How to Improve the Feedback Reception on Your Team

Giving someone feedback can be tough, but teaching feedback reception can be even more difficult. Luckily, it doesn’t have to feel like an uphill battle.

In our comprehensive overview, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about feedback reception, including the steps involved, key strategies to use for your team, core skills to focus on for improvement, common pitfalls, and an app you can use to develop your team’s ability to receive feedback.

What Is Feedback Reception?

Feedback reception is the way people hear and respond to feedback. The ability to take in and implement feedback from others is a soft skill that promotes personal and professional growth. 

Knowing how to listen and react to feedback doesn’t always come naturally for everyone, however. It takes a conscious effort to learn how to best receive and respond to criticism or constructive feedback. 

Steps to teach feedback reception 

For team leaders, teaching feedback reception is sometimes a responsibility they’re unprepared to take on. However, researchers have identified some common steps in teaching this essential skill. 

For example, in a preliminary investigation headed by author Rachel J. Ehrlich, the steps involved in teaching feedback reception are: 

1. Come to meetings prepared. 
2. Maintain appropriate eye contact as you can.
3. Ask necessary follow-up and clarifying questions. 
4. Acknowledge the feedback given.
5. Be an active listener when engaging in feedback reception. 
6. Verbally commit to changing your behavior based on the feedback.
7. Show your gratitude for constructive feedback.
8. Stay professional throughout the feedback reception process.  

Sharing these steps with your team can help you teach them the overall process and what they can expect. 

Why is constructive feedback reception important? 

Feedback reception is important because regardless of the industry you work in, chances are, you’ll come face-to-face with criticism or feedback at some point. Whether it’s unsolicited feedback on an outfit you’re wearing or constructive feedback at work, knowing how to take in this information and process it in a healthy manner that encourages personal and professional growth is important. 

4 Easy Strategies to Improve Feedback Reception on Your Team

Receiving feedback isn’t always easy, especially when that feedback can be perceived as criticism. Working on delivering constructive feedback can go a long way in improving this skill on your team. Here are four simple strategies to improve feedback reception on your team and encourage team-wide growth.

1. Actively practice giving constructive feedback.

One of the best ways you can work on developing your team’s feedback reception skills is by giving appropriate, constructive feedback. Team leaders who overly criticize or otherwise have trouble giving constructive feedback will have a much harder time improving the feedback reception skills of their employees. 

For example, one popular method for feedback delivery is the “compliment sandwich” method. This strategy sandwiches the “negative” feedback you want to give your employee between two positive compliments on what they’re doing well. 

However, in many industries, especially business, this technique has fallen out of favor. Some folks think the employee will focus too much on the praise and forget the criticism altogether. Even so, if your team is new to the concept of feedback reception, the compliment sandwich method might be worth experimenting with. 

Be sure you’re also modeling this behavior for your team. Actively seek out feedback from your employees, whether that’s through conversation or anonymous feedback surveys. Normalizing the concept of receiving information about your own performance and behavior at work can help your team get more used to the same idea.

2. Teach your team to focus on the message (instead of the person delivering it). 

With folks who are newer to feedback reception, it’s easy to forget the message and focus on the person delivering it. Make sure your team understands that it’s best to try not to make assumptions about the intentions of the person giving you feedback. Instead, take the words at face value instead of assigning some kind of extra moral value to their words. Honing in on the content of what’s being said is more helpful.

In a similar vein, make sure your team knows not to take feedback personally. Feedback is never a personal attack on their character. Even if they were to receive negative criticism from, say, an angry customer, their delivery is a reflection of themselves, not the person receiving feedback. 

Frame feedback reception as a unique opportunity for growth and development. Instead of an intimidating or tedious process, highlight it as a useful tool for professional (and personal) improvement. 

3. Encourage your team to ask questions.

Oftentimes, when you’re receiving feedback, the last thing you think of is asking questions. Feedback reception should include asking clarifying questions for best results. For example, encourage your team to ask questions to avoid misinterpretations or misconceptions.

It’s also a good idea to teach your employees to paraphrase that feedback back to the person to make sure they have an accurate understanding. Otherwise, they might miss important aspects of the feedback and won’t be able to change their behavior accordingly. 

4. Create a safe, welcoming environment for your team.

Although it might go without saying, teaching feedback reception is much harder if you don’t have a welcoming, safe environment for your team. If employees don’t feel comfortable for whatever reason, they most likely won’t be open to receiving any feedback, negative, positive, or otherwise. 

4 Essential Skills to Build for Better Feedback Reception

Anyone can improve their ability to receive feedback. However, there are certain learned skills that can make receiving and implementing feedback even easier. Here are four essential skills your team should focus on to improve their feedback reception.

Open-mindedness

Not everyone is naturally open-minded and that’s OK. However, the quality of being open-minded can improve your ability to receive feedback tenfold, so it’s worth aiming for. Motivate your employees to work on their adaptability skills and consider other perspectives, for starters. This can help open them up to thinking about other opinions and viewpoints instead of just their own. 

Encourage your team to take feedback in stride instead of becoming defensive. Feedback — especially in the workplace — is a natural occurrence and a tool for improvement and growth. It’s easy to feel defensive when you feel like the feedback is a personal attack, but try to emphasize to your team that giving criticism or sharing your observations will never be an attack. 

Emotional intelligence

Although it’s a bit of an underrated skill, emotional intelligence is one of the most valuable qualities in a team. That’s because it allows folks to effectively manage their emotions so they can be receptive to things like criticism, observations, and feedback. 

People with a low level of emotional intelligence often have the hardest time with feedback reception, so encourage your team to actively build this skill. Learning how to listen with empathy and building strong, positive relationships with others can help with emotional intelligence. 

Self-awareness

When people are self-aware, they’re more in tune with the way they think and act. Encouraging self-awareness in your team members can help them see their own strengths and weaknesses before they’re pointed out by others. They’ll start to realize what they need to work on and will be more open to feedback reception in the future. On top of that, you can also encourage your team to self-reflect and routinely take a look inward to evaluate their own performance at work. 

Self-awareness can also help your employees understand their typical reactions. For example, you might have one employee who always gets defensive when you bring up constructive feedback. Their gut emotion isn’t wrong, but having the self-awareness to know you usually get defensive can help you mitigate that response when it comes up.

Active listening

Although it’s an often underrated skill, active listening is key for successful feedback reception. That’s because active listening involves the employee actively paying attention and digesting the message as opposed to them just “hearing” it. 

If your team struggles with actively listening, here are a few quick tips for improvement: 

• Turn your attention to the speaker and focus.
• Get rid of any distractions, whether that’s your phone, music in the background, or computer notifications.
• Summarize what the speaker says to make sure you understand.
• If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to ask them.

The more your team practices this type of listening, the easier feedback reception will get.

Practicing Giving Feedback and Feedback Reception With Yoodli 

Ten years ago, there wasn’t an ideal way to practice feedback reception. Today, however, taking advantage of a tool like Yoodli can revolutionize the way you and your team practice receiving feedback. Yoodli is a communication coach that uses artificial intelligence to provide a realistic, conversational space for teams to practice their feedback reception abilities. 

One of the hardest things about feedback reception is that you’ll face criticism from all types of people. While feedback from your boss might feel constructive and friendly, criticism from an angry customer might feel more like an attack on your character. That’s where Yoodli shines. Yoodli gives teams the chance to practice hearing feedback from a variety of personalities so they’ll be prepared for anything. 

Plus, when you’re using a simulation to practice feedback reception, there’s no “risk” of upsetting anyone else. It’s a completely safe space for your employees to practice, make mistakes, and improve.

But Yoodli isn’t just an echo chamber for practice. Its intelligent AI analysis will provide employees with detailed information on how they can improve when it comes to feedback reception. Maybe they use too many filler words or their word choice could be better. Whatever it is, Yoodli will highlight that for you so you know where you can improve for next time. 

If you want to improve the feedback reception on your team, learn more about how you can leverage this enablement tool for free at https://yoodli.ai/.

How to Avoid Common Pitfalls with Feedback Reception  

The process of delivering and giving feedback isn’t the same for everyone. Whereas you might receive feedback in the form of a compliment sandwich from one person, you could get non-constructive, negative feedback from another. 

Helping your team prepare for these instances is one of the best ways you can improve their feedback reception overall. Here are a few common pitfalls when it comes to feedback reception and how you can help your team work through them (or avoid them altogether).

Prepare your team for negative feedback

Even if you’re committed to giving your team positive, constructive feedback as their manager, there will come a time when they’re faced with purely negative feedback. Maybe this feedback comes from a stressed client or a frustrated customer. Either way, helping to prepare your team for this situation will help them avoid feeling attacked or defensive. 

Similarly to the strategy shared above, having your team focus on the message instead of the messenger can help them isolate the actual feedback from the delivery. So, if an angry customer says, “Your stupid product broke the first time I used it,” they can focus on the actual issue, which is that the product broke. Removing the emotion from the message can be tough, but it’ll help your team focus on the feedback.

That being said, make sure your employees know not to react to emotional deliveries like that example. Staying calm is important, especially when a client, customer, or other person is delivering feedback in an emotional manner.  

Help your team face their fear of feedback

Having a fear of feedback is actually pretty common, but you can help your team work through it and face their fears. Sometimes, this fear isn’t about feedback but more about the way the feedback is delivered. Criticism can feel like rejection sometimes, and this can also cause a fear of feedback. Whatever the case may be, emphasize that feedback is a tool for growth and it’s in your team’s best interest to use it to their advantage. 

Help them question and push back against negative internal thoughts that might crop up during feedback reception. Implementing a regular feedback process can also help employees feel better when it comes to fearing feedback. When it’s more of a routine, it becomes more comfortable for teams (as opposed to a more scary, once-a-year occurrence that they dread).

The Main Takeaway 

Feedback reception can be a difficult concept to introduce and practice, but it doesn’t have to be. Using a tool like Yoodli can make a world of difference when it comes to teaching employees how to handle feedback. Plus, with all the different personas your team can practice with, they’ll get experience from all types of personalities. It’s well worth investing in this crucial skill.

Sources

• Behavior Science Technology: “Feedback Reception.”
• Journal of Organizational Behavior Management: “Teaching Employees How to Receive Feedback: A Preliminary Investigation” (2020).
• Harvard Business Review: “Fear of Feedback.”