How to Digest Non-Constructive Feedback
Generally speaking, industries with slim profit margins tend to have more results focused leaders. On the other hand, high margin businesses tend to have people focused leaders. The generalization arises because if margins are slim, leaders may need to be more time ensuring profitability, thereby potentially less time on people and feedback. I saw this arise anecdotally when I was working in ecommerce, a low margin business. The feedback I received from leadership was often not-constructive. For example, if sales were down in a given month, feedback would roughly translate to "This month was terrible. Fix it." This situation and others where the feedback provided was not constructive can be viewed as disadvantageous, but if non-constructive feedback is digested appropriately, the feedback recipient can elevate her or his communication and problem solving capabilities.
For avoidance of doubt, constructive feedback has clear and tangible improvement points, whereas non-constructive feedback is not directly usable for making improved changes. The individual who provides the non-constructive feedback will be called "provider". If we receive constructive feedback, we will not need to invest a large effort into processing it. However, since non-constructive feedback is not yet usable, we will need to process it, which boils down to having initiative to track down our own feedback. To process non-constructive feedback, we need to assess the circumstances of the situation, clarify feedback with the provider, and then return feedback to the provider.
Assess Feedback
When non-constructive feedback arrives, we need to first look to assess it by taking the initiative towards understanding it. We may not get to a full understanding, but at the bare minimum, we need to understand the direction of the feedback, the overarching context, and how they are related.
Directionally, non-constructive feedback is associated with negative feedback, but positive feedback can also be non-constructive. Statements such as "Great job" are non-constructive, because it does not inform the listener what specifically went well, what specifically should be continued. Therefore, whether the feedback we received was negative or positive, if it also was non-constructive, we need to clarify it. After we have determined the direction of the feedback, we can further assess how the feedback fits in relation to the situation.
In some cases non-constructive feedback will have appropriate context for us to understand an overarching element was good or bad. In extreme cases, non-constructive feedback will be even more vague, leaving it to us, the feedback recipient, to try to uncover what the feedback was about. It may seem inefficient, but thinking through what the feedback is linked to will help us take a hypothesis driven approach, which will improve our problem solving capabilities.
After we have hypotheses for the context and direction, we then look to hypothesize why the feedback was given in the first place and what steps can be made moving forward. For example, at a high level, what type of change is needed? process? strategy? people? In my ecommerce example above, the direction of the non-constructive feedback is negative and the context is low sales. Knowing these two pieces, we can take additional initiative to striving to understand why sales were low and what steps can be made to fix it.
Clarify Feedback
After assessing the situation and direction of the non-constructive feedback, we can begin to think through clarifying the feedback. To do so, we need to understand the potential factors that could cause an individual to give non-constructive feedback. Then, we can leverage this information to continue the conversation to clarify the non-constructive feedback in the appropriate manner. As we will find out, in some circumstances, it will be as easy as asking for more constructive feedback, whereas in others, we will need to put in more work and thinking before asking for additional feedback.
Individuals may knowingly or unknowingly choose to provide non-constructive feedback. We will review three common overarching cases and then discuss what are the 'tells' for the case (i.e., how can we tell our feedback provider falls into this category). Note that it is possible for a feedback provider to fall into multiple or all cases.
In one case, the feedback provider expects us to figure out the solution on our own or with limited feedback from them. They may have done this consciously, even when they are fully aware of the next best steps, in order to for us to go through the problem solving process and learn first hand. This would be a case where the feedback provider is providing limited training and forcing a higher leap to increase our independence. Alternatively, the feedback provider may not know the answer and are placing the onus on us to solve the problem.
'Tells': Feedback provider mentioned challenging/testing/growing our problem solving capabilities or directly said that we should make another attempt first
In another case, the feedback provider may not have enough time, or not care enough, to give constructive feedback. Typically, this cases arises from managers that have other higher priority projects or care more about delivering results than developing people. Taking the positive side, the feedback provider does not want to give specific feedback that is not helpful, so places the responsibility on us, the feedback recipient, to ask targeted questions to obtain the feedback that we need.
'Tells': Feedback provider mentioned juggling their other tasks; our project makes a smaller impact on the feedback provider's goals than other projects (requires us to understand manager's other priorities)
Manager unfamiliar with how to give constructive feedback, need to
Once we have determined where our feedback provider is coming from, we can shape the conversation and our efforts such that we work towards getting the feedback that we need. In the first case, we need to make more progress, potentially involving outlining an approach, then come back with updates and request more feedback. In the second case, we will need to aggregate our thoughts from the situation, initial feedback, which we can use to generate targeted questions in order to get the feedback we need. In the final case, we will need to hand hold the feedback provider through a longer conversation, where we can ask broad as well as targeted questions in order to get feedback that is more constructive.
In my ecommerce example, the executives expected me to figure out the solution alone, so I perceived the non-constructive feedback as an additional opportunity for me to develop my problem solving capabilities.
Return Feedback
In all cases, positive or negative feedback direction, aware or unaware feedback provider, we need to take the initative to return feedback to the initial provider. In many organizations today, these meetings are called "Retros", short for retrospective meetings, where team members give each other feedback on what went well or poorly, including what feedback methods are helpful or not helpful. We should openly and explicitly tell feedback provider, what feedback was helpful or where additional/less detail was needed, while also trying to understand their perspective in giving the feedback.
In my ecommerce example, being fully honest, I was not able to execute this last step and do regret not having the initiative to drive change in the way feedback is provided.
Closing Remarks
Feedback's purpose is to accelerate our growth by letting us know what we should start, stop, and continue doing. Non-constructive feedback can make this difficult, but if we are able to properly process it, we can even grow from non-constructive feedback. After going through a cycle of assessing, clarifying, and returning feedback, we should have built a level of understanding for this non-constructive feedback and ultimately grown as stronger communicators and problem solvers. To continue our growth, we need to have the initiative to go through this process every time non-constructive feedback arises.
