How do you give and receive feedback?

It seems so easy: when you see someone doing something you like, you give them a compliment; when you see someone doing something that makes you unhappy, you say something about it. Yet in practice, giving and receiving feedback is difficult. Giving feedback on the content of the work is generally possible, but calling someone to account for their behaviour is much more difficult. And giving and receiving compliments is even more difficult. And how do you find the right tone? It can be exciting or scary to show your feelings. Yet we know that feedback helps us to work together better, to learn from each other and not to let irritations grow into fights. And a compliment makes (almost) everyone happy, especially if you learn how to receive it.

How do you deal with feedback?

Do you recognise yourself in one of these examples?

“‘You do that so well and so quickly,’ I said to a colleague at the wringer in our laundry. Her basket of sheets is quickly empty with the slightest crease. She looked at me in surprise. That is quite normal, I have been doing this for so long’. That is typical of the way we work. Everyone is busy with their own laundry baskets, we have little contact except during breaks. Yet I noticed that it touched her. She was clearly not used to getting compliments. A while later, she offered to teach me a few tricks. We now have much more contact during work and I am learning fast.”

“We recently took a feedback course with our team of doctors’ assistants. The reason was that some irritations had arisen, partly because we did not dare to speak to each other. During the course we learned how to listen to each other better and how to give feedback in a respectful way. This also includes compliments. Because we found this quite difficult, we agreed to give someone a compliment once a day for a few weeks. Last week, I received my first compliment from a colleague on the way I had helped a patient. My first reaction was: ‘that’s normal’, until I remembered the course. So I let the compliment come in and thanked her. It felt good. In the course of the week I started to like receiving compliments more and more, especially when they are well meant!”

“‘How do you manage to be so stupid every time?’ He had been annoying me for a long time. Because he forgets to pass on messages from customers, I get the blame, because angry customers come to me. I knew, of course, that this way does not work, so when I had cooled down, I asked him to sit down together for a while. I first apologised for my outburst, then I told him as precisely as possible what was bothering me about his behaviour and what the effect was on me. He recognised this and asked me to help him do better next time. Since then, we work much better together and there are fewer angry customers.”

Do you know how to deal with feedback?

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