Feedback Sessions
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Why is feedback so important?
Feedback - we love to hear it when it’s positive, and we despise it when it’s negative. Yet, to obtain a successful career it is imperative to receive and act upon both positive and negative feedback. In a work setting, a feedback session is a meeting between two individuals where one of them gives feedback on strengths and weaknesses to the other person. If you are early on in your career, then in most feedback sessions you will receive feedback rather than provide it.
No matter if you are learning how to play soccer or create a website, it’s unlikely you’d be perfect at anything on the first go at it; that’s where feedback comes in. Feedback allows you to know your strengths and incrementally improve on your weaker points. Personally, I am proactive and can anticipate work, but I’ll sometimes overlook the minor details and make careless mistakes. How do I know this about myself? Well, feedback of course.
As much as we’d like to think we can objectively evaluate our own strengths and weaknesses or have an online personality test tell them to us, it is all the more powerful to hear them from someone who has seen you in a work setting. They have worked with you on the day-to-day and understand where you are excelling, and other areas where maybe you are falling short. Again, I cannot stress this enough, negative feedback is okay! No one is perfect, and if you can act positively upon the negative feedback you are already doing far more than most people.
Trust me, asking for feedback after big milestones in your career shows initiative, puts you on a path of growth, and allows you to refine your weaker areas before they become larger problems.
How should you structure feedback sessions?
For the record, you don’t have to go into a feedback session at the mercy of your manager’s will. Instead, you should take control of the meeting and suggest an agenda beforehand. Before attending the feedback session, jot down some areas of exploration and ship them over to the other attending party to give them a heads up. This allows you to dictate how the call will be structured and prevents the opportunity for a rambling session between either one of you. Since feedback sessions are so valuable, you should make use of every single minute. Plus, setting an agenda is a quick way to look good in front of your manager as it shows you’re thinking ahead!
An example agenda:
Overview of what I am doing well - strengths
Deep-dive into areas of future improvement
Align on short and long-term goals on how I can continue to grow and develop in my role
If your manager is open to periodic feedback sessions, then I encourage you to take full advantage. When thinking about the frequency of those sessions, it depends heavily on your scope of work. Specifically, if you are in a project-based profession, then I would recommend checking in after big milestones, such as when you finish an important workstream. In most other professions, it’s safe to aim for a feedback session once a quarter as you want to ensure your manager has ample material to provide constructive criticism. Either way, it’s always good to leverage your manager’s experience and ask what cadence they recommend for feedback sessions.
During the feedback session
There are three key points that will ensure a smooth, yet productive feedback session for yourself.
First, bring a notepad and record the feedback. Taking notes during the session is crucial for a couple of reasons. Primarily, in important conversations, like those in feedback sessions, it is difficult to both be present and recall every point made by the other party. Luckily, writing notes helps both with memory retention and it will be much easier to reference your own notes for improvement rather than relying on memory. Secondarily, the sheer act of taking notes showcases to your counterpart that you intend on acting on the feedback and you are taking the meeting seriously.
Second, truly listen to what they are trying to communicate. It’s easy to tune in for the positives and tune out for the negatives, but I urge you to be present for the entire session. Really put two-and-two together of why someone would think communication is a strength of yours, like when crushed that presentation two weeks ago in front of 10 people. Be grateful that someone recognized that awesome trait about you! Uh oh, but now they are pointing out your weaknesses, and you feel your mentals walls coming up. Take a deep breath, and engage with the conversation. If you don’t listen to those weaknesses, then you can never solve them and improve. Also, the cliche does state no one is perfect, so don’t expect yourself to be either!
Third, ask follow-up questions to their criticism. Really dig into the details of how you showed to your manager you were a good communicator for example, and how they recommend continuing to build that muscle over the next couple of months. On the flip side, really pinpoint where your weakness is located. For example, let’s say your manager states, “the work you turn in sometimes is incorrect”. Okay, let’s drill deeper, so you ask “what sections tend to be incorrect?” And so on and so forth, until you finally uncover the crux of your weakness, which may be forgetting to double-check your work before sending it up the ladder.
Goal-setting
Goal-setting is where the rubber meets the road. Sure, hearing about how great you are at X or how you could improve on Y is nice and all, but putting those words into action is the crucial next step of the process. Cue in SMART Goals:
Smart goal image from The Reserves Network
Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based; this is your mental checklist for ensuring the goals you set in your feedback session can actually be fulfilled. Luckily, one of my friends at Menti wrote about SMART Goals here. Once you’ve established those SMART goals, and run them by your manager, then the rest is up to you.
I leave you with the idea that these feedback sessions are for your own improvement. Instead of picturing them as school-yard detention, reframe them as an opportunity to learn about yourself through an objective lens. All of us have feedback sessions, and we all have weaknesses or “areas of opportunity”, what is going to make you stand out is acting upon that feedback and being just that 1% better than the person you were yesterday.
