Soft skills can have a major impact on your overall journey in Canada, not just at the workplace. If you aren’t aware of what soft skills are and how they can affect you, then this is for you. Before we begin with our major topic, let us look at what soft skills are. Soft skills are the abilities or attributes that define how you can work around someone or with someone. One of the major soft skills that everyone must be equipped with is communication. How you communicate with someone says a lot about your personality. There are many communication skills that one should be equipped with; one of them is managing feedback.
What is Feedback?
Feedback is something that one can either give to someone or receive based on their or others’s shortcomings. Feedback has turned out to be an essential communication skill that everyone should stay equipped with if working with a team. The reason for that is, if you don’t communicate properly, an issue will never be resolved and will always create a conflict. Let’s look deep into how this soft skill can be mastered and used at times when required the most.
Giving Feedback is Not as Easy as we Think
Most of the time, we think we just have to communicate what needs to be done or what the shortcomings are when it comes to giving feedback, but it is not that simple. There are many aspects that need to be considered when giving feedback, like what the other person’s emotional state is, if they are actually responsible for it, and what they were thinking when things went wrong. In the end, we are all humans with brains. No one would do something wrong intentionally. But, on the other hand, there can’t always be a positive side; there are possibilities that someone just did it wrong because they didn’t give it a thought, or maybe they were just lazy. When giving feedback, it is important that we make sure we are not just telling the person what they are doing wrong, but we have to make sure we are helping them improve and not harming their dignity at all. To overcome these challenges, there is a 7-step method that can be used to give feedback efficiently and professionally. Let’s look at some of them.
Step 1: We must start with Acknowledging their Positives. By doing this, we can make sure that the other person is open to negativity as well without getting defensive at times.
Step 2: This is the part where we need to be Careful with our Words. We need to Communicate with them on what wasn’t done and what Repercussions we can face because of their Action. We need to make sure that we are as specific as we can be and that we are not making vague statements. We need to make sure; we are telling them how this will benefit them in the long run.
Step 3: This might sound confusing, but on this step when you have communicated your expectations and their benefits, we need to Take Feedback on our Feedback. This is a way to understand if the other person has taken your feedback in a productive way and not in an offensive way.
Step 4: After making sure that the receiver understands the expectations and is ready to look after them, we need to Come Up with a Solution on how it can be done. You can either give a solution or ask for one. This will make them feel engaged and involved. But before giving a solution, it is always beneficial to ask them for one.
Step 5: When everything is done, the last and most important step is to Take a Follow Up, we can always talk about things, but what matters is if action is being taken on it. So, a follow-up is a must to check for progress and give motivation if there are visible improvements.
Giving feedback can be challenging at times, but one thing we all need to focus on is the solution and growth of the receiver. But we are not always going to be the ones giving feedback but receiving one too. Let’s put our foot in the shoes of a receiver and see how we can be a good receiver when we are being given feedback.
Receiving Feedback is Not as Hard as we Think
Receiving feedback can make you feel scared, uneasy, or fearful that something got wrong. Apart from this, you might act defensive or uninterested in it. But one thing to always keep in mind is that it is for your own benefit and growth. Sometimes, it can create conflicts too when you are not at fault for real, but there is also a way to get over it. Before we begin, be aware that a reaction to feedback that you are receiving is normal, but taking feedback confidently is equally important. Let us look at some challenges that one needs to overcome while taking feedback.
Feedback Traps: There are some traps that you fall into while taking feedback, which are taking things personally, getting defensive, ignoring feedback, or letting your ego come in between. But we need to understand that by letting all these factors affect you, you are simply stopping yourself from growing. Additionally, we must recognise that work-related feedback belongs to the workplace, not to you. Work-related feedback should stay at work and never be taken personally.
Avoiding these Traps: When we are aware of these traps, it is easy to avoid them. Let’s look at how that can be done. The best way to avoid it is to become a good listener. When you listen to the feedback giver attentively, you understand that what they are saying is somewhat true. It gets easy to look back on what you did and connect it with the feedback you are given. There is another technique that you can practice, which is deep breathing. This will calm you down if you are getting aggressive and will maintain the rhythm of the process. The reason why someone needs to avoid these traps is the learning that they might skip in the process, which we will discuss now.
Learning from the Feedback: If you are acknowledging feedback, it means you are already learning from it, so that is the first step towards learning. Putting it in action is the biggest learning, and in itself is a flex. Learn from it and grow with it. This will not only help you in your professional life but also in your personal life, as we are all surrounded by feedback, from friends, from family, and from your partner. As we said earlier, no one is perfect, and we all make mistakes. What is important is that we are putting our ego aside and learning from it.
To learn more about it and get details on how every action can be achieved, visit Workright’s website at: https://workright.ca/fromafar/ or to the course, “Surviving and Thriving in Canada”: https://training.workright.ca/learn/public/learning_plan/view/72/surviving-and-thriving-in-canada