Services
TAYA

They Ask, You Answer Mastery

A coaching & training program that drives unmatched sales & marketing results.

Sales

Sales Performance Mastery

Improve the competencies and close rates of your sales organization.

Web design

Website Mastery

Web design, development & training for your team.

HubSpot

HubSpot Mastery

Everything you need to get the most from HubSpot.

AI Mastery

AI Enablement Mastery

Unlock the power of AI in all aspects of your revenue operations.

Discover how IMPACT’s services can help take your business to the next level. Book a free 30-minute coaching session Book a free 30-minute coaching session
Learning Center
Learning Center

Learning Center

Free resources to help you improve the way you market, sell and grow your business.

Discover how IMPACT’s services can help take your business to the next level. Book a free 30-minute coaching session Book a free 30-minute coaching session

Free Assessment: How does your sales & marketing measure up?

Get Started
Close

Free Assessment:

How does your sales & marketing measure up?
Take this free, 5-minute assessment and learn what you can start doing today to boost traffic, leads, and sales.
Get Started
Marc Amigone

By Marc Amigone

Apr 5, 2018

Topics:

Careers in Inbound Executives and Leaders
Subscribe
Join 40,000+ sales and marketing pros who receive our weekly newsletter.

Get the most relevant, actionable digital sales and marketing insights you need to make smarter decisions faster... all in under five minutes.

Thanks, stay tuned for our upcoming edition.
Careers in Inbound  |   Executives and Leaders

Negative Feedback Sucks - But the Way You Give & Take it Doesn't Have To [+VIDEO]

Marc Amigone

By Marc Amigone

Apr 5, 2018

Negative Feedback Sucks - But the Way You Give & Take it Doesn't Have To [+VIDEO]

Giving and receiving feedback -- when it comes to growing personally and professionally (and helping others do the same), there are few skills more vital to success.

It’s also one of the most difficult things to do.

Especially when it comes to negative feedback, it can feel like rejection and, as social animals, we, as humans, depend on acceptance from our peers for survival.

Feedback, and its impact on work cultures, is the focus of the first episode of ‘WorkLife,’ a new podcast from author, organizational psychologist and Wharton Business School professor, Adam Grant.

As a fan of Adam Grant’s writing (and a certifiable podcast geek), I was extremely eager to check out Grant’s new podcast that sets out to “explore the psychology of unconventional workplaces.”

One episode in, I’m eager to listen more -- and share some of what I’ve already learned.

Radically Candid Feedback as Part of a Corporate Culture

In the first episode, Grant dives deep into the culture of radically candid feedback at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, by telling the story of a manager named Kiran Rao.

Kiran tells the story of a meeting where in front of over 200 of his co-workers, he was singled out as being the worst manager at all of Bridgwater.

Have you ever experienced anything like that in your career?

I know for me personally, getting negative feedback even in a one-on-one situation can be intensely difficult. I’ve never experienced anything close to what Kiran experienced, and if I did, I might consider making a career change.

At Bridgewater, however, that sort of thing happens all the time.

On their website, they describe themselves as a “community of people who are driven to achieve excellence in their work and their relationships through radical truth and radical transparency.”

In the podcast, Adam Grant reveals that culture of radical truth and transparency extends all the way to their CEO, Ray Dalio. He recounts a story where one of his employees gave him a D- on a presentation he gave to the company and told him he expected more out of him.

Ouch, I know, but Dalio was completely receptive to the feedback and took it to heart.

In leading by example, he set the tone at Bridgewater for everyone to follow -- candid feedback will help everyone grow and succeed.

So how do they manage to maintain such a healthy work atmosphere where everyone is giving each other such candid, direct feedback?

They ask their employees to buy into the concept of a “Challenge Network.”

How to Be Better at Getting Negative Feedback

Find a Challenge Network

Grant explains that when we receive negative feedback, our ego’s natural response is to become a totalitarian regime, “controlling the flow of information to our brains the way a dictator controls the media.”

Simply put, we go into denial.

We avoid or remove people from our lives who give us negative feedback and seek out the people we know will reassure us.

We go to our friends, like-minded colleagues, or even moms to validate to our egos we couldn’t possibly be deserving of the negative feedback we received!

But what if we didn’t reject this feedback?

What if instead we looked to a network of people we trusted had our best interest in mind to give us candid, honest feedback; people we trusted to push us to improve and tell us the things we don’t want to hear but need to?

That’s what Adam Grant calls The Challenge Network.

For me, my challenge network consists of my best friend and my wife. They’re both smart, hard-working people who know me about as well as anyone in the world, and I trust both of them to be completely honest with me.

When it comes to a challenge network, however, Grant makes a key point, “A challenge network can only help you if you’re ready to listen.”

Depending on your workplace, it can be difficult to know who exactly you can trust to give you objective, dependable feedback. Perhaps you’re new or you don’t quite feel comfortable with that level of vulnerability with your coworkers, but that’s where your challenge network can be extremely helpful.

If you don’t 100% trust the people giving you feedback, you won’t feel comfortable opening up to them and taking what they have to say to heart.

Asking those you’re closest for honest feedback instead gives your ego permission to truly let your guard down and filter out anything that would prevent you from actually improving. Then, you can more comfortably bring this progress back into the office.

When it comes to the process of self-improvement, the ego can be a difficult silent partner.Sometimes you need an extra trick (in this case, your Challenge Network) up your sleeve to get it to play nice.

The Second Score

The concept that stuck with me the most from the first episode of WorkLife was the ‘Second Score.’

When someone evaluates your performance on a given task, they’re essentially giving you a score. Sometimes they’ll literally tell you, “I give you a 5 out of 10 or a C-,” or sometimes they’ll just let you know in more general terms that your performance on a given task was subpar.

Grant describes the way in which we respond to the initial evaluation as an opportunity to earn a second score.

We can’t go back in time to change our performance that earned us our first score, but we do have control over how we respond to the feedback we’re given. 

This more conscious response disarms the ego from trying to protect your image. The subpar performance is in the past, and you have the opportunity to redeem yourself in the moment with this performance.

What determines your second score? Whether you’re open or defensive.

The Second Score is one tool at your disposal for making receiving feedback a bit more pleasant. What about giving negative feedback though? That can be an equally undesirable task for most people as well.

How to Be Better at Giving Negative  Feedback

One way to help build a culture of candid feedback at your company is to make the experience of giving and receiving feedback a more palatable experience for everyone.

Adam grant interviews Kim Scott, an executive coach in Silicon Valley, and Kim provides a few ways to effectively provide feedback:

Don’t: Say, “Don’t Take It Personally”

it’s natural for people to take offense or react emotionally when receiving negative feedback, and saying this will not only be ignored, but may come off as patronizing.

It might actually be helpful in the long run for the emotional reaction to feedback to sink in as it will help the experience stay with them and perhaps be taken more seriously.

Do: Be Compassionate

While she doesn’t recommend saying the words, “Don’t Take It Personally,” Kim Scott does stress the importance of being compassionate.

For someone to open up with you and truly listen to what you have to say, they have to trust you have the best intentions in mind.

If you don’t communicate with kindness and compassion, that will never happen.

Honesty is a great policy but only if it’s accompanied by kindness. Don’t make the person to whom you’re giving feedback feel worse by being unnecessarily cruel. Be direct and honest, but remember to take into account their feelings in the process.

Don’t: Use The Feedback Sandwich

According to Both Grant and Scott, research shows “feedback sandwiches,” where someone layers negative feedback in between two layers of positive feedback, do more harm than good.

People see right through those veiled attempts to soften the blow and simply take offense to people sugarcoating what they have to say.

Do: State Your Intention to Be Helpful

If you feel the need to disarm someone before giving them negative feedback, remind them where your interest lies: in helping them grow and learn.

If you’re genuinely interested in helping them succeed, make it known,, and they’ll be much more likely to open up and listen.

Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions

It may not be easy to open yourself to the pain that comes with negative feedback, but we can all look back to moments where someone in our life made us aware of a given behavioral trait we might not have known we had.

In time, I know I’ve become extremely grateful to the people in my life who’ve helped me learn and grow (even if I wasn’t particularly enthused by their feedback in the moment) and also learned to be more constructive with the feedback I give others.

That being said, this is my first article at IMPACT. What do you think? What feedback do you have for me? I promise, I’m all ears!

Free Assessment:

How does your sales & marketing measure up?
Take this free, 5-minute assessment and learn what you can start doing today to boost traffic, leads, and sales.

Related Articles

Want to Grow Your Business? Start by Growing Your People

November 30, 2022
Chris Marr Chris Marr

The Modern Career Path: 8 Sales and Marketing Pros Explain How They Got Here

October 17, 2022
John Becker John Becker

12 Tips for Improving Team Communication in Every Workplace [Infographic]

October 13, 2022
Ramona Sukhraj Ramona Sukhraj

13 Women in Marketing, Sales, and Business You Need to Follow

March 12, 2022
Ramona Sukhraj Ramona Sukhraj

11 Books Every Black Sales and Marketing Professional Should Read in 2022

March 5, 2022
Hannah Woods Hannah Woods

24 ways to make the most out of your next virtual event as an attendee

March 19, 2021
Stephanie Baiocchi Stephanie Baiocchi

21 Women on What It’s Like to Work in Marketing (Original Research)

March 2, 2021
Brian Casey Brian Casey

Buyer beware: Why you should be skeptical of a free HubSpot or website audit

February 23, 2021
John Becker John Becker

Video Sales & Marketing World: a guide for videographers and content managers

December 3, 2020
Connor DeLaney Connor DeLaney

How to run a virtual event (checklist, tips, and examples)

November 17, 2020
Stephanie Baiocchi Stephanie Baiocchi

Content Creation Bootcamp: Who should really be attending?

October 12, 2020
Connor DeLaney Connor DeLaney

How to handle negative thoughts and emotions at work [Infographic]

October 4, 2020
Melissa Smith Melissa Smith

What's Happenin' in IMPACT+ (September 2020)

September 29, 2020
Zach Basner Zach Basner

INBOUND 2020: 9 forward-thinking sessions you’ll need to succeed in 2021

September 15, 2020
Ramona Sukhraj Ramona Sukhraj

Why sales pros need to attend HubSpot Training Day (and the sessions you won’t want to miss)

September 14, 2020
Connor DeLaney Connor DeLaney

My HubSpot Training Day agenda for content managers (on October 27)

September 11, 2020
Liz Murphy Liz Murphy

HubSpot Training Day: If you're a digital marketer here's your custom agenda

September 10, 2020
Stephanie Baiocchi Stephanie Baiocchi

IMPACT+ vs HubSpot Academy: a Head-to-Head Digital Marketing Training Comparison

August 21, 2020
Lexie Ward Lexie Ward

The underrated power of introverts [TED Talk video]

August 16, 2020
Natalie Davis Natalie Davis

Circa (née EventGeek) launches a marketer-friendly tool for virtual events

August 7, 2020
Stephanie Baiocchi Stephanie Baiocchi

Virtual peer groups vs roundtables vs masterminds: Which is right for you?

August 6, 2020
Gemi Hartojo Gemi Hartojo

The 3 best online digital marketing courses for 2020

July 31, 2020
Dia Vavruska Dia Vavruska

Pandemic guilt: What it is and how to address it in the workplace

July 22, 2020
Natalie Davis Natalie Davis

Why growing as a specialist often doesn't mean scaling the ladder [Interview]

July 1, 2020
John Becker John Becker

8 best virtual digital sales and marketing events in 2020

June 22, 2020
Connor DeLaney Connor DeLaney