It can be painful to get critical feedback from someone that you care about. After all, we are all out there doing the best we can with what we’ve got. No one is perfect. We are bound to make mistakes. It’s not like life comes with a user manual, am I right? Every time someone close to us gives us feedback, it can be easy to think we are deeply flawed or wrong.
That doesn’t feel good.
When feedback does come around I personally tend to take one of two paths. Either I hear the feedback like a grown up and listen with an open mind (yeah right), or I get super defensive and deploy some strategy ranging from avoidance, to a counter attack depending on my prevailing mood (that’s more like it).
While most days it might seem like I am just fine with the defensive strategy, it turns out that for the growth-oriented person, feedback is a valuable tool for personal transformation.
Who’d have thought? 
The next time you decide to use the feedback for your own personal development, you can use the following steps to get through the uncomfortable period of growth as quickly and painlessly as possible.
To illustrate this, let me tell you a story about a recent piece of feedback that I received, and how I’ve been… sigh… evolving…
The Story
The other day my friend gave me some feedback. It’s worth mentioning that I could write an entire post about the strategies people use to distance, deny, and otherwise avoid really hearing feedback. However, for the sake of time, let’s skip all that and jump to the part where I actually heard the feedback she was offering (it’s been a long time coming…).
Basically, she said “I’ve noticed that sometimes in conversation, you don’t acknowledge and validate the feelings of the person you are talking to.
That might be helpful.” 
After listening to her feedback, I began what I like to call a developmental detour. This is a section of my life where it is safe to try things, fail, make mistakes, and generally get better at life. In this case, my detour looked like this:
#1) Listen for Meaning, not Agreement
Try to understand what the feedback means. Assume, for the moment, that the feedback being offered is not only absolutely true, but being told in love and for the good of all.
What was she trying to tell me? Which behavior, exactly, is the source of the signal, and which kinds of behaviors might be better in those situations? How can I learn from this situation?
In my case, I asked questions about acknowledging and validating emotions to really understand what I was missing.
#2) Experience the Feedback in Reality
Once we understand the intention of the feedback, we can start to notice how it shows up, specifically. In other words, what signals can trigger the awareness of the unhelpful pattern.
In this phase, I started to “call myself out” on the pattern that led to the feedback, noticing every opportunity to practice that I can. Observe what the situation is, and then consider what steps might create positive Shift.
In this case, I got a strong signal when friends would occasionally drop out of rapport and adopt a slightly defensive posture or tone. That is the signal I’ve been using to cue my practice.
As THAT becomes consistent…
#3) Practice until Integration
In my world, this is the fun part.
Now that I know when to practice, I start to actually develop my new skill. Keep in mind that fledgling skills are fragile. Too much criticism during this phase can slow down progress.
New skills are like muscles: they have to be developed with repetition over the course of time. I find a sense of humor to be really helpful during the journey.
Here’s one of the ways that I practiced THIS feedback: I was on the phone with my mom and I noticed that she started to drop out of rapport with me, so I recognized my chance…
In a nutshell, she had just told me about a renovation that she was doing on her house, and was excited about it, and how expensive it was going to be, which is when I started to go into logistics or “problem-solving” mode (classic Ben ). For instance, I started thinking through the different ways that the project could be completed, how timing could work to make efficient use of resources, what kinds of material options were available, etc.
Which is when I noticed her disengagement.
See, she didn’t care about any of that. She was sharing with me something that was exciting for her, something new, and she just wanted to share those positive emotions with me, not get a consultation.
When I checked in with my feelings, I was starting to get heated, and noticed the speed of my brain seemed to get turned up. I felt like I was on a mission.
So I paused…
And felt her excitement…
Then I said, “It sounds like you are really excited about that renovation, mom.”
It’s amazing to feel the kind of emotional connection and collaborative spirit that can come up when practice a social skill effectively. She lit up so brightly, I could feel it from my end of the phone call.
It might be painful to receive feedback, but it feels amazing to experience the transformational shift that happens on the other end.
