How to Survive Feedback as a Young Professional

It’s the end of the year. Maybe you’re like me and the only thing standing between you and your holiday bonus is your year-end review. Or maybe you have a whole quarter to wait for your fiscal year to end. Either way, it’s time to start thinking about that performance evaluation. This advice works for anyone, but being in the earliest part of your career, it is especially important to learn how to survive feedback as a young professional. And as a woman.

Making it through the review process involves more than sitting there and having your boss talk at you. It requires you to take initiative to get as much information as possible and then reacting in the most productive manner possible. You have to know how to get the information you need to keep meeting expectations in your job function as well as to impress your boss, or how to not get on her bad side.

What To Do When the Feedback Isn’t Great.

I’m starting with this, not because it’s the most important, but because you should take it in, learn from it, and move on. Negative feedback can be difficult to take but easy to dwell on. If someone gives me ten touch-points of feedback and only one of them is negative, it’s in my nature to forget everything but the one bad thing five minutes after the conversation is over. So when the feedback is negative, follow four steps.

1. Ask for specifics. If your boss is telling you that your writing wasn’t up to par this year. You should be asking questions like, “For which deliverables?” “What expectations did I not meet?” “Was it all of my work on this project or certain aspects?” It does no one any good for you to change the way you do everything when it’s only one thing in one or two areas.
2. Ask what needs to be done to improve. This is your chance to figure out exactly what it would take to turn their opinion of you around. Although you can always set your own additional benchmarks, it is their judgment you’ll be facing again this time next year.
3. Formulate a plan of action. Once you know what areas you need to work on and what the expectations are, form a plan. Do you need to add a step to your checklist to ask the leader of every project what their expectations are, or to do a second review of any writing for grammar and clarity? Maybe you need a refresher course on data analysis or presentation skills. Don’t let time start passing because chances are you’re already in the middle of a project they’ll be looking at closely.
4. Take ten minutes to be upset and then move on. Whether you were expecting some negative feedback or you were completely blindsided, it’s going to sting a bit. We all deserve a few minutes to wallow, but it’s detrimental to productivity overall. So take in the feedback, feel it, and forget it. Except for the plan you have to fix it, of course.

Don’t get defensive in that moment. Although it’s natural to want to explain why things happened, the majority of the time your boss will have already taken into consideration any extenuating circumstances and weighed them against your performance.

It is also important to be aware that women are judged more harshly, by men and other women, for any shortcomings in their work. If your boss can’t give specific examples then that is a red flag. Challenge their perception of your work politely, but firmly. This puts the responsibility back on them to at least further consider what they were seeing so that they can give you the feedback you need and it might make them reconsider whether or not they were holding you to a higher standard without making those expectations clear. If you disagree, particularly if they couldn’t give specific examples, wait 24-48 hours to re-address it. Millennials are considered snowflakes and women are thought of as sensitive, so taking the time will not only give you time to reflect but will show that you gave the feedback real consideration.

What To Do When You Get Glowing Feedback.

This is the good stuff, so take it in. Luxuriate in it, because this is what is going to fuel you throughout the next year. Don’t deflect the praise. And don’t make any statements that diminish your part in the good work done. Before you walk out of that meeting, make sure you know how to do it again.

The first things you have to learn is whether it was, “exceeded expectations on this project” good or “surpassed expectations on almost every benchmark” great. You should be asking questions like, “Were there any areas in particular that I excelled in?” “Where would you like to see me improve in the next year with this skillset?” and “What were things that I impressed you specifically?” This is a good way to learn about good things you’ve been doing that you may not have ever thought about before.

Once you have your answers, it’s time to figure out what you can reasonably do on a consistent basis. Sometimes you’re going to get a lot of praise for a particular deliverable and biggest difference between that one and all the rest is time. Unfortunately, that’s not something you can control very well. So what you have to ask yourself is if there were any specific tasks that benefitted from your having more time to devote to the project. Isolate those tasks and determine if there are efficiencies you can build into your process so that some of them can still be done, and done well, even when you aren’t lucky enough to have extra time.

When you’ve just been doing really well at almost everything, that’s when you standardize those things you’ve been doing subconsciously. It might be something you like double-checking a memo for clarity to make sure someone who wasn’t a part of the process can understand or linking all related documents in an agenda for a presentation. These are easy extra mile things that can easily get left off if you’re in a hurry. So go ahead and add them to your checklist. Don’t forget to include things that you learned from your boss’s feedback that you hadn’t considered before.

What To Do When You Get Basically Nothing.

Women are more likely to be given vague feedback than men so it becomes doubly important to dig in. This can even sound somewhat positive but doesn’t leave you with any clue what it means. Ask for specifics, good or bad. If your work was off in some way you need to know what in order to not repeat the mistake again. If you did something well, don’t become overwhelmed with being pleased in that moment. This is the time to learn why it was good so it can become part of your personal standard.

You’re going to have to put your leading question skills to the test. Ask what you should be focusing on and if any deliverables stood out in any way. Were there any skill areas where you displayed a particular strength or weakness? Once you have those answers use the tips for how to get the most out of your feedback for if it isn’t great, or if it’s glowing.

Happy bonus shopping investing, and may the odds be in your favor.