Episode 31: When Not To Take Feedback: Even if it’s from your boss
We are told feedback is a gift. Whether it's from our boss, customers, or even our family. But not all feedback is created equal! It's not always accurate or is just someone's opinion.
We get to choose what feedback we are going to act on or not: even if it is from our boss or customer.
In today's episode, I cover:
Why feedback can be incredibly useful in Upgrading our careers and businesses
How to decide what feedback to take and what not to
How to move on after getting feedback you aren't going to act on
Full Transcript:
welcome back to the Upgraded Career podcast. I'm your host Nicole Case, and today we are talking about feedback and specifically when not to take feedback. So we are constantly getting feedback, we're constantly getting information. It comes from us. It comes to us even back for when we were in school getting grades.
[00:01:26] We're getting performance reviews now at work in our jobs to getting Google and Yelp reviews from our customers. We get feedback from our family and friends from social media. It's actually really quite overwhelming. All with all of the feedback that we are getting in our lives and like they say, Feedback is a gift, which is lovely.
[00:01:49] Right. That's That's so nice to say. Feedback is a gift, and I do believe that's true in a lot of ways, right. I do believe it's true. Feedback can do a lot of things for us that can alert us to our blind spots, right? So we've been talking a lot on the show recently about strengths, and I definitely believe that our strengths can sit right beside our dysfunction.
[00:02:11] Meaning we can sometimes dial up our strengths too much. Then they can become a problem, right? So one of my number one strikes is communication. And what if I dial up my communication too much? What if instead of being succinct, which is something I do struggle with, but if I, if I'm not being succinct and I just allow my strength of communication to run wild, this episode could be an hour and a half and I don't know that anyone's gonna turn, tune in for an hour and a half, right?
[00:02:44] So our strengths can sit right beside our dysfunction again. So feedback can let us know, Hey, you're dialing it up a little bit too much, or, Hey, this is something that you're missing because you're so focused over here on this area. So feedback like that can really help make sure we are keeping those things in check, right?
[00:03:05] So feedback can also just make sure that we're treating people the way. They wanna be treated. So the Golden Rule, we've updated this, right? The Golden Room has now been updated, upgraded to platinum, because we want to recognize the fact that we all want and like different things. We wanna be, we all want to be treated in the way we want individually to be treated.
[00:03:29] So we wanna treat individuals the way they want to be treated. And some people. For example, want very public recognition about their performance, you know, so calling them out in the middle of a meeting would be amazing for them. That would be incredibly motivating for them. But some people would be utterly horrified to be recognized in a team meeting or in a giant email blast.
[00:03:54] So asking for that feedback just to understand, hey, how is our leadership style or our communication style is that. You know, jiving with our teams, with our customers, and it's just important to ask for that feedback and listen to that feedback in order just to enhance what it is that we are doing. And again, just making sure that people feel included, that people feel like they have a good, safe place to exist.
[00:04:25] Which can lead us to kind of the next point around how feedback can be really great for us is that it can really lead us to build stronger relationships. When we pause long enough to hear the feedback somebody's giving us or or ask for that feedback and then really internalize it and take it in, that can really, really build that trust, that respect with each other when we can come together and just really have production productive conversations around how we can best.
[00:04:55] Work together. I remember one time I had a boss who gave me some really, really tough feedback. And of course it was hard, hard for me to hear. Of course I cried because that's what I do. I'm a crier and you know, I was really emotional about it because frankly, I, she was right. I knew it. Like she didn't even have to tell me.
[00:05:13] About the feedback. I mean, I had already recognized it in myself and I really respected her for, for calling me out on it for, um, and I like to say she called me in, you know, she did it in such a way that again, I was able to be really receptive to it. And I just really respected her for having a difficult conversation with me, and it made us.
[00:05:34] Closer as a result, I knew that the reason why she was giving me feedback was not to be a jerk or anything like that, but because she really cared about me and my success. So, and I'm still close with that manager today, which leads me to my next point, which is that feedback can help you from making really big mistakes or keeping things from going sideways.
[00:05:57] Right? Um, you know, sometimes, you know, we might be going down the wrong path or just we might be doing something wrong, frankly. And. You know, sometimes we don't realize it, and holy cow, if somebody would've just told me, I would've fixed it a long time ago. Right? This is such a huge thing that I hear from employees when it comes to not getting enough feedback from their manager or being surprised at the end of their performance review, for example, they're like, oh my gosh, I had no idea what I was doing was a problem, or else I would've, I would've fixed it if somebody would've just told me.
[00:06:29] Right? So, By you listening to feedback and taking action on it, again, it could really help prevent you from making mistakes or really having things go sideways. And finally, feedback can really enhance your customer experience, right? There's a reason why companies are constantly asking you to do surveys for them.
[00:06:47] They want to create the best customer experience possible. And what better way to do that than by asking their customers, right? But no matter how valuable feedback can be, It's still important to remember to take all feedback with a grain of salt, no matter where it's coming from, no matter who it's coming from.
[00:07:09] I kind of think about it as like looking at glass doors for reviews about a company you might go work for, or even Yelp reviews for a restaurant. A lot of times those reviews are by people who either had an exceptional experience or a poor experience, and it's usually the poor experience that gets. The writeup on, on Glassdoor or on Yelp.
[00:07:31] Right. And it's not to say that those experiences aren't true or they're not valid, but there is probably a whole population of people who had just fine experiences and didn't take the time to leave a review. Right. It's usually the people, the loudest people are the most upset people, or the most, or the most excited people.
[00:07:49] Right. But the most of us are, are somewhere in the middle. Right. But again, we just don't often. Take the time to write a, a review. If things were just saying they were fine, nothing to write home about exactly. But when is it important to think about? Maybe we don't actually take feedback from someone.
[00:08:09] There is definitely times where we should not be taking feedback from, from certain people or for certain c for certain circumstances. It's important for us to remember that we get to choose, right? So, What are those situations? What are those times when we might decide not to take action on the feedback that somebody gives us?
[00:08:29] Well, one situation is. If the feedback doesn't matter, right? Like this is usually in the form of advice or unsolicited feedback, and there's not anything substantial that would happen one way or the other by listening to this. So, you know, the stakes are really low. It really doesn't matter. Like I think of this as someone being kind of nitpicky, if you're a manager, like remembering like, does this feedback really matter?
[00:08:53] Does this detail really matter? Am I. Again, is this a personal preference or is this a requirement? Right. Um, but like for me it's something like someone telling you that you would look better in a red shirt instead of a blue shirt, but like, who cares? Who cares what color shirt I wear? Maybe I like blue, maybe I wanna continue wearing blue.
[00:09:10] And I don't care if you, I don't care if anybody thinks that I look one way or another. I get dressed. In the morning because of how I want to look now, not about how I care about anybody else thinking how I look, right? Um, so that's one thing. If the feedback just doesn't matter, there's no, you know, again, there's no major consequence or anything substantial that would happen one way or the other.
[00:09:34] So you can just be like, okay, thanks, and move on. The other time when you might think that, you know what, I'm not gonna take this feedback is if the person doesn't have authority over the thing. Or they aren't the target. So like I'm not gonna ask my dad for feedback on my website. My dad has never created a website in his life.
[00:09:55] My dad is not my target audience, so I'm not gonna ask him what he thinks about my website because he's not an authority on that. Now my dad is a mechanic. And he has an excavating business. And so I'm definitely gonna ask his opinion or his feedback on the type of car that I'm gonna buy or how I'm gonna landscape my yard because he's got an authority over that.
[00:10:15] He has experience and he has a perspective that I value and that other people value his customers value. So I'm probably going to listen to what he says for that. But otherwise, there's lots of other things that I'm not gonna take a feed his feedback on. Right. So, Another example would be my husband. My husband.
[00:10:35] I love him so much. He's my number one cheerleader and number one supporter for sure. And he gives me feedback on my business all the time. And a lot of times when I ask him, I'll ask him for his feedback. I'll wanna brainstorm or talk it out with him. And he's usually, he's usually spot on. He usually does give really, really great feedback, but sometimes it's not great feedback.
[00:10:56] Sometimes it's perspective. It's not a great perspective, and I just know that, and I'm just like, when he will say something and I'm like, mm, yeah, I don't agree with that, and I just, I don't wanna talk about it anymore because the thing is, I don't wanna get in a fight over it. I wanna get in an argument over it because the fact is he's not my target audience for the services that I provide.
[00:11:15] So sometimes his perspective or his feedback about how about a service I wanna provide or how I talk about a particular service, it's just not feedback that I'm gonna take an action on because. He's not the target audience, so his perspective might not be spot on, and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that.
[00:11:32] It's just that it's just, it's not gonna be as accurate as it would be, as if it would be coming from, again, my ideal, my ideal, um, customer. And then finally, when should you not take somebody's feedback? Is just in general, if your gut is telling you it's not right. There are lots of times where people who are, well-meaning, who do have authority in a particular area, who care about you a lot or again, are just are.
[00:12:02] Maybe they might be experts in this area, but for whatever reason, your gut's saying, mm, that doesn't feel right for me, and that's okay. There's definitely going to be times where somebody's feedback or somebody's expertise or somebody's re recommendation. Is not the right thing for you, and that's totally fine.
[00:12:19] The trick is being strong enough to say, yeah, that's, I'm not gonna take that feedback. I'm not gonna move forward with that strategy because I don't think that's gonna work for me, and that's okay. Right? But it can be really scary sometimes when it's somebody again that either is. An expert or the authority in a particular area, or maybe they're your boss or something like that.
[00:12:42] So I have been in several business programs over the last several years, and I don't do exactly what everyone tells me in all of those programs, even if they are quote unquote an expert. Right. I can, I can think back on very specific times where business coaches and gurus and whoever else out there are saying, you know, you should be.
[00:13:03] Doing your social media this way, you should be structuring your, your programs in this way. You should be doing group programs. You should only be doing one-on-ones. You shouldn't be doing one-on-ones inside of your group program, whatever it is, right? You should be doing webinars, you should be doing podcasts, you should be doing YouTube videos.
[00:13:18] You should be doing live videos on social media, whatever it is. Of course, there's lots of. Proven strategies out there in order to have a successful business. And that's great, but I also have to decide what's gonna be best for my strengths, what's gonna be best for the resources that I have, and what's gonna be best for who I think my, my customers are and how they want to engage with me.
[00:13:41] Right? This can be sa the same in, um, in at work that. Your boss may say, Hey, this is the right way to interact with your customers, or This is the way, the best way to do this thing. And you might be like, yeah, no, I don't think so. I don't think that's how I'm gonna do it. And that can be okay. Right? So. So again, you get to choose if you are going to act on someone's feedback.
[00:14:08] Now, you also have to be prepared for the consequences or the outcomes as well. But again, you still get to choose so, Now again, what happens if this feedback is coming from someone who can make a big difference in your work, in your job, like your boss or another senior leader in your organization? I was just talking to two clients the other day and they both had really interesting, um, situations where they had their direct manager, their direct boss sharing feedback with them that they did not agree with.
[00:14:43] So I had, um, one of my clients. Very, very senior executive in a really large organization. She's got many years of experience and um, and she shared with me that her boss gave her a piece of feedback and she's just like really confused by it because they didn't give her really great specifics. They were really vague about the feedback and.
[00:15:07] She was just kind of really taken, taken aback by it cuz she's like, I don't see this at all. I don't see it at all, that this is a problem for me. And the specific feedback here was that she, um, lacked executive presence. Now I feel like a lot of times women in particular or given this feedback that they're not moving up or they're not being successful because they lack executive presence or.
[00:15:33] They are lacking, um, technical knowledge. They're not strategic enough. They're not technical enough. I would hear that a lot when I was in hr. That's the type of feedback managers were giving about their female employees, and for me, that's just lazy. That's just really lazy. You're not being specific enough and it's not helpful and it's not useful.
[00:15:52] The interesting thing here is again, this woman is a senior executive at this very large company, and I find it really hard to believe that she would be as successful as she is and would be getting all of the other feedback that she's getting from people about her communication style, her leadership style, how she's showing up, how she's delivering for clients, how she's interacting with her, her team, if she didn't have good.
[00:16:17] Executive presence. So, you know, this is like, she's been ruminating on this feedback for several weeks now and you know, she said, you know, I just need to go back to my boss and just have a conversation with him to ask, you know, what, can you gimme some specific examples of this and, and kind of dig into it further.
[00:16:34] Um, and then I also just said, you know, you might think about maybe asking some other people specifically, maybe some peers of yours very specifically about, um, Their perspective on what your executive presence is, because you know what? Sometimes our bosses are human, right? Not sometimes, all the time. Our bosses are always almost always human.
[00:16:52] You know, talk to me in five years and maybe AI has taken over and we're reporting directly to robots, maybe, but. Today, at least as, as of this recording, of this, of this interview or of this, of this episode, our bosses are human and they miss and they make mistakes sometimes or maybe they misspeak. Right?
[00:17:11] You know, giving people feedback about something like executive presence is tricky, right? Or, or giving somebody feedback about their strategic thinking or decision making. Those are kind of squishier and fuzzier. Um, Things that are just a little bit harder ar to articulate sometimes. So I mean, who knows?
[00:17:31] Maybe her boss just misspoke. Maybe he was trying to explain something else and he just chose the wrong word. I mean, and that's possible too, right?
[00:17:40] So again, there's some more digging there that I think needs to happen, but it's an example of she's just like, I don't see how this is a problem any longer based on my current performance over the last several years based on my interactions with my customers and the feedback that I'm getting now from everyone else.
[00:17:58] This is kind of coming outta left field for me. So she may decide to just not take the feedback and just say, okay, that's your perspective or your opinion, and move on. Right? But again, your boss is human. They may make mistakes or misspeak. They may have heard this feedback from someone else and didn't see it themselves, and so they're just passing the feedback along.
[00:18:22] Now, I would hope that, um, they would let you know that to say, listen, this is not something that I've noticed. This is not something that I'm seeing, but wanna let you know that this was a piece of feedback that I did get from someone that's still valid and information that I think is still important to get right, because, you know, other people's perspective of you.
[00:18:43] Can be really important. So even if your boss doesn't see it, your boss can't see you in every interaction. So it's still really important for them to pass it along. But if they have heard it secondhand or it was someone else who brought it up, it's important that as a leader, they share that with you.
[00:18:58] And if you're not sure, ask that question. Hey, are, is this some? Is this something that you have seen yourself, that you've experienced? Or is this, is this something you're hearing from someone else? Right? It's important to get that perspective. And finally, Maybe you and your boss just don't see eye to eye on what good looks like in your role.
[00:19:19] I had a second client that I spoke to last week who had a similar story in the sense that she got some tough feedback from her boss, and in this case, the feedback was very, very specific. Her boss is new, um, new to the organization. She'd only been there. Um, she's only been in the organization maybe two months, so her boss is still trying to navigate and trying to figure everything out, right?
[00:19:43] But she had a very specific piece of feedback, or she had a very specific expectation for my client. She said. You're going to this meeting, this in-person meeting, everybody's coming together. It is my expe. It's really important that you lead this conversation, that you drive this conversation in order to influence the particular outcome that we are looking for.
[00:20:04] So that was the very specific piece of feedback or very specific expectation that my client's boss shared with her prior to this meeting. And then when my client got to the meeting, I. That's just not how the meeting unfolded. The meeting did not unfold. Unfold in a way in which she was really taking the lead at the beginning and making the intros and like setting the stage.
[00:20:28] A different colleague did that instead, and when I was speaking to her about this, she was just like, I was okay with that, with how this meeting kind of organically unfolded and how the conversations went, because there's been a history here of our two teams not getting along, and she said, I've been working really hard over the last six months to really repair those relationships and to really demonstrate that our team is here to be supportive and to work alongside.
[00:20:59] And so the partnership was really important. That was. Likely a piece of context that her brand new boss did not know and did not have. But after the meeting, her boss sat her down and said, I specifically shared that it was important that you approached the meeting in this way and you did not do that.
[00:21:19] And this is a, a just a situation where these two people just do not agree. Or do not see eye to eye on how the situation should have been handled. So no matter what, you know, intent there, was there. The, the, the reality is that they're never going to agree on what feedback is, is correct or not in this case.
[00:21:45] So what my client's going to have to do is decide if she wants to take this feedback on or not, and I. If it doesn't seem like it's going to be putting your job in jeopardy, or it's gonna be, you know, detrimental to your, you know, say your performance review or, or, or for you to be able to move up, you might just be able to say thanks and move on.
[00:22:07] Like, and, and my one client who, um, her manager shared with her that she needed to work on her executive presence and she's like, You know, based on everything else that she's doing, it's probably not gonna be an issue. This is probably not a real problem. This feedback is probably not something that my client needs to take on or take action on, and she can just merely say thanks and move on.
[00:22:33] Now my second client, who her manager, has given her very specific feedback and shared. These are my very specific, specific expectations. This could turn out to really damage her reputation, damage her relationship with her boss. If she truly fights back on this, or truly says, you know, this is not how I'm going to approach these meetings.
[00:22:55] This is not the approach that I'm going to take. This really could go sideways from her. This really could cause a problem. Between her and her boss, and at that point, she really needs to make a decision is on if she's going to go along with it, even though she does not agree or if this is the right place for her long term.
[00:23:16] Right. She's really gonna have to make that decision on if this is, if we are fundamentally disagreeing on how I should be showing up and communicating and approaching something like this. Then I have to, I have to really make some decisions here about, again, if this is the right place for me, long term.
[00:23:34] Again, there's lots of ways to do business. There's lots of ways to do work and in this world, the trick is, is to figuring out where is that place? Where are those customers? Where is that boss that aligns with my strengths and aligns with my beliefs on how I wanna show up and how I wanna deliver in the way that I want to deliver.
[00:23:56] So all things to be thinking about. Next time you get a piece of feedback that you're not quite sure you agree with, or not quite sure you actually want to take action on it. So thank you so much for being here with me. If you want more contact, like content like this, head over to nicole k speaks.com/newsletter and get signed up for my weekly newsletter.
[00:24:15] But in the meantime, remember your career deserves an upgrade.
