I used to be really bad at taking feedback. Some might call it perfectionism, but this was so much more specific than that. I feared hearing that I had let someone down, that someone felt I didn’t do a good job for them or that they were disappointed in what they received. Even now, addressing this, I get this tightness in my chest at just the thought of someone saying that to me.
I realized I was spending a lot of time trying to live a life and do work where I’d never have to hear feedback. Only that’s impossible. You will inevitably get feedback as a coach and as a business owner. You can’t make everyone happy, which means you’re going to get feedback at some point in your financial coaching career.
So I had to learn how to make taking feedback easier. I’ll share the mindset shifts that helped me and the actual process we use for receiving, reviewing, and analyzing feedback so you can implement repeatable steps that will serve you really well.
Three Essential Mindset Shifts for Receiving Feedback
Mindset 1: You Get to Choose What You Think of the Feedback You Receive
This is the foundational mindset I want you to adopt. You get to choose what you think of the feedback you receive.
Feedback is not fact or truth necessarily. It’s just an opinion, an observation, or a thought. It might be perfectly accurate and reasonable. It might be a good idea, but simply not feasible. It might be the first and only time you’ve received that particular feedback. It might be a terrible idea. You get to decide.
Another choice I’ve made: I will not let negative feedback be louder than positive feedback. Which feedback I give my thoughts and energy to is entirely up to me. It is my choice.
I do get a lot of positive reviews and feedback and I appreciate it so much. There was a period of time before I figured out how to be skilled at taking feedback that I almost didn’t even give a thought to the positive ones because one negative comment could spiral me out of control. Now I appreciate and feel my positive reviews so much more deeply because I’m able to stay more grounded when I get the negative ones.
What you make of feedback that you receive is entirely up to you.
Mindset 2: You Will Get Feedback, So Get Good at It
You will get feedback. I guarantee it.
Once I accepted this, my mind shifted from trying to prevent the inevitable to asking: how can I make sure I’m ready for it? Operationally, but also emotionally.
I immediately shifted into thinking, okay, so this is something I better learn how to get good at then because it’s going to happen. I imagined having force fields like on the Star Trek Enterprise. How can I create these emotional and operational shields so that I’m able to accept and analyze feedback in a healthy way, personally and professionally?
Because receiving feedback and taking it emotionally without being able to hear it properly is not healthy for me or for the business.
Mindset 3: Receiving Feedback Is a Good Thing
You are receiving feedback and that is a good thing.
That means someone took the time to share their thoughts with you. That means someone cared enough to at least think that you can improve based on their feedback. Receiving feedback as a business is a good thing. You want feedback if you are a business owner.
So those are the three mindsets to remind yourself about when it comes to feedback: You can decide what you make of it. You are going to get it, so you might as well get good at it. And someone cared enough to give you feedback, which is a positive sign.
You’re going to get feedback, but you can be ready for it so that it isn’t as painful and doesn’t sting as much. You will get feedback and it will be okay. You will be okay.
Building Operational and Emotional Shields: Your Feedback System
Let’s talk through the operational and emotional shields I’ve created to equip myself and my businesses to receive and analyze feedback effectively.
How can your process for receiving feedback be built to support you? Here’s our incoming feedback process at my companies.
Step 1: Automate Feedback Collection
First, automate feedback as much as possible. Create an exit survey for your program or offer. Then have the results automatically go to a special folder in your inbox or into Excel or Google Sheets using something like Zapier.
Do not have it come right to your inbox so that you receive it suddenly and unexpectedly without a clear process in place. That is dangerous. If you get constructive or mean feedback and you aren’t emotionally prepared, it can derail an entire day or week.
Step 2: Schedule Your Feedback Review Time
Add a recurring appointment for a set day and time each month that you will review any feedback you received. You could also do this weekly if you want.
At that time, give yourself a pep talk first. It might sound something like: “I might read some things that don’t feel good to read, but I’m going to remember, I get to determine what I think of the feedback.”
I recite things just like that to myself, using the mindset reframes I shared earlier. I also listen to an empowering song and take a few deep breaths. I remind myself that it’s going to be okay no matter what.
After I feel calm and ready, that is when I read the feedback.
Step 3: Read All Feedback First, Then Re-read the Positive
My recommendation is that you read all submissions all the way through first. If you received more than one piece of feedback, read all of them before getting too focused on one of them.
Then re-read any positive feedback you received first. Really take the time to imagine that a person took the time to share that thought with you. Allow yourself to feel proud and good about yourself and the work that you do. Imagine that you just strengthened your relationship with the person who submitted that positive feedback.
Then move on to the critical feedback you’ve received and read it again. This is when you analyze the feedback.
How to Analyze Feedback From a Business Perspective
By analyzing feedback, you boost your ability to not simply react to it, but truly consider it from a business perspective. Here are strategies and policies we’ve adopted.
Filter 1: Is this the first time we’ve received this feedback?
My policy at both of my businesses is that I do not make a change based on one person’s feedback.
When you pride yourself on doing a really good job, it can be really hard when someone points out a typo or something random that you didn’t catch and you think it will only take a minute to change it and make it right.
Have you ever worked as a server? The number of trips you take between the kitchen and the tables determines your efficiency. You grab all the things you need in one trip because you want to minimize trips back and forth. This is the same idea.
In your financial coaching business, changes are your trips to and from the kitchen. The time it takes to make changes and keep trying to make things perfect costs you business, time, and money.
First, you have to get the feedback more than once. Note it, and that’s analysis filter number one.
Filter 2: Is something wrong, or is this a personal preference?
Ask yourself: is something wrong and we need to make it right, or is this a personal preference or nice-to-have, but not a necessity?
This helps prevent over-tweaking and over-optimizing. There are a lot of things that might be nice to add or offer, but those are very different from something that is clearly a mistake.
We have an ideas list at my company. We don’t have a shortage of ideas; we have a shortage of time to do them all. Something that is nice to have, but not currently broken, goes on the ideas list and gets prioritized along with everything else. Something that is broken and needs fixed gets a more responsive approach.
Filter 3: Is there merit to this feedback?
This feels like a softer question for me personally than “Is this feedback true?” It feels more nuanced than the black and white option of is this feedback right or wrong.
Just asking myself, is there any merit to this, is easier because I can find some piece of it that has merit, even if it stings to read the full feedback.
What to Do With Feedback After Analysis
When you put feedback through this decision filter and analyze it, several things can happen.
Sometimes you love the feedback and accept it and go about making the change. Most often the feedback we get is delivered so kindly and in a way that really shows they’re just wanting us to succeed too. Some feedback is actually really lovely to receive.
But not always. Some feedback is simply just wrong. By wrong, I mean that at some point we actually considered exactly what this person is asking for and we chose not to do it. So we simply disagree and that is okay.
You could disagree for any number of reasons. Sometimes it’s a mismatch of values. Sometimes it’s something you don’t think would really help or provide enough value to warrant adding it. Maybe it’s something that has a lot of maintenance involved with it and would require more maintenance than the value it would deliver to clients or users.
Feedback always needs to be weighed against many factors, resources, and the other priorities you have on your plate.
And sometimes you totally agree with the feedback, but you simply decide that you don’t have the capacity at that time or to address it in the way that you would really like to address it. So you add it to your project calendar and get to it when you can.
The customer isn’t always right. I’m not saying that makes their feedback invalid or bad. It’s just not right for the offer or the business or what you’re trying to accomplish.
Building a Sustainable Approach to Feedback
You really want to take feedback in and receive it in an automated way, but also analyze it in a very grounded professional fashion.
Once you think about feedback this way and you put systems in place to automate your analysis of the feedback, you will experience faster growth and a more enjoyable ride in entrepreneurship. That is what I want for you.
Cheers to you and your success with all of the feedback along the way that you may receive.
