(Freshman year baseball picture)

Last week was about feedback and relativity.  This week is about learning how to catch a baseball and feedback.

Growing up, my dad is the one who taught me how to throw and catch a baseball.  Obviously, being able to throw the ball is important, but we spent a lot of time working on catching the ball too.  In a perfect world, the throws would always come to your chest and right into your glove, but that rarely happens.  As a result, I had to learn how to move my mitt and adjust my body to make the catch.  The idea was that if it was in my general vicinity I should catch the ball, even if it was high, low, or off to the side.  All the practice catching allowed me to make these adjustments and catch throws that were imperfect.

What does this have to do with anything?  When it comes to feedback, we put a lot of emphasis on the person GIVING feedback, and there isn’t as much focus on RECEIVING feedback.  In our analogy, this would be like learning how to throw, but never really learning how to catch.  Even if you know how to throw, your throws won’t always be perfect, and if the person on the receiving end doesn’t know how to catch, the ball will either hit them and hurt them OR they will miss it entirely. In a similar way, just because the feedback is not delivered perfectly, doesn’t mean it’s bad/incorrect feedback. 

Think about the past few times you received feedback.  How well did you receive it?  Were you open?  Did you close yourself off and become defensive?  Did you explore to understand?  Did you immediately discount it?  Did you take the time to understand the impact of your actions?  Receiving feedback consists of being humble enough to admit you aren’t perfect, listening with an open mind, staying objective about yourself, asking clarifying questions, and understanding the impact of the behavior you’re receiving feedback on.  None of these things are easy.  I’ve messed all of them up and will continue to do so.  However, getting better at these things throughout my career has helped me have better conversations that have led to growth.

The challenge: How are you getting better at RECEIVING feedback?

Bonus: Recently, I read Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well: Stone, Douglas, Heen, Sheila: 9780670014668: Amazon.com: Books.  It’s entirely dedicated to RECEIVING feedback.  It was interesting and included a few angles I haven’t thought much about in the past.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry