Increasing Your Emotional Intelligence: Solicit Feedback
What if I told you that I had a gift for you? Not some cookie cutter gift store gift, but one that I picked out just for you. One that I really put some thought into. Would you be excited to find out what it is? Would you trust that my intentions are positive? What if I told you that my gift for you was the gift of feedback?
Still excited or feeling a bit let down? If it’s the former…good for you. Viewing feedback as a gift is good for the soul. It’s also great for your emotional intelligence! If you are not so sure about this, let’s take a moment to examine what feedback really is:
Some types of feedback are not very helpful at all.
Image courtesy of Fifth Pillar’s Feedback IQ Program.
Let’s face it, some people suck at giving feedback. They may be so bad at it that they lead others to equate feedback with criticism and try to hide from it for the rest of their lives. They might only tell you when you’ve done something wrong, or maybe they offer you ‘fluffy’ feedback with no real direction on how to improve. If you have received ‘feedback’ like this in the past, please don’t give up. Feedback can be a beautiful thing.
Those of us lucky enough to have experienced working or playing in a culture of feedback can attest to the fact that it is amazing. For nearly a decade, I exchanged positive and constructive feedback with my peers and/or managers every single day and you know what…I got really good at my job!
When the people analytics team at Google studied the qualities of their highest performing teams, they found that psychological safety was at the top of the list. One factor they used to determine the level of psychological safety in a team was whether or not its members felt comfortable asking for or offering constructive feedback. This leads us to step 3 on the quest to increase our emotional intelligence:
Step 3: Solicit Feedback
There are 3 competencies nested under the Self Awareness quadrant of Goleman’s model of EI. They are emotional self-awareness, self-confidence, and accurate self-assessment. Soliciting feedback is a great way to ensure that you have an accurate understanding of the way that your actions impact other people. Here are a few tips on how to effectively ask for and interpret feedback from others:
Create group norms - Every time a new team comes together they have a choice to make. Do they just sit back and let their culture emerge or do they explicitly communicate how they would like to work together? Creating group norms or operating agreements is an effective and efficient way to foster psychological safety in a team. There is nothing complicated about this. Simply come together with your team and ask the question, ‘How would we like to work together?’ If they need some examples to get the conversation started, you can find plenty of them here. What a great opportunity to suggest openness to giving and receiving feedback as a part of your group culture!
Extend the invitation - If you are truly open to receiving feedback, then try saying it out loud. Specifically, invite people to share feedback related to the specific area in which you are trying to improve. For example: “Hey ______, I’m really trying to work on being concise when presenting information. Can you please watch for that in our next meeting and let me know if you have any observations or suggestions?” Not only will this help you get more relevant and useful feedback, it will also build trust and connection with the person receiving this invitation.
Treat it like a gift - Receiving feedback is like being gifted with a new sweater. You unwrap the box and open it. You may not be sure whether or not it’s really a good fit for you, but you politely say thanks and assume they meant well. Later on, you decide to try on the sweater and see what it feels like. Maybe it actually does look pretty good on you. Maybe you end up donating it to Goodwill. At least someone was thoughtful enough to give you a gift in the first place. Treat feedback just like this and everything will be better.
It may or may not be about you - A mentor of mine gave me a piece of advice that helps me find value in every piece of feedback I will ever receive. She said, “It may or may not be about the receiver, but it is always about the giver. If you listen for it, they are telling you exactly how to be successful with them.” So, if the feedback you receive doesn’t resonate with you in relation to your own behavior try examining what the feedback tells you about the giver. Through this lens, every nugget of feedback you receive will be useful.
This concludes our exploration of the first 3 steps you can take to improve your self-awareness, which serves as the foundation for all the other competencies that contribute to one’s emotional intelligence. In our next article, we’ll begin to look at skills related to self-management including positive outlook, adaptability, emotional balance, and initiative.
By the way, I’m working on taking complex topics like EI and breaking them down into simple actionable steps that anyone can implement. If you have any feedback for me, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Dan Miller is the founder of Fifth Pillar Consulting and believes that developing our emotional intelligence is a good idea.