How Do I Handle Negative Feedback from My Team?

MURIEL WILKINS: I am Muriel Wilkins, and this is Coaching Real Leaders, part of the HBR Podcast Network. I’m a longtime executive coach who works with highly successful leaders who’ve hit a bump in the road. My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying their goals and figuring out a way to reach them so that hopefully they can lead with a little more ease. I typically work with clients over the course of several months, but on this show, we have a one-time coaching meeting focusing on a specific leadership challenge they’re facing. Today’s guest is someone we’ll call Robin to protect her confidentiality. She’s been at her current company for her entire career, and she’s honed her focus as a leader there over time.

ROBIN: I like to say I grew up here. There’s a great amount of gratitude that I have to the company for shaping me into the professional that I am today. I’ve been fortunate to work throughout the company across all lines of business and functions. I am focused on people, and that has always been an interest of mine, how people respond, how people are inspired, how people are motivated. And I am an agitator of that and a believer in the unlimited potential that people have. I have anchored always back to that as my core foundation.

MURIEL WILKINS: Robin’s journey led her to her current position, which she considers a dream role, but her transition into the role was not without its challenges.

ROBIN: I’ve never had any transition like this in all of my transitions, and I would say this is most difficult, trying to maintain all of the responsibilities. When I came in, the team turned over, so I was not only transitioning in that first 90 days, but I also was doing that alone and trying to navigate and quickly orient myself around what I needed to know, knowing that I would be on my own for a while until I was able to rehire some staff.

MURIEL WILKINS: The situation has improved for Robin, but she says that it’s an unforgiving role with little room for error, and also one that requires her to be both strategic and creative. Nevertheless, she’s gained traction by rebuilding a team and is working on training them up, but she’s recently felt a setback when she received some unexpected feedback from her team. Let’s start there.

ROBIN: I received some feedback from the team and it wasn’t direct. Well, I’ve always created an open environment, a culture of feedback, and there was a scenario where we were all in a face-to-face and some concerns were expressed, and we were up against the clock and I had to go to another meeting. So I asked the team to come together and talk through the feedback that they had, and then we can talk about it together. They were happy to do that. In between that time, HR gave me some feedback that the team said they weren’t feeling heard, they wanted more recognition. There was feedback that they felt fearful to express their opinions, and there was feedback maybe that they didn’t feel like they had a say in the culture or the work that they were doing. To be honest, it hit me like a ton of bricks because immediately in my heart, there was a conflict. This is the core of who I am, so it not only impacted me just on a surface level, but also it went straight to the heart. Of course, I would never want my team to feel that way, and so I just went straight into immediate reflection on how this could be, how I could come to receive this feedback, and the team had this perception.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. So first of all, kudos to you for even moving to a place of self-reflection around it rather than immediate reaction.

ROBIN: Thank you.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, I want to understand. When you heard the feedback from HR, did your team eventually also share this with you or?

ROBIN: Yeah. So there was already a meeting set up from my team and it was just such a beautiful call where they all aligned across the feedback and they each had a part in reading out the feedback. And it wasn’t just negative, it was a balance. It was a beautiful picture of feedback from a team. It was a gift, and I was just appreciative on the call. I remained mostly quiet and just attentive and took the notes and repeated back what I heard, and then sent out a follow-up email as well to just confirm what I heard and confirm our agreement together about the path forward.

MURIEL WILKINS: All right. So you have spent the past year and a half bringing this team together. You have worked hard to create a culture of feedback. Lo and behold, that culture actually enabled feedback to happen, maybe not in the way that you had expected, but it happened. Your team approaches you that they have some feedback to give you, and then it is also communicated through HR. And what I’m hearing from you is that it landed in a way that was heavier maybe than you expected? You said it hit you like a ton of bricks.

ROBIN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, what is it that caused the feedback itself to hit you like a ton of bricks?

ROBIN: The direct, in my mind, feedback felt like a conflict from what I see and how we engage and the evidence thereof. So in my curiosity, I went back and did an audit of myself. I selected just a couple of mediums to get a snapshot of the sentiment of the team, and I would consider myself on the higher end of self-awareness. That might contribute to some of the conflict I felt because how could this be? I needed more context, so I just went and did my own research. There was a lot of things that came out of my exploration, and sure enough, there was evidence of things that contradict the feedback and there were things that I also missed as well.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, when you say conflict, conflict with who or what? Usually when we think conflict, there are two opposing sides or there’s tension. What is the tension?

ROBIN: So, specifically, one example – not feeling safe, the environment is a safe environment to share feedback and direct statements made, this is a safe environment, that conflict.

MURIEL WILKINS: That was being said by team members?

ROBIN: Yes, yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, you found that the most recent feedback you were getting was contradictory to evidence of what you’d seen in the past or even what you felt was happening?

ROBIN: Correct. And I love that you used that term because it presented a conflict first, and then I found it to be contradictory when I went and looked back for awareness-sake, to retrace my steps, if you will, around where I missed things or where I could have improved.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. So you’re now in this place of what’s really going on. I don’t know what to believe, right?

ROBIN: That’s right, a 100%. So I did a pulse check, and then I went and spoke with trusted mentors and colleagues. I got various different responses and all of it helped soothe me, but I knew that I would have to be the one to create the path forward for me and how I responded. And I think my biggest goal was to show up honest, and model humility because that is a value that’s important to me. And a conflict internally was my immediate take was like, “I’m not being humble here. Yeah, you’ve got this evidence that proves that everything on this sheet is not right or what was said, or it’s being exaggerated or taken out of context.” And I felt like it was an attack and in my spirit, that just didn’t feel right.

MURIEL WILKINS: So what I think I’m hearing from you, and you tell me if I’m hearing things in the way that you mean, is this question of not whether the feedback is real or not, or let’s dissect the feedback, but really how do I respond to this feedback that I’ve received?

ROBIN: A 100%. That creates a path forward that we all want to be on.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. So how do I respond to this feedback that I’ve received that creates a path forward, that we all want to be on?

ROBIN: Mm-hmm.

MURIEL WILKINS: And I find it interesting that you described your initial experience of receiving this feedback of there’s a conflict, and I asked who’s the conflict with or with what? And you said, “Oh, well, it’s contradictory to what’s happened in the past.” And yet what I hear is a conflict within, because what you just described is, I’m just visualizing, it’s almost like you have, on the one hand, there’s a part of you who’s like, “Okay, ROBIN. Aspirational ROBIN is humble and honest, and creates the safe space for being able to enable others to provide feedback.” So, she hears, aspirational ROBIN?

ROBIN: Mm-hmm.

MURIEL WILKINS: And then I also hear ROBIN who’s like, “What the heck?”

ROBIN: A 100%.

MURIEL WILKINS: Defensive Robin.

ROBIN: A 100%.

MURIEL WILKINS: What? This is not right. I have the evidence. Look, people, this is not what’s been happening and yet this is what you’re saying.

ROBIN: Yeah. That is what’s making me feel like this is more of an attack, and I don’t want to feel that way. I want to be open to the feedback. So if that adds even more context to my conflict, contradictory, aspirational side and how I’m actually feeling side.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. So there’s a sense for you of like, am I being attacked here rather than am I just being given feedback?

ROBIN: Mm-hmm.

MURIEL WILKINS: And so, what would it look like for you to respond in a way that’s aligned with aspirational ROBIN, regardless of whether it’s an attack or not?

ROBIN: I have been thinking about this question for a really long time, and for me it’s no response at all. It is outside of obviously taking the feedback and co-creating a path forward with the team. Unfortunately, I don’t see a healthy path forward where I can address the authentic feeling that I have.

MURIEL WILKINS: And what’s the authentic feeling that you have?

ROBIN: That this was an unfairly run collection of feedback that did not consider me. There was feedback collected from the team, but there was no feedback collected from me whereby I could provide the evidence if necessary, to prove the contradiction and to what end anyway. So for me, in that loop going back and forth, like so many other times in different scenarios, I felt there was just no path forward for me to address the true authentic feeling I had, which is the irony of that here given the feedback is so evident, at least to me.

MURIEL WILKINS: What’s so evident?

ROBIN: That the real person I’m feeling like who can’t respond authentically, who can’t share authentically how I feel, is me.

MURIEL WILKINS: When we think of feedback and leadership, the challenge that might most often come to mind is the difficulty that a lot of leaders have in giving feedback to members of their team in a way that’s effective. What’s perhaps less discussed is how leaders themselves hear and receive feedback. Now, what’s interesting to me in hearing from Robin is the level at which she’s trying to approach dealing with the negative feedback that she received. It’s easy to get defensive when it comes to critical feedback, which she feels a bit of, but she’s also trying to take a step back and be honest to see if there are truly growth opportunities here for her. I also want to dig more into this word conflict, which we’re seeing come up in a few ways in this case. One, the conflict she’s feeling between the stories she’s hearing and the way she experienced these situations. And two, the conflict she’s feeling between the different ways she can respond to the feedback. Let’s jump in now to look closer at what she’s experiencing, that she can’t have her authentic feelings about the situation. By digging more into that, we might be able to work towards a resolution and next steps. So I want us to kind of play around with this a little bit because if you don’t approach this from a whole self, meaning all parts of you, you’re always going to feel this conflict and this tension. So if you were to authentically, as you put it, share what your feelings are about this, what would that look like?

ROBIN: I think I’ve tried in the team setting and it sounded something like a claim brought forward and then me saying, “Hey, where do you see that, or when is that happening, or how is that happening,” and them saying, “Well, maybe I’m just assuming, or maybe I’m just emotional right now,” and then a redirection of the conversation so it never really comes to realization, any type of real feedback. And when challenged, or not challenged, but just asking for clarity, it can’t be provided. So in a small way, I felt like that was a time when I tried to respond authentically and I’m usually having to pick that up anyway and/or create my own level of blame so that we can move on, so I can apologize and move on. And so the exercise was really helpful for the team to go in and collectively align and then provide the feedback that was helpful and constructive and authentic where we all felt I think really good. But if I come back to your initial ask of what does it look like for me to respond authentically after somewhat piloting in a smaller setting, I don’t see a path forward.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay, so what were you expecting when you responded authentically? What would’ve made you feel like, yes, I was able to respond authentically?

ROBIN: It would sound like I’m not being accountable to how my team feels. It would come across defensive deflective and not help us move forward.

MURIEL WILKINS: If you responded authentically, you said, that’s what the impact would be?

ROBIN: Yeah, I think based on the feedback, based on the feedback of where the team is. If I responded authentically, calling out evidence of a contradiction, I’m not sure that anyone would receive that without trying to fight back or prove a point.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay, so that might be how they receive it, but that’s not what I asked you. What I asked you is how would you know that you’ve responded to something authentically?

ROBIN: That’s a good question. I’m sorry. I didn’t even hear that.

MURIEL WILKINS: Well, I might not have asked it in that exact way.

ROBIN: Oh, that’s really good. That’s really good.

MURIEL WILKINS: But how would you know?

ROBIN: I think there’s a feeling like even now, like you asking me that question, it was easy for me to say, “I didn’t even hear that question.” I guess it’s a feeling that I’m not having to be careful or put myself aside. It would feel like I’m not having to press down how I’m feeling or put myself aside for the sake of the team.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay, so here’s the thing, I hear you around wanting to have a voice in all of this and feeling like you’re not because you don’t see a path forward because of how it might land. And you can be as authentic and as truthful as you want. You just have to be eyes wide open around what the impact of that might be. But ultimately, it’s your choice. So I would encourage you to not see yourself as choiceless in the moment.

Meaning as long as you keep saying, “Well, because of the way they would receive it, I can’t do this,” that’s fine. Yes, you’re right. That’s probably how they receive it, but I can’t do this, that’s ultimately your choice. You can do it. It might lead to those results. So we should talk about whether those are the results you want, but let’s not use how other people respond as what dictates what ultimately is your choice in terms of how you respond to this feedback.

ROBIN: That’s so good.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay?

ROBIN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: So how authentic you are, whether it is about responding to feedback, whether it is about any other thing, it’s ultimately up to you. In that moment, I think what might have been happening is, hey, I’m going to show you that the evidence doesn’t bear out what this feedback is saying. And they didn’t respond in a way that basically said, “Oh my gosh, Robin, you know what? You’re right,” which would’ve been validated your truth, if you will. I’m using the words you used. And what I’m suggesting is your truth is a truth is a truth whether somebody validates it or not. If that’s what you think, that’s fine. Now, whether you share it or not depends on what outcomes you’re driving to. And so in this particular situation, you are very self-aware, and you’re also very aware of what the impact of your response might be. So I think rather than focus on the input, let’s focus on the impact. What is the impact that you want to have on your team now that this feedback has been given?

ROBIN: I want to use this opportunity to bring us closer and to create new opportunities to trust, to extend trust to one another and everyone feels seen, everyone feel valued, everyone feel heard, and ultimately, everyone performing well and feeling inspired because all of us are in the spotlight, if you will, as models for the rest of the organization. So it’s important that the core is healthy and whole.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, I hear you around, you want everyone, I’m just going to pick up on one of the main things you said, you want your team to walk away from this process feeling seen, valued, and heard. Actually, you said you want everyone to feel seen, valued, and heard.

ROBIN: Yes, including myself.

MURIEL WILKINS: Including yourself. I think the question is who’s going to make you feel seen, valued, and heard?

ROBIN: So good. Sorry. Sorry.

MURIEL WILKINS: It’s okay. I can tell this has been a hard situation for you because it conflicts what you thought about yourself and everything that you’ve represented, but yet, here you are. Here you are. The beautiful part of it is you’re seeking it as an opportunity for growth. I just read recently that when… I’m not going to quote it exactly, but basically it’s when we are in these situations and these seasons of difficulty, it can either feel like quicksand or lotus leaves. We’re all in the same mud, but we can either rise like lotus leaves or go down into quicksand. So you don’t have to apologize for the emotions. This is how you value your truth, right? So when I ask that question to you, who makes you feel seen, heard, and valued during this time, how is that landing with you in that moment?

ROBIN: Yeah, I think outside of the work context, I’m just very independent and have been, and there aren’t many that I have to or that I would even hold the responsibility for them to see me or value me. If I think about inside the work context, I have an amazing boss, but we are also in a hierarchy such that he’s an executive. He’s got the day-to-day, and he does see me. So our follow-up conversation was, as I’m thinking about this and talking through this when we did finally have our one-on-one, I didn’t even have to say a word, and he just pretty much responded, shared and reiterated his appreciation for me and his trust in me and my leadership and how much he valued me and how hard this situation is and encouraged me to find the path forward and lean on my strengths and my creativity to have fun along the way and bring others along. So I felt seen and heard then.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, what is it that you’re seeking from your team?

ROBIN: I think I’m looking for trust from them because in my mind it was kind of shaken a bit to receive the feedback and then know that these other things contradicted. But I, of course, never brought that forward to the team. They just live. They just exist. As far as the team is concerned, our interaction has been either individual and collectively has just been a continuous conversation either in staff meetings or the meeting that I mentioned earlier. We’re moving along and I just want to continue to build on the trust.

MURIEL WILKINS: And when you say build on the trust, is it that you want them to trust you more-

ROBIN: Both ways.

MURIEL WILKINS: …or you to start trusting them more? Okay.

ROBIN: Both ways.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, what would enable you to trust them more? Because you’re the one who’s sitting here. What would enable you to rebuild how you trust them?

ROBIN: I can’t help but think of Stephen Covey’s Speed of Trust, and it’s an activity that the team and I are also working through right now. And the first one is talk straight. And I love this particular card and behavior, because it not only talks about what it sounds like when it’s working well, but it also talks about what it sounds like when it’s not working well or when it’s the counterfeit of the talking straight. So I think I need to find my own talking straight that is better aligned to my authentic feeling that creates the result and the impact that is desired.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, let’s try to push that to a bit more concrete terms, okay?

ROBIN: Okay.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, let’s imagine I’m the team and you’re going to talk straight in a way that reflects your truth, your feelings and honors and reflects their truth, their feelings. Let’s imagine you are in a team meeting and some of the feedback that you got, which you feel is contradictory to what you think, and yet this is the feedback that they’re presenting. You’ve already shared that if I go in and I say, “Well, here’s the evidence,” then that’s speaking your authentic truth, but that doesn’t feel good. If you don’t say anything and you just let them go on and on and on and on, then that doesn’t feel right because it feels like your voice is not in it, but yet their voices are heard. So what would it sound like to allow yourself to talk straight and others to talk straight at the same time? How could you tee that up.

ROBIN: Address the topic. So once again, removing us and saying… So an example could be, hey, want to check in on this being a safe environment. Let’s go around on a scale from one to five how safe are we feeling.

ROBIN: “Let’s go around on a scale from one to five, how safe are we feeling?” Maybe get a pulse and then that might generate some additional conversation that could be fruitful if necessary, or at least give me a read on where everyone is and where I might need to go next.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay, so what that does is give you a read, right?

ROBIN: Mm-hmm.

MURIEL WILKINS: Figure out what to do next. What I’m still not hearing is the initial question you brought up, which is, “Where is my voice in all of this?”

ROBIN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: Which I think is the clincher for you.

ROBIN: It is.

MURIEL WILKINS: You’re like talking through all of the… You literally, you have the checklist of how to respond effectively to feedback. You get people together, you listen to them, you think through what are the things we could be doing next time differently? Let me do a pulse check. Is it working? What’s working? What’s not working? All of that you’re doing. So even though you said, “How do you respond to the feedback?” I think you have that checklist, what I’m not hearing is the other tension that you brought up, which is somewhere in there it feels like you feel like you’ve lost yourself. So, okay, one way to go is to say, “That’s okay. I know why I’m doing this and I know what I think, and it’s okay. Everybody’s got a right to have their perception. I’m the leader. My job is to make them feel heard, valued, and understood,” or the other things you said, not the other way around, “I’m okay with not sharing my piece.” That’s option number one. Option number two is, “Oh no, I’ve got to share my piece at all costs,” and you’ve already articulated that come off as like, “Let me show you all the reasons why what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense.” That’s the defensive route. And what I’m looking for is where’s option number three, which is you can have a voice and I can have a voice, and then we can choose which path you go forward. I’m not saying that’s the path. I’m saying that’s a path.

ROBIN: Yeah. It’s even awkward for me to even try to go down that path because you’re absolutely right, it’s easy for me to put myself to the side, to your point, option one, where I just say, listen, I’m the leader. I’ll take it on the chin, whatever I’ll submit to the needs of the team. It’s really hard to honor me in that. That is an area of opportunity for me in many settings. So when you were talking, I was thinking, and again, not used to doing this, so I’m going to try it out loud, but I’m not sure how it will even sound. But the thought was, “Hey, I’m sensing that we’re safe here.” Am I off? When I say that it sounds pretentious or even like I’m trying to lead them to also agree.

MURIEL WILKINS: Let’s pause here, because we’re getting some good additional context about the challenge that ROBIN is trying to work through. We’ve mentioned the conflict she’s feeling, that she’s received negative feedback that she doesn’t necessarily agree with, but regardless, she’s hoping to find a positive and constructive way forward for both her and her team. At this point in the conversation, I felt that a little role playing and working through specific scenarios might be useful for Robin to make things more concrete so that instead of just thinking about it would allow her to start actually playing out different ways she could respond that might feel more authentic to her. That process might also help her step back from focusing on what is right and wrong in this situation and gain perspective on how she wants to move forward. When we started this conversation, you started off by saying the feedback really hit me a ton of bricks, and that felt honest to me, like that was authentic to you, and then you went on to share what happened. I think you need to really hone in on what is honest and authentic versus what sounds right. And I know I’m sort of pushing you to say, “What does it sound like?” A lot of times what is honest and authentic is not that complicated. So let me give you an example. This is not say, this is how you should do it, but I think this is a point, and sometimes as a coach, it’s like modeling, mirroring what could happen. What if there was a situation where you heard the feedback and the response was, “Wow, I have to be honest with you guys, it has been a bit difficult for me recognizing that how you’ve experienced me as a leader is different than how I experienced myself, and what I’m committed to is making sure that there’s a path forward where we can all feel supported and valued and heard. And so as part of that, I want to continue to hear from you around this topic of feeling safe. And so what are you feeling right now on a scale from one to 10, how safe does it feel here? And do you even feel safe sharing that? Because it’s important to me to respect how you feel regardless of how I might’ve thought about it in the past.” Let me pause there. What did you take away from my meager attempt at modeling?

ROBIN: First of all, it felt good, it felt right. It felt like I was considered, and it started with me in what you shared as well. It started with how I was feeling, which I know… that’s the heart of authenticity, how I’m feeling. But I love the, “It may be different than how you feel, and that’s okay,” but I love how it still created space for me to have my own feelings and that not necessarily have to be how everyone else feels or receive the same information. So, I think that to me felt authentic. I think if I think about the formula so that I can extract from that in multiple different settings, I think you led with, it doesn’t always have to be the feeling, but the sentiment or the perception plus the acknowledgement of what you may know to be true that the audience may have shared, plus an invitation for the audience to weigh in and reflect or respond.

MURIEL WILKINS: First of all, I think we tend to think being authentic is letting it all out. I once heard a colleague say, “You can authenticate yourself right out of a job.” It’s like that skit, When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong. And so it’s not about faking it, but you’ve got to also understand that different individuals have a different capacity to hold your authenticity. Not everybody can… I know it’s in a completely different context, but as Jack Nicholson said in that movie, “You can’t handle the truth.”

ROBIN: “You can’t handle the truth.”

MURIEL WILKINS: And who’s to say it’s the truth? It’s your perception. But in a way, what is the goal of ensuring that that, “Truth,” is let out and conveyed? Not to say it shouldn’t, but just be clear around what the goal is. If the goal is so that you can feel a sense of validation, as you said, feel heard, valued. If I get it out, maybe they will say, “Yep, you’re right, and therefore I feel okay. It soothes me.” Good luck, you’re dismissing how they feel if that’s where you want to get them to. And oh, by the way, that’s not their job as your team. It’s the other way around. You’re the one who has to lead in a way where they feel valued, and worthy, and understood. And if you do that, maybe it’s reciprocated, maybe, but there’s no responsibility on their end. So that’s not to say you shouldn’t have that support. I just don’t know if that’s the support you’re going to get from your team. You got it from your boss, great. You’ve talked to other trusted advisors, you lean on other people, absolutely. Get the support that you need from people who can actually give it to you and are in a position where that’s part of the role that they’re playing.

ROBIN: So good.

MURIEL WILKINS: So yes, you can be authentic, but authenticity does not mean I got to let every… It’s not unhinged. Yes, you can be honest, but it’s not unhinged. Choose what you want to share. Let’s not even call it honesty and authenticity. I think the question really is what do you want to share? What do you need to share and what do you want to share in that moment that makes you feel like, “Hey, I’ve acknowledged me and I’m acknowledge everybody else?”

ROBIN: I’m going back to what really landed with me, which is let’s remove authenticity because that can get complicated and just need to make a choice on what I need to share, and I can reverse engineer, this is what I was saying, the intended outcome, and maybe start from there and then work my way backwards onto what needs to be shared.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, what I’m hearing you say is, “Let me sort of have my eyes on the goal, which is again, to make my field team heard, understood, and we have a pathway forward.” And I’ve heard you use the term a few times around, “Wanting to move forward, wanting to move forward, wanting to move forward.” And yet what we keep talking about is this feedback, and going back to what happened, and going back to the evidence, and going back to all the things. Marshall Goldsmith, who, I don’t know if you’re familiar with, amazing executive coach and writer, coined the term feed forward, which is all about what are the suggestions to move us forward rather than feedback, which is kind of a retrospective, it’s kind of like Janet Jackson, what have you done for me lately?

ROBIN: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: You know? It’s all looking back and staying there and reacting to that rather than paving as you put it, the path forward. And I sense that you have spent time in the gathering of the feedback, and I’m wondering, what role can you play in now shifting from the retrospective to the prospective, which is what do we want to have happen in the future? What role do you think you can play in moving things forward?

ROBIN: Prompting, framing, framing it that way, and not anchoring on what was said before, but acknowledging the current, the present. And that might be related to a specific item, or it could be related to a feeling or a sentiment across the culture, and just maybe prompting the question, “All right, how would you like to see? Or ideally, what would it look like or what would it sound like? What do we need to do now in order to get to that point and inviting that type of conversation?”

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah, I think it can be simplified, pick one of the areas where you got feedback. So, one of them was not feeling heard, so being able to say, “Hey, I get it. I heard you around not feeling heard. That is not the way that I want you to feel.” That’s the acknowledgement. “I own that that was the impact on you.” Acceptance, I own it. “I don’t want you to feel that way. It’s important to me as a leader.” You’re being honest, that’s-

MURIEL WILKINS: … it’s important to me as a leader, you’re being honest. That’s the honesty that you’re sharing. It’s important to me as a leader that you don’t feel unheard to the best of my capabilities.

ROBIN: Sure.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, I commit to an effort to make you feel heard to the best of my efforts. Now, what might make me feel heard might be different than what makes you feel heard, and I want to make sure you feel heard. So ,Jane or whoever, whichever team member, I’m making up that name, “Jane, I’m just curious. I have some ideas, but I’d love to hear what makes you feel heard?” So you’re creating a path forward based on the impact that you want to have, but because you’re really talking about feelings here, you’ve got to understand what makes them feel a particular way. You can have a hypothesis, but you need to validate it. So the pulse check for the sake of just a pulse check, I mean, which pulse are you checking?

ROBIN: Sure. That’s true.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, the practice of feed forward is asking for suggestions, but also being mindful that part of the ownership for you is you’ve also got to come up with, “Here’s what I want to do,” and that’s the part. Is that process authentic to you? What would make that process authentic to you?

ROBIN: It is authentic to me. It’s actually right in line with my normal style anyway, because I’m always thinking about just how do we move forward and how can it be better. It’s just my growth mindset, that’s my leaning anyway. And so I think it’s natural for me to maybe lean on this first as a tool rather than my initial leaning, which is to, it’s not always bad, but I just always want to assess and reflect, and there’s just not always time for that. And now that you’re mentioning this, I think of leaders that I see model this often, “Hey, so what’s the recommendation, or where do you think we should start, or how do you see it?” Paint done for me. And even just asking that question naturally progresses the conversation in a constructive way.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yes. And you can’t move to action without laying the groundwork. So let’s not dismiss the process that you’ve already gone through. If we had started this conversation and you said, “I want to move straight to action,” and I said, “Okay, what’s happened?” And you didn’t tell me that you had the conversations around trying to understand the feedback, I think you used the word apologizing, etcetera, then you might not be ready to move to action.

ROBIN: That’s so good.

MURIEL WILKINS: What you want to be careful of is staying stuck in those initial phases and never moving forward, stuck in the awareness phase. Because essentially, I mean, the step is you become aware of the feedback, then you’ve got to acknowledge the feedback, which you used the word apologize. Sometimes it requires an apology, sometimes not. But you, at the very minimum, need to acknowledge that their perception is their reality regardless of how you feel about it. Then you’ve got to accept it, which is take ownership around, “It is what it is. This is the situation whether I like it or not, this is how people feel,” and then you can move to action, which is the forward piece. But if you stay stuck in just, “I’m aware of the feedback, I’m dissecting it and assessing it,” and keep on trying to find out whether it’s true, whether it corroborates, whether it doesn’t corroborate, it’s not to dismiss all that, but at some point you’ve gathered enough, what do you want to do? And that’s your choice. You can stay in that, but you’ve already seen what it leads to. I mean, what is it leading to? I don’t know. To me, and I don’t know if that’s a good situation.

ROBIN: Well, no.

MURIEL WILKINS: You don’t want to be led to me.

ROBIN: No. Well, and what I’m hearing you say too is because I do believe that we are on the forward journey, but now I feel like I am also on it. I was moving the team forward, but I wasn’t on the forward journey.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah.

ROBIN: That’s what I heard you say like, “Yeah, I’ve moved on with them, but I was still at the evidence and now I feel like I’m seen, and I see a clear path for me to join them.”

MURIEL WILKINS: Who’s doing the seeing when you say I’ve seen, who’s doing the seeing?

ROBIN: Well, I think I’m choosing, I’m making the choice to acknowledge where we’re at and accept it, contradiction or not. And the expectation for the team to cooperate is no longer on the table, and I can just make the choice to accept, to have an awareness, acknowledge it, what you just walked me through, accept it, and we continue on the path together. And then I think another action for me is to fortify the support outside of the team for myself.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. Fortify the support outside of your team. Look, we started off this conversation when you shared about your background and what drives you and the ability to shape the career that you’ve had at your organization over all these years and the strength that it showed. Yes, others will fortify you, but my sense is that you have fortified yourself as well, and that is also bringing your voice into it, so it’s not one for the other. It doesn’t mean that you have to stand alone and be by yourself, “I can do it all on my own.” But I do think there’s a, I know what my intention was or was not, and I can understand that that’s not how it ended up landing and I got this. Aspirational, ROBIN can tell defensive ROBIN, “I see you defensive ROBIN, thank you for trying to stand up for me, and I got this. I got what I need. I know what I need to do. I know what I was trying to do, it may not have landed. That’s okay. We’ll figure this out.” Get that from the people who can actually provide it to you, and one of those people is yourself.

ROBIN: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. So tell me as we wrap up, one thing that you think you’re going to do or that you know you’re going to do differently with your team moving forward.

ROBIN: Feed forward. Now, obviously I’m not going to say that, but I think in every, at least team setting, I want to lean into that and create more opportunities for dialogue amongst the team and collaboration amongst the team, because I can see more than just a few benefits of that, and outside of the context of what we’re talking about today, and even more so in the performance and the outcomes.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay, great. So how are you feeling now relative to the beginning of our conversation?

ROBIN: I feel light. The ton of bricks have been lifted. I mean really, and I think it’s because I truly feel that A, I’ve got it and that I have left the feedback behind.

MURIEL WILKINS: Beautiful. Thank you.

ROBIN: Thank you. Thank you so much.

MURIEL WILKINS: When we think about the challenge Robin was facing and how she might deal with it, there are a few layers to consider. We start with the specific problem that seemed to be at hand, at least at face value, what do I do when I get negative feedback from my team as a leader? But we quickly saw another layer overlaid on top of that, what do I do when the feedback I get, even after careful reflection, doesn’t align with my perspective on the situation? So, Robin has to wrestle with that conflict within herself. When we got more specific about why she wanted to respond to the feedback in a certain way, the conversation went to the idea of authenticity. I encourage ROBIN though, to think not just about feedback, but the idea of feedforward, because ultimately deciding on the right response in these situations isn’t necessarily just about being right. It’s about knowing the audience and taking the action that best aligns with your desired impact. In other words, what do you really want to share and to what end? And in ROBIN’s case, as it is, for many of us, the goal is creating a culture where we can all feel seen, valued and heard. That’s it for this episode of Coaching Real Leaders, and that’s a wrap on this season. I have a simple ask of you. If you like this and any episode from this season, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This is really important so that we can continue to bring you these coaching conversations and so that others can find them as well. While we’re on hiatus, there’s a number of ways we can keep in touch. If you want more on the show, join the Coaching Real Leaders community where I host live discussions on each episode and answer your questions. You can become a member at coachingrealleaderscommunity.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn @Muriel Wilkins, and if you’re dealing with a leadership challenge, I’d love to hear from you and possibly have you on the show next season, apply at coachingrealleaders.com. Thanks to my producer, Mary Dooe; sound editor, Nick Crnko; music composer, Brian Campbell; my assistant Emily Sopha, and the entire team at HBR. Much gratitude to the leaders who join me in these coaching conversations and to you, our listeners who share in their journeys. From HBR Podcast Network, I’m Muriel Wilkins. Until next time, be well.