HealthyGamerGG - How To Reject Negative Feedback At Work

Episode Date: December 29, 2022

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So if I get feedback that I'm not doing very well in sales or that some of my clients are complaining about, for example, my attention to detail, or my tardiness and responding. So if we look at what happens during feedback, when I get that kind of feedback, I feel bad about myself, right? I feel kind of bad. I start to, it can almost be like a confirmation of the fears that I hold about myself. Hello, Sarasaswan Mangau Pasad here. If you want to get control of your life and understand how the mind. Mind works, check out a DIY guide to mental health. The link is in description, huh? All right. So let's talk a little bit about how to not take feedback personally, or even, I know it sounds

kind of weird, how to reject feedback. So this is kind of important because sometimes, like, when we get feedback, the first thing is we take it personally, right? So we think that there are circumstances that are outside of our control, which result in someone giving us a piece of feedback. and then we sort of take that feedback to heart. It hurts us a lot, right? It makes us feel bad about ourselves.

Like, a good example is if you get broken up with or someone's breaking up with you and say, it's not you, it's me. We sort of still kind of take that feedback personal. So on the one hand, we kind of say, oh, don't take it personally. It has nothing to do with you. So what we mean by that is that

if there is feedback that does not have to relate to you specifically, sometimes what we do is we make it relate directly to us. But what I'm going to talk about today is a little bit different. What I want y'all to do is to not take feedback personally. And what I mean by that is almost reject feedback that is personal. So I'll give you all an example of this because this happens way too much in spaces like work, right? So sometimes

people will get feedback like, oh, you're not a team player or you're not a go-getter. And if you really stop and think about it, what does that feedback mean? Right? So if someone is not a team player, like how do you fix that? Sometimes some of the worst and most common feedback that we get at work is very personal. They say, is an attribute of who you are. They say you are not a team player, but it's not like I can wake up tomorrow and be a team player, right? You can't correct feedback by being something else. Someone gives you feedback that you're stupid. And the best place for unconstructive personal feedback is in online gaming, by the way, right? You suck at life, uninstalled, noob. That's not feedback that you can do anything about. And the tricky thing is it's not just in gaming, right? We get

this feedback at work all the time, where a boss who is not very thoughtful about what you're doing wrong gives you general person-based feedback. You're not a team player. Well, what do I do about that? Because generally speaking, if you give someone personal feedback, like person-based feedback, they can't change that. I can't change who I am. So I'd love to do today is share a little bit about, first of all, a little bit about in general how to deal with feedback. And secondly, how to almost reject personal feedback. Okay. So don't take. personal feedback. So let's talk a little bit about feedback. What is the ideal kind of feedback? So the purpose of feedback is to get people to improve, right? It's to give them like opportunities

generally to improve. And so that's one of the biggest problems that people, they sort of, we kind of think about feedback as, okay, this is what they're doing wrong, but like what's the purpose of telling someone something that they're doing wrong? What does that accomplish? It doesn't accomplish anything unless you can also tell them how to fix it. So the reason that we give negative feedback is to actually help people improve. Otherwise, it does no good. A simple example of this is that, so if you look at like a test, right, this is one of the biggest problems with the school system. If you look at a test, let's say I get a C on a test. And then what happens after I get a C on the test? I never get any opportunity to improve on that, right? I get the test and then we

move on to the next module. So actually, if we think about how we do tests, our systems are not designed to actually have us improve our learning. They're designed to rank our us, separate us, but the goal isn't actually learning. The goal of our current educational system is differentiation. And that's something that has carried forward into the workplace. And we end up getting feedback that isn't actionable so we can't actually improve. And then what's the point to giving the feedback anyway, right? So what's the point of telling someone, hey, I'm sorry that you know, your situation is that I'm sorry you're upset about your work situation. You happen to be an Egyptian slave that was born 2,500 years ago. And you need to be actually.

XYZ, right? There's no point in giving people feedback unless they can actually improve on it or act on it. So what we want feedback to be, let's run through what good feedback looks like. So first of all, it should be constructive or actionable. So it's not an attribute of yourself or personhood. It's like an action that you can take. The second thing that is ideal around feedback is that feedback should be sort of measurable or trackable in some way. So if I tell you that, you know, I want you to be better at XYZ, I should also let someone know, how are we going to measure that? When are we going to measure that? How are we going to track progress?

What does progress look like? This is where once again, if you tell someone you're not enough of a team player, well, what do I do tomorrow morning? How do I be more of a team player? There aren't particular actions I can take. How are we measuring it? And so what we'll see in works spaces is people will be like, oh, you're not enough of a team player.

You need to work on that. And so then the question is, okay, like, how do I work on that? How do you know that I'm working on it? How do I know that I'm working on it the right way? None of these questions actually get answered. Because we deliver this general vague feedback, okay? So we want feedback to be constructive, actionable, and measurable. The other really important thing about feedback is as best as possible,

we want to remove our emotions and ego from the equation. So if I get feedback that I'm not doing very well in sales or that some of my clients are complaining about, for example, my attention to detail or my tardiness and responding. So if we look at what happens during feedback, when I get that kind of feedback, I feel bad about myself, right? I feel kind of bad. I start to, it can almost be like a confirmation of the fears that I hold about myself.

So if I have imposter syndrome, for example, and I get some kind of negative feedback, what actually happens in my mind is I start to panic, right? Because I'm like, oh, my God, I knew I felt like an imposter. I knew I was an imposter. And now what do I do? Because like everything that I feared actually turned out to be true. all my worst fears are correct. I am an imposter. I don't belong here. And so what does that do in our mind? It sends our mind into a tailspin. We start to take it personally, right? And what do I mean by take it personally?

We start to form conclusions about ourselves based on the external feedback we receive. That becomes part of who I am. And once it becomes part of who I am, it becomes unchangeable because now it's part of my personality. Now it's part of my character sheet, right? It's not like a class skill. It's a stat and it's fixed. So this is what tends to happen when we get feedback. So let's run through actually how to appropriately receive feedback and to a certain degree almost even how to push back against it.

Okay? So we're going to take a quick look at this. So let's look at the general feedback situation. So sometimes what we're going to do is we're going to see, let's say we receive feedback. Okay. And if the feedback is poor, it's going to be personal in nature, i.e. not a team player. If we're, and furthermore, even if it's not personal, we can sort of make it personal. So even if it's constructive, this will trigger our emotions.

So emotions also trigger our humkar or ego. And what does that mean? So remember that our ego is the part of our mind that protects us from negative emotion. So what it does is it like, it starts to become egotistical. We start to compare ourselves to other people. It's essentially a protective mechanism. But once again, remember that, Once the ego activates, it becomes part of our identity. And the problem is that once it becomes a part of our identity, this becomes unfixable. Because it's who, okay? Because who you are is not something you can change very easily.

It's not an action you can take. So if we get this kind of feedback, what I'd love to do is actually give you all sort of an idea of, like, how to approach feedback that will give you some help in avoiding this whole cycle. Okay? because once this also becomes who I am, what that's going to do is even if we get constructive feedback, we're going to ignore the constructive feedback, and we're going to go straight to emotions. So, for example, if I lack confidence in myself at work,

and my boss tells me that I did a bad job for reasons, A, B, and C, instead of recognizing that those are things that I can fix and then do a good job, what I actually end up learning or the takeaway that I have is, oh, I'm so terrible at this job, I'm never going to be good. There's so many other people who are better than me. And then what I end up is, I end up setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure because I'm not even able to incorporate good feedback. Because my identity or my ego takes control of my mind. So what should you do if you get bad feedback?

Okay. So the first thing you should do is anticipate your emotions. So if you have a performance review coming up and you're afraid to talk to your boss, you're afraid, you're terrified to go in and get your feedback, right? Oh my God, what if they tell me I do a bad job? First of all, if you're terrified, that should tell you something about how you view feedback. So anticipate what your emotions are. So ask yourself, okay, what do I, you know, what do I think I'm going to feel? How will I feel?

I'll feel anxious. Why do I think I'm going to feel anxious? And then what we want to do is when you go into the feedback, you want to listen. So let's say you get the feedback. And let's say that you get personal feedback. So they say, you're not a team player. So this is where I would encourage you to push back a little bit. And then instead, so you don't have to push back in kind of a mean way.

But what you can sort of do is you can ask your employer. You can say, okay, help. me understand what that means. So ask an open-ended question. Then what you can do is ask, you know, what can I do to be more of a team player? You can ask something like, what do team players do non-team players, right? So what you want to do is take whatever the defining term is and translate it into actual actions. Okay? And then what we want to do is you can kind of say, okay, so I want to work on that. So you want to sort of signal to your boss that you're interested in changing. And then what you also want to do is sort of start the measurement conversation.

What is the measurement conversation? That's sort of asking, okay, so what are some examples? Like how do I know, let's say, a week from now, whether I'm making progress, right? So what does progress look like? Does that mean attending meetings? Does that mean asking other people if they need help or offering to help people? What does that look like? okay and you can even ask your boss explicitly how will we know or how do we measure progress just ask them

so instead of getting oh you're not a team player you need to be more of a team player you can okay so like what what does a team player do that a non-team player doesn't do what do you know what you could just ask questions like that and how are we going to measure what actual progress looks like okay now so this is kind of what to do but what we're also going to talk about in terms of feedback is what not to do or how to avoid doing the harmful things in feedback. So we're going to give you all kind of a couple of like cognitive exercises that you can go through to do to avoid kind of falling into the trap of like taking feedback personally. So the first question you can ask yourself is what would I tell a friend of mine if they received

this feedback? And you're going to notice that there's a big difference between what you tell yourself and what you tell a friend of yours. So a good example of this is you can think about breakups, right? So if someone breaks up with a friend of yours and they say, it's not you, it's me. What would you tell your friend? What do you think about them? And what do they tell themselves? What would you tell yourself?

There's going to be a big difference there. Okay? Next question that we need to ask is how did this feedback make me feel? Because oftentimes when we get feedback, we just think about the feedback. We think about changing it. We think about fixing it. We don't even think about the impact it had on us. And that's huge because ultimately the instrument that we are going to use to fix the situation is us.

So if we become compromised in some way, it'll sabotage our attempts to fix the feedback. And this is why people get stuck getting the same damn feedback over and over and over again. Right. People will tell you, you need to study harder. You need to apply yourself more. And once again, like, how do you do that? What is that? Who the fuck knows? The bigger problem, though, is you feel so bad after being.

told, oh, you would succeed if you just tried harder. The negative emotional impact to you tanks your motivation and makes it impossible for you to try harder. Because the whole point is your feelings decrease your motivation. And if your motivation is down, how are you supposed to try harder? So you have to understand how the feedback made you feel. Now, here's the next step. Okay, this is how we really start to fix it. And you can't really do this next step until you've done these others, which is what fears about myself become true. truer with this feedback. This is the biggest thing that most people miss about feedback, is that when we get feedback, we each carry around some fears, right? I may not be capable. I'm an

imposter. No one will ever love me. I don't have what it takes. And so when we get some feedback, we've got this fear. And the fear is sitting in the back of our mind. And it's waiting for evidence because you're terrified, right? So let's understand this from a neuroscientific perspective for a second. If I have a fear that is terrifying, what does the brain want to do? So we've evolved with our brains. If we're afraid of a snake, let's say we saw a snake an hour ago. What are we going to do to any stimulus in the environment around us that even remotely looks like a snake? It creates a cognitive filter that supports and reinforces the fear.

And that's a survival mechanism, right? So if I saw a snake in my house an hour ago and there's a piece of rope on the ground, or there's an extension cord, my mind is going to jump to the possibility that that is the snake, and I'm going to freak out. So once we hold a particular fear, we have this cognitive bias

that we will interpret information to support that fear. And this is why even constructive feedback, we can sort of make it personal and it sabotages us instead of being a roadmap to actually improve our lives. So you have to be aware

of what fears about myself does this feedback confirm. And literally like, write it out, right? It may sound scary to like put it on paper, but actually the whole reason that the fear grows so much is because we never face it. We never acknowledge it. It just lives in the back of our mind and continues to create cognitive filter after cognitive filter after cognitive filter. So it shapes our thought process without us ever realizing it because it's too scary to admit. So what you've got to do is ask yourself what fears about myself become truer

with this feedback. And now we're going to go to a evidence-based approach to sort of fixing this problem. Okay? So the next thing that we need to ask ourselves is what factors outside of my control led to the feedback and what factors in my control led to the feedback. Now, this is a really important step because if we look at it, what does our mind do automatically? It just looks at this. It completely ignores this part. So all we ever think about is what I did wrong. Oh my God, I'm such a terrible person. I'm not charismatic. That's why I'm not a team player. You know, I could, like, and what we actually end up doing is if we think about, let's say we made a mistake, half of the mistake is ours to control. Half of the mistake is outside

of our control, right? I know it sounds kind of weird, but how can you say that? Because no, no, no, it's all my fault. No, I mean, just think about that for a second. Any situation, especially at work, is not going to be 100% in your control. It's absolutely ridiculous. I suppose, the only situation that I can kind of think of is if you're, if you're the only person who works at your job, you're your own boss and you control all of the market forces as well. That's, I suppose, a situation. really think about it, anything at work, there's something, there's some work contribution, there's some non-work contribution. But the whole point is that our mind jumps to this. So we need to explicitly sort of think a little bit about what are the factors outside of our control.

And so then, because normally what happens is until we acknowledge this, we feel responsible for this whole thing. We try to fix all of this. And then what happens is this is frustrating because half of this is impossible for us to fix. But we are accepting responsibility for fixing it anyway. And so this leads to inefficiency and frustration, okay? Because we're not, we're trying to fix things that are outside of our control, which means that of the stuff that we can control, we're at best putting forth 50% effort. So once you go through this and you start to realize, okay, there's actually some stuff that is outside of our control. So then what I'm going to do is I'm going to focus 100% on this quadrant and actually on purpose,

draw a line over here and not worry about any of this stuff. And so this in turn will make us more efficient and less frustrated. So next thing that we're going to do, and we kind of talked about this a little bit already, is what actions can I take? And now we have to be a little bit careful here. So this is, you have to separate this out into two further questions. What actions do I wish I could take and what I capable of reasonably? So this is huge. Because oftentimes when we think about responding to feedback, we just jump to everything. We're like, oh, I just, and we create this wish list that's based on this like idealized version of ourselves. If I was the person I knew I could be, I would wake up at 6 a.m. every day. I'd network in the evenings. I did this. I did that. I do this.

No, no, no, take a step back. Take a deep breath. What actions can you actually take? What's reasonable? For someone who has accomplished what you've accomplished over the last month, what is reasonable to do this week, right? So we got to take a step back and not let our emotions turn our actions into a wish list. Because the more ashamed that we feel about ourselves, more grandiose actions are going to be. And thus, we doom ourselves to failure because we're setting ourselves up for tasks that we won't be able to accomplish. Okay. Next question you've got to ask yourself is how do I track improvement? So this is a really important question because when I talk to people who are upset about where they are in life, they'll say, I'm such a loser. And then I'll say,

okay, so you want to work on that? Great. How are you going to measure what percentage of progress you're making on being a loser. How do you even measure that? And so we set goals for ourselves that are completely unmeasurable and we don't want to be a loser anymore. I want to be a winner. Okay, cool. I get that you want that. That's a wish that you have, but how do you actually measure it? And then the next thing, and this is the last thing, which is oftentimes also very important, which people don't really acknowledge, especially when they're feeling ashamed about themselves and they're a humkars active, is what is my contingency plan when things don't work? Okay. And related to this, who can I ask for help when things don't work. Because a lot of times when we get feedback, we don't even

think about enrolling anyone else. We don't even acknowledge for a moment, I know it sounds kind of weird, but whose responsibility is it that you learn to do a good job at work? And so we all may say, oh, it's my responsibility. But the truth is that it's not just your responsibility, it's also your boss's responsibility, right? They're the ones that are responsible for you. And yet, we have this culture nowadays where bosses don't accept responsibility of like the work product of people beneath them. And so it's kind of foreign. Like it's actually they're partially their job. I contribute something and they contribute something. And when we receive feedback and we take it personally, the thought of asking for help never even crosses our mind. So let's say I set a target for myself one week from now,

then and there, before I even get to that week, I should develop a contingency plan. Okay, who am I going to ask for help? Do I need to go see a therapist because I'm depressed? Do I need to get evaluated for a vitamin B deficiency? Do I need to spend some time with my friends, spend some time with family? Am I going to sign up for a course? Am I going to learn how to meditate? Am I going to start exercising? Can I ask coworkers for help? Can I ask my boss for help? And start to set your contingency plan in place. And so I know it sounds kind of weird, but what we actually want to do is like not take feedback personally. And if you're given personal feedback, even reject it. Because personal feedback is not actionable, is not measurable. Is wholly within theoretically your control? Even though there's

nothing you can really do about it, right? If someone tells you, yeah, you're just not a good fit or you're not a team player. Like, what do you do about that? There's nothing you can do about it. And so as we sort of wallow in the shame of receiving personal feedback, as we accept that personal feedback without approaching it critically, it worsens our sense of identity about ourselves, creates more of a cognitive filter, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Because we're not actually making changes. We're just terrified that, oh, my God, like, I'm going to screw up, I'm going to screw up, I'm going to screw up. And then sort of creates this like reinforcing cycle. So oddly enough, what I encourage you all to do is reject feedback

that is personal in nature because you can't do anything about that. And you don't have to reject it in a harsh way, right? Screw you. I don't accept that. But you can start to ask questions. Okay, what can I do about this? What actions would you recommend that I take? How are we going to measure progress? And even to start thinking a little bit about what amount of this feedback is outside of my control, what amount of this feedback is in my control? What actions can I take? And as you start focusing on an action oriented approach, and there's research that shows that this is effective, it actually changes your attitude, attitude and mindset in the work-related space. Instead of wallowing and shame and frustration because you're such a loser, you start to actually make progress, right? And then you start to feel a little

bit better about yourselves, because actually your thoughts are focused on doing better. And then once you set up a measurement scheme for yourself and you actually start to hit those targets, that's going to actually boost self-esteem. And then you'll realize something that I know is really bizarre, but once we remove ego from the equation, feedback is one of the best things that we can get. Because feedback is the way for us to get better at life, get better at our job. And who doesn't want to be better? We all want to be better. Feedback actually moves us to one step closer to perfection towards the ideal version of yourself. People are literally telling you what you're doing wrong so that you can fix it. And once you fix it, your life will be better. You will be better. Your performance will be better.

But why do we, why are we so damn afraid of feedback? Because of the ego. So as long as ego is a part of it, it completely shifts the direction and impact of feedback. And as we stop taking it personally, as we stop accepting personal feedback and we start focusing on actions, just about everything will start to get better.