Giving or Receiving Feedback & The Spectrum of Happiness

Alexander Barkin
Written 11.20.2020. Revised 03.20.2023

How many times have you been given feedback; was it always positive? Did it always help? If so, you’re perfect and this article isn’t for you. However, if at the end of a presentation, being on either the giving or the receiving side, you were less than happy, stick around - what you’re about to read will be helpful!

Think of who’s in charge. In any exchange of feedback between the giver and the receiver, perhaps counterintuitively, but nonetheless it’s the receiver who is always in charge. As a receiver you have the opportunity to frame and drive the conversation to maximize the usefulness and meaningfulness of it. The receiver decides what to let in, what sense to make of the feedback, which lessons to learn, and whether and how they are going to learn and improve.

There are myriads of seminars on how to give feedback, but they aren’t as critical as learning the skills needed to receive feedback. Think about any design critique and the blizzard of often unsolicited feedback you’ll receive. “Somehow I have no emotional attachment to that button...” or “I’m just not feeling it…” or “Perhaps if you shift that pixel a little more to the left...”

During design critiques, how often do you hear a designer start their feedback with “This is knit-picking, but...” Well, if it’s knit-picking - don’t waste people’s time! Don’t provide feedback unless you truly believe the idea will improve the design and then, be prepared to offer solid constructive solutions. Giving valuable feedback is a skill.

Feedback is the team’s relationship with you and your relationship with the team. Again, think about giving and receiving feedback as a skill. On the receiving end, we could improve how we ingest and learn from feedback, take charge and drive our own results. We don’t need to wait around for good givers to show up. Yes, some of us are lucky to have great mentors in our lives; people we trust, whose credibility and experience can actually be helpful, whose opinion we respect. Instead, more frequently, we get feedback from everybody else. Often people who are horrible at giving feedback, who may do it unskillfully or for the wrong reasons, or worse, those who haven’t really invested any thought about what they deliver or how they deliver it.

It seems like most feedback coaching sessions focusing on teaching givers how to give are a push model of learning – I figure out what you need to learn and I push you to learn it. When actually it’s the receiver who is in charge. Say that to yourself again, “it is the receiver of feedback who is ultimately in charge” and let it really sink in. Once you realize where the control lies, you can now begin to understand how to draw out learning opportunities even from off-base, unfair, poorly delivered feedback. What happens at that point? Instead of walking away, head hanging, disappointed in yourself, you adapt the viewpoint, find the deeper meaning, turn junky-jibberish into new and improved constructive feedback that could make a huge difference!

Consider that people who are skilled at learning even from negative feedback - have learned how to improve, and generally have higher work satisfaction. They adapt quicker in new roles and, by the way, get higher performance reviews, which suggests that if you get better at receiving feedback, it doesn’t just change you, it changes how other people see you.

It doesn’t matter how authoritative, powerful, or even skillful the giver is. The real leverage here is in teaching all of us that core human challenge - to really see yourself as others do and to take their input to understand how you impact those around you; thereby learning from yourself.

Let’s consider the psychology and how, at first glance, we perceive feedback as working against us.. It so happens that we are naturally wired against receiving feedback; because humans like positive and abhor negative. And we assume those who give feedback expect action after delivery; if giving negative feedback they expect an improvement, if positive messages are delivered that sets a bar for the future. Either way we can’t simply dismiss it. So turn your personal tool box on its head. Instead of simply dismissing feedback you disagree with and dismissing it as ‘frivolous, uncalled for or even, vindictive - look deeply to find meaning in it. Even if 90% of it is completely irrelevant, the remaining 10% could ultimately help you grow!

Typically feedback triggers three types of reactions; truth triggers, relationship triggers and identity triggers.

Truth Triggers are composed of the following questions: Is it true? Is it correct? Is it accurate? Is it good advice?

Truth Triggers are challenging to discover. At first you must process what the giver is trying to say, not so much the words but the meaning behind those words. Then comes the challenge to see yourself accurately; from the giver’s point of view, not your own. We all have blind spots. I don’t, but you do...see what I did there?

The second feedback reaction type is Relationship Triggers. The authority of the critic plays an important role. We instinctively position critics on a hierarchy of validity based on our relationship to them. We often evaluate the relationship and put more value on ‘who’ is giving the feedback (a manager, CEO, professor) rather than ‘what’ they are actually saying. To process this natural reaction to feedback, challenge yourself to separate the who from the what, and judge each on its own merit.

Finally, and possibly most importantly, are the Identity Triggers. This challenge has to do with your emotional reaction to feedback. Research suggests that the spectrum of individual emotional sensitivity and how long it takes to process the event and recover from it could vary by as much as 3,000%. According to a psychologist Dr. Martin Selingman, 50% of our reactions to events are based on genetic, inherited wiring factors. An additional 10% are based on the unique circumstance. That leaves a surprising 40% or our reaction that we have complete control over; how we act or react, what we think and how we process the result, and ultimately the behavior response we deliver.

In other words, there is a huge part of our life–the way we react to events–that we have the power to control. Apparently, there is a lot of opportunity, between 50 and 40%, to manage identity triggers more effectively. It comes down to how we choose to live and respond to events throughout our lives. Taking a deeper look into the neuroscience, we are all wired differently and there are multiple wiring factors. Let's look at just three main components: The Baseline, the Swing, and the Recovery.

The Baseline is the idea that each one of us lives at some setpoint - a degree of happiness. Individual events could knock you off, but you will naturally gravitate back toward your baseline. That is your normal degree of happiness; your everyday state of mind. Now consider that some people live at a happiness level of 9, and others at level 3. This is relevant because if your baseline happiness level is low, even when you receive positive feedback, the overall impact may not bring you as much euphoria as the person whose baseline is naturally higher. For example those whose baseline is naturally at 9 are happy about everything from a cup of coffee to a promotion.

Research conducted with lottery winners turned up an interesting fact: within about a year of winning the lottery they are about as happy or unhappy as they were before winning. Consider then, people who are imprisoned, after about a year, are also about as happy or unhappy as before they went to jail.

The Swing has to do with how far we may get knocked off of our baseline, and the Recovery has to do with how long it takes to rebound. As I mentioned before, these three factors can vary individually by as much as 3,000%.

Understanding your profile can help you understand your reaction to feedback. Likewise, when considering a colleague’s reaction, estimating their baseline is important to help you gauge how to best deliver considerate, thoughtful, and useful feedback.

There are challenges on both ends of the spectrum. Feedback can be overwhelming, perceived as too much too soon where a 'now' may be perceived as 'forever'. This type of feedback becomes a supersized entity of its own; untacklable by a mere human causing a shutdown in the receiver. Then there is the notion of Google Bias; when searching the term “things that are wrong with me” 1.2 million hits identify all your past mistakes, future potential failures, sponsored ads from parents, teachers, and exes; as if nothing you’ve ever done was right.

Guess what? Your search results are driven by your search keywords. You didn't search for “things I’ve done well” so none of those results were returned. If your original profiling approach begins in the depths of Google Bias - you cannot learn, you are too overwhelmed. The answer is not to hide in a corner, but to dismantle those distortions of self-image and perceive feedback at its actual size, and then begin the process of learning from it. Be sure to seek out balance when profiling a colleague and yourself.

On the other end of the spectrum, being insensitive to feedback, or undersensitive (although if you’re in that category you don’t care what I call you) has its own challenges too. There are differences between how you see me and how I see myself. You might think I am aloof, but I see myself as shy; You might say I am unfriendly, whereas I may see myself as efficient; overbearing versus outgoing; intimidating versus having high standards; elitist vs smart; impatient vs passionate…

When I think about feedback, I think about approaching life as a conversation. A successful conversation consists of talking and, perhaps more importantly, listening. We must make a conscious decision to not only listen to the words of others, but also be open to hearing their intentions, and adapt our reactions to bring about the most positive result.

Possible reactions include: denial, deflection, self-righteousness, and irritation. Regardless of what was said or how true or false it may be - breathe; and simply say “Thank you.” Now think. Are you interested in improving? Consider what was said and whether you can learn from it. The usefulness of feedback begins with being open to change. This is when engagement begins.

Another way to look at this is being adaptable; adaptability leads to resilience. Life is full of lessons - it’s up to us to choose to deflect, deny, get irritated, or to learn. If we meaningfully navigate through the lessons learned we have an opportunity to become better, more productive, successful, and creative people.

On the business end of it, I prefer to do work that others find value in and receive a paycheck for it. However, as opposed to working in silos, collaboratively we can be so much more successful. As Aristotle said, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” This is why the conversation is so important. Feedback requires trust, trust is built on relationships, and relationships begin with a conversation. The more meaningful and constructive the conversation - the more beneficial the feedback becomes to both the giver and receiver.

However, we must always keep in mind that some conversations can be difficult, but that doesn’t mean they should not occur. Most importantly, always participate in the conversation, especially by being a good listener. By doing so you show to the person that your questions are important, your priorities are important, your feedback is important, and ultimately you are important! In other words, when I ask for feedback, I am not being rhetorical. The feedback matters even when it might be inconvenient, or you disagree, or even think it’s irrelevant. Even if it leads you to realize that in order for you to stay relevant - you need to adapt. So, if you want to gauge whether what you’re working on is on the right track, whether it’s your stakeholders or your 9-year old - just ask. Ask for feedback, seek out the real meaning beyond the words and be open to change.

There is a truth at the core of feedback that we struggle to get around. Feedback sits at the junction of two core human needs that happen simultaneously: one, we want and need to learn and grow, and the other, we need to feel accepted and respected the way we are now. Thus, the very fact of feedback suggests that how we are now isn’t quite as we should be. This duality isn’t going away. However, it helps us to understand our love and hate relationship with feedback is a part of the condition of being human.

Even if the conversation is framed well enough to be beneficial, the fact of the matter is that feedback, and especially constructive feedback can sometimes be unpleasant. Consider that some of our most important lessons in life came from, at times, painful experiences.

What’s up with that? Why can’t we have a pain free human learning system? I wish I could offer that, but in closing, I can only share what works for me, it’s the skill to understand and manage the feedback in order to enrich our relationships and to get to the learning faster.