February 18, 2025
by Stephen T. Messenger
A few weeks ago, we received anonymous survey data from participants of an event. I’m no stranger to these questionnaires where we ask for feedback about the good, the bad, and the ugly. The Army loves to use them, rightly so, to encourage candor from people to provide unfiltered feedback without names attached. It’s a great resource to improve an event and get better at our craft.
The majority of the comments are professional, productive, and helpful. But every so often, we’ll see one with a personal attack. In this case, one participant provided a negative comment about something I said. I won’t bore you with the details, but it was a little painful to read. Not because it was horrible or wrong or inappropriate, but the perception of this person, and hence their reality, was that I failed them.
It was like a flaming Molotov Cocktail flying through my computer into my brain. Weeks later, I’m still thinking about that comment. At the same time, I couldn’t tell you any of the positive responses to the survey, but only the negative one lives in my head.
When this happens, we have to receive that feedback openly, process it internally, make adjustments, and move on.
Living Rent Free
Negativity bias is the psychological science of processing negative life events with more intensity than positive ones. In other words, we’ll dwell on improvement feedback more than we’ll focus on the positive things people say to us.
It’s science. Neuro processing studies show that negative stimuli produce a larger brain response than positive ones. The cerebral cortex processes the bad with more intensity than the good.
As an example, it may be a great day but on the drive home from work and through no fault of our own, we’re on the receiving end of a long honk and middle finger. Walking through the door, our significant other asks how our day was. “Terrible!” we reply, fixated on the crazy driver even though the rest of the day was very pleasant.
These “bad things” love to live in our brain rent free. Our minds are fixated on the negative and stay in our memories. They even have the ability to influence our decisions. I remember as a kid someone told me I don’t look good in yellow. While this was a random comment from a snapshot in time from a kid at school, I still think about this years later whenever I’m about to put on yellow. It makes no sense! I now only own one yellow T-shirt tucked way down in the bottom of my drawer never to see the light…
So that performance review at work where we skimmed through the positive comments to fixate on the constructive criticisms—it’s not that we’re crazy, it’s our brain.
The Response
Since we’re not going to suddenly flip from focusing on the positive instead of the negative, what we can do is use it to our advantage. We do this by welcoming the feedback, processing it, adjusting if needed, and move to the next event.
1. Receive the Feedback. The first step is to lean into it. Feedback is a gift and every chance we get to expand our Johari Window is good. When others are trying to help us improve be it an anonymous or known source, we should accept their help. If we know the person, a simple, “Thank you for that,” goes a long way. There’s no need to debate or get defensive. Acceptance is the key.
2. Process it Internally. The second step is to understand if the feedback is relevant. When I provide feedback, I usually say, “Just because I’m giving you this feedback doesn’t mean I’m right. It’s up to you to internally process this and see if you can use it going forward.” It’s also helpful to run it by trusted agents to see if they agree, and if the comments are relevant enough to require change.
3. Make Adjustments. If we determine the feedback will be helpful, it’s time to make changes to prevent it from happening again. Sometimes this is simple and obvious and sometimes it’s more complex and challenging. If clarification is needed and we know the source, ask. If not, run some ideas to improve by those trusted agents. One thing I’ve found is that there’s no shortage of people wanting to help others get better.
4. Move on! Finally, don’t dwell on it—I know, easy to say and hard to do. If we deem the feedback was stray voltage, put it behind us. If it was helpful, make the changes and we’re good to go. If it was questionable, keep the thoughts in the back of our minds. But no matter how we use it, we have to get past the negativity bias and focus on the future.
The Feedback We Needed
Feedback is a gift, and unfortunately one that is occasionally lit on fire with gasoline and thrown at others. Couple that with the way our brains process negativity, we have a Molotov Feedback Cocktail living rent free in our heads.
A better way to leverage feedback is to focus on the behavior and not the person. Whether we’re on the giving or receiving end, feedback is about bettering behavior and increasing performance. It has nothing to do with personal attacks or belittling another. When we receive feedback that is overly personal, the best thing to do is come at it unemotionally.
As that flaming feedback arcs towards us, don’t panic. Receive it with professionalism, process it internally, make adjustments if needed, and move on.
After all, if we don’t hear these things, we’re never going to get better.
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