When Feedback Makes You Cry a Little

Feedback really is a gift. But feedback can also be hard, both to give and to get. I moved into a leadership role a little over a year ago, and got my first hard-hitting feedback at the end of 2016.

The fall was a stressful time for our entire team. We were launching something completely new with fewer people than we needed and inherently inflexible deadlines. I was pulled in multiple directions as I tried to build what our team would do more broadly, champion this one huge project, and do a fair bit of individual-contributor work that really did have to be done by me in the circumstances. Everyone else was faced with wearing too many hats, too. We managed to maintain a very high quality through the fall but we were all worried about what was looming in the new year.

Late fall, my lead initiated a feedback process for me that included everyone on our team and a bunch of folks that worked with us. I also did a self evaluation. It's a standardized process used with all folks in leadership roles. I got a report back with a summary of scores on the various questions and the written responses, but of course none of the names to go with them.

When I first got the report, my heart just sank. How poorly I had calibrated my self-evaluation is what struck me first - most scores given to me seemed really low. Then I started to read the written stuff and my heart sank even lower.

Nothing written was mean, and in fact, none of it was unfair. It took a day or two of reflection, but the feedback was absolutely right.

I wonder if there are known stages of absorbing feedback, like the stages of grieving. At first I felt shock, then I felt a little upset, and then I felt horrible about how I had made the team's lives harder in some ways. It was difficult to realize how much less self-aware I was in some areas than I imagined.

After reading the report I had a session with one of our internal coaches. I definitely cried a little in that session. We worked through the feedback, me talking through what likely caused it and how I missed realizing what I was doing. It was extremely valuable and I highly recommend doing something similar if you can.

The coach gave me some suggestions for how to address the feedback with my team. At our next standup I brought it up using her advice and cried a little again. The team was so wonderful. It became really clear that the feedback came from a place of us all caring about each other very much. It was a difficult but very important experience.

I was able to put some of the plan for addressing the feedback into action before leaving to have a baby a couple of months later. My biggest takeaway, besides the specifics of the feedback, is that I need to give and ask for feedback more often. It's not always easy, and it might make you cry a little, but it is so so worth it.