Find the Gold in Toxic Feedback

Managers need feedback, even if it’s biased, rude, off the mark, or irrelevant—and much of it is. The trick is learning to extract and decode the meaningful stuff and turn it into something usable. Through our work with hundreds of executives, we have uncovered a number of “alchemists”: rare individuals who are adept at transforming the base minerals of low-quality feedback into pure gold. Their behavior follows a few patterns that other managers can learn from. (See the exhibit “The Philosopher’s Stone.”) The Philosopher’s Stone Alchemists, who are skilled at turning toxic feedback into useful information, consistently react differently from most managers. Whether it’s personally offensive, unclear, incomplete, pointless, exaggerated, or nonactionable—and whether it comes from superiors or subordinates—low-quality feedback can be toxic if it’s taken to heart. It can be powerfully demotivating, damaging to managers’ confidence, and paralyzing. It can prompt managers to waste time on the wrong issues by, for example, addressing weaknesses that are unimportant in their current roles. Feedback almost seems to hypnotize some people. They become obsessed with it. Other managers deal with low-quality feedback by ignoring it or becoming defensive. Ignoring it can lead them to dismiss all negative opinions about themselves; ultimately, they become cut off from what people around them really think and feel. Defensiveness can be even more dangerous because it angers and alienates those who would give feedback and reinforces their negative views. Alchemists are able to avoid those traps and learn from even the most noxious or apparently useless comments. Their method has an emotional component that enables them to be aware of and manage their visceral reactions and a cognitive component that allows them to extract the useful information intelligently. They neither become obsessed with the feedback nor ignore it. The result is that they distinguish the message from the medium and focus on the information they need for the problems they face. They are able to look beyond the literal meaning and find valuable second- and third-order data about people’s perceptions, assumptions, and attitudes. They are able to focus on their strengths and place negative messages in the context of the positive feedback they have received in the past. One such alchemist—we’ll call him Tom—is the customer service director of a large U.S.-based electronics firm. A subordinate repeatedly complained about Tom’s apparent blindness to another direct report’s poor performance, eventually telling him that “some people” considered his inaction to be a sign that he didn’t “have the guts to confront tough situations.” The feedback, Tom says, “was an insult to my leadership.” Tom, in fact, was working behind the scenes to coach the underperformer, who required special handling because of his connections to the board. “Despite all that,” Tom notes, “the feedback really helped me.” He says it taught him to examine more carefully the potentially negative effects of actions he didn’t take. Although he was upset by the accusations, Tom mastered his feelings and didn’t react defensively. The feedback contained important information about other people’s perceptions of his actions. He extracted the usable message and was able to change his behavior.

Find the Gold in Toxic Feedback

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