one bad thing and think that everything is wrong, but it's a really powerful shift when you can go from thinking, ‘If one thing is wrong, I did a bad job,’ to, ‘90% of this is ready to go, and now I know what 10% needs work.’ 

Is that an easy shift? No. Is it a helpful shift? Yes.

Have you ever noticed that Jessica, or dealt with this shift?

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes. Well, the thing is, I don't know that I tend to think everything wrong, it really depends on the context sometimes. But one of the ways I've noticed this is in writing. I find words to be very sacred, and so I used to be that when I wrote something and I asked somebody to review it, it was really hard for me to see lots of red lines or, you know, lots of red text if you're using the track changes or whatever it is, you know, it used to be really hard for me.

And then, I discovered that, no, no, no, it was, [00:08:00] you know, some red text, some red lines. And the red lines were not ‘get rid of this immediately, it sucks.’ The red lines were challenging me to think and make it a little better. And frankly, I really now have come to, you know, appreciate that feedback.

But what I used to see when I would write something, someone needed to edit it, I used to see, ‘Oh, there's so many comments on here that the whole thing is just terrible.’ And then I started to do a lot more editing, and it took me maybe just a couple of times where I was like, ‘Oh, this is awesome. They're making my work more awesome.’ 

And so I don't know if that's exactly the shift you're talking about, but it started to help me understand that it doesn't matter even if they have red lines on every single paragraph, which was never the case. But even if that happened on every [00:09:00] paragraph, it was not them telling me it all sucks. It was them saying, “Hey, I see opportunity here, and here's my thought on how it could be a little better.” Which was awesome.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I love that. I love the idea of, “They're helping me be more awesome.” What a great mental catchphrase! 

I think a lot about, ‘What script is my brain running? What is it telling me?’ And so if I can switch it from, ‘They're telling me it's bad,’ to,  ‘They're helping me be more awesome,’ what a gift.

Speaking of gifts, another gift has to do with a mindset shift. It wasn't until I started thinking about feedback that I realized how much doing theater as a child was a huge gift to me, and one of those was receiving negative feedback. It made it easier for me.

Were there ever any times someone was talking about performance anxiety for giving a speech and they were talking about, okay, what sensations are happening in your body? When else did you feel those? And then they were [00:10:00] talking about rollercoasters and how a lot of what you feel, like anxious, kind of your breath changes, it's the same thing that happens right before going on one, apparently for some people. 

I find rollercoasters terrifying, but for some people it's like this anticipation. And so they're able to mentally feel the anxiety in their body and say, ‘Oh, this is also what excitement feels like.’ And then they're less scared, and they're more able to be excited about doing a scary thing, not just scared of doing a scary thing.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, as someone who really loves rollercoasters, I concur with that. The risk is worth the reward, for sure. Not the risk, but the, you know, the anxiety, and the - it's excitement/anxiety. You're excited, but you're also a little scared, and it's amazing.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. And isn't that a much more pleasant feeling than just being terrified. So I thought, ‘Okay, obviously that wasn't gonna work for me thinking about roller coasters, because I still cry every time I go on a roller coaster.’ And you [00:11:00] know, like sometimes I need to cry. It's very cathartic, it's great, but I was like, ‘Okay, I don't want to cry when I get negative feedback from my coworkers,’ right.

So I was like what are some other examples where I can do that, a mirroring thing and mentally tell myself, “Oh, it's like this situation. I'm safe in this situation. You don't have to be scared right now.” And for me, that was in theater. I think you've also done some theater stuff. Are you familiar with “getting notes?”

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like, in my case, where I was doing it, it was for an improv group, and we got notes mostly during, we got “side coaching,” a lot of times they called it. But, yeah, we got notes during our rehearsal.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Sure. That's fair. Okay. So I didn't do improv, I did more traditional theater. And there's, before you do your big performance, you have a dress rehearsal where you're in costume, you run it as if there's an audience and if there's a show, and the director almost always is taking tons of notes.

And then after you've run through the whole [00:12:00] show, they bring everybody together, you all sit on stage and the director just runs through the show from top to bottom and says every single thing, good or bad, that they thought about while running the rehearsal. And so you hear everybody's feedback, you hear the good stuff, you hear the bad stuff.

And I don't know what it was. Maybe it was just because everybody's there. But that was never scary to me. Maybe it was 'cause I did children's theater and they were really nice about it!

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Maybe, because you were all getting feedback at the same time together. We're going to be good and bad. Maybe someone only got good notes because they had a fantastic rehearsal. I don't know.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, well, I think too, some of it was, there was not time to go in depth on anything, so it was just like, “Hey, this wasn't working. Try this next time.” And so it was very direct and specific. And so that was all really helpful for me. So I've started to think about, ‘Oh, maybe that is the mental attitude that I want to have when I'm receiving negative feedback. Think of it as I'm getting notes in a show.’

And [00:13:00] sometimes I didn't agree with the director's feedback.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: And that was okay. So that gave me kind of a framework where I'm taking myself out of having my like “flight or fight” response into, “Oh, I'm getting notes at a show.” 

And now I will admit, not everybody does theater and not everybody had that experience with theater, but I bet that everybody has some experience somewhere where they got negative feedback and it wasn't hard.

Like maybe you really love cooking and you have somebody taste test it, or you are really into fitness and you're used to having somebody coach your form at the gym

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: You love trying out new outfits and you get feedback on them from your friends. Whatever your thing is, I bet there's somewhere in your life where you can get feedback and it doesn't feel scary.

And so thinking about putting on that mindset when you're getting feedback can be such a helpful pivot.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I really love this and because, I have not had the same frame of reference as [00:14:00] you, but a similar point of reference - I get that feeling, and I love that you brought up all those other examples of where we might have experienced that.

Like I also have, you know, I have some friends where if they told me something didn't look good on me, I might have a bigger problem with it than other friends, if they told me that. And you know, now probably anyone could tell me anything and it wouldn't bother me, when it comes to what I'm wearing.

But I just mean, I love that you brought up all those different possible examples, and if people can kind of reflect back on when you received feedback. And it wasn't difficult for you to receive that feedback and get back in touch with that feeling and that memory. That's a really powerful thing.

And, so, let's get into the final piece that you have for us, because the script you were talking about earlier, I'd like to hear more about that.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Sure. I love a script. I don't fight or flight. I tend to freeze, which is not helpful. [00:15:00] I mean, it is helpful sometimes, but it can be very frustrating. 

So I often think that if I make a plan beforehand that I don't have to freeze. If you're a person who fights, then you're like, ‘I don't have to decide how nice to be right now.’

You could just go with your plan. Right? Like, I think it's applicable even if you're not a freezer.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: But this is what I call a “method for the moment.” The first step is to just take a breath, to just pause. And this can be like a two second pause, but pause just to remind yourself, "Hey, I'm okay.”

Number two is quickly discerning, is this someone whose opinion matters to me? And sometimes you do not like this person at all. You think their advice is terrible, but they're your supervisor or they're an important collaborator. So even if you think their advice is terrible, they're still somebody whose opinion matters because you're trying to maintain a relationship with them.

If you do care about their opinion, [00:16:00] that's an opportunity to get curious. If you have capacity, ask a couple of questions. Some good ones are, “Can you tell me more about why you think that? Can you give me some examples to reference for what you think it should look like?” Often people's feedback is very vague, even when it's negative.

Which is shocking, like you're used to it being really specific, but sometimes it's just, I don't know, you're too angry or something, and you're like, “Oh, can you tell me more about, do you have an example? Can you tell me what you think I should aim for?” 

If you don't care about their opinion, you can just say, “Oh, thank you for sharing that with me. I've got to move on regardless.” 

So this is kind of where there's like a bit of a divergence. You decide if you care about their opinion. If you do, be curious, if you don't, say thank you. Once you're done being curious, you can also just say thank you.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I just wanted, I'm wondering if, say you do care about their opinion, but you don't feel any reason, like you feel like the feedback was fair and that they gave [00:17:00] you enough information. Can you just go right to thanking them? Or should you get curious no matter what?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I, you know, I think being curious is for your benefit. So if you feel like they gave you feedback that is valid, true, fair, and helpful, and you don't need more information to do something with it, you could just say, “Wow, thank you so much for telling me that,” and move on. The curiosity is just there for you to get something meaningful out of the interaction, if it's a person you trust, who doesn't have the skill to give you the specifics you need.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: The other thing that I recommend is thank them for their feedback, but don't commit to doing anything immediately

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I like that, that’s great.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Because so many people, if you don't have a lot of practice being calm while you receive negative feedback, are in this really heightened state of like, almost panic sometimes.

And so if you just say, “Hey, thank you for letting me know that. Can I circle back with you after I've had some time to think [00:18:00] about it?” That's an easy script. Most people respect that. If they don't, there's a bigger issue there. 

And I think what's really helpful about that is then you have time, once they're not looking at you, to kind of think through, ‘Okay, is there anything I want to change or do differently in response to this feedback?’

And then you can circle back and just say, “Thanks again for that feedback. In the future I'd like to try doing this.”

JESSICA BECKENDORF: And you can come up with your own plan.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, exactly. I really encourage people to come up with a plan with somebody else. If you have the opportunity and you don't want to just come up with a plan on your own, find a buddy to make a plan with, because I think so often there's this pressure to immediately say, ‘Oh, I have to immediately tell somebody.’

And the thing is like in most cases, you don't need to immediately tell somebody, ‘Oh, I'm gonna completely change my life.’ 

So once you've thanked them and the conversation is over, make a follow-up plan. Decide if you need [00:19:00] one, and then, if you're not quite sure what you want to do in response to the feedback, I have a couple of questions you can ask yourself, which is, “What is one thing I could do differently or try? Who is a person I could ask for advice, coaching or mentorship about this?” And, “Who is someone who knows me well enough, who I trust enough who can fact check this for me? 

Sometimes people are wrong. Sometimes your response is not proportional to their feedback. So that's kind of a place where you can pause and reflect while you're making your plan, and get input from people you trust.

And that's it.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: That might happen the most to me. I'll get feedback and I like, in my head, the feedback was a hundred times different than when I go back a day or two later and I look at it again, and I'm like, ‘Oh, this actually isn't a big deal.’

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: I said one of my strategies I found is I need a little bit of time, and then I can go back and read it again [00:20:00] and we're good.

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, absolutely. And that is again, why I tell people, start by taking a breath. Start by deciding if this opinion matters. Then, be curious, then thank them, then end the conversation. 

And I think that's really the gift for me, is realizing negative feedback doesn't have to turn into a fight, and it doesn't have to turn into me setting a bunch of goals with a person spontaneously.

It can just be, ‘Oh, thank you for sharing that with me. I will go reflect on that.’ And then it's over, right.

It doesn't have to be long. And I think a lot of people are just so afraid that it's going to be a big, terrible thing. Prepare yourself for maybe it's not so bad.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right. I mean, I'm going to overanalyze it enough in my head anyway. 

Not with these new tools though, and the new mindsets! So thank you so much for sharing this, Erin. And I think there's going to be a download available that we'll have some of this?

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, I realize that this method is not like five words that you can bullet point on your hand, [00:21:00] so I'll make a little printout that you can have on hand to read through, if that helps you remember stuff better.

JESSICA BECKENDORF: Awesome. Thank you. And we'll link to that in the show notes. 

Well, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We'll be back next week with a new episode. Until then, keep practicing.

CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.