I get a lot of critical feedback from my boss and I don't always know what to do with it or how to improve. Sometimes I don't even agree with the feedback. What should I do when I don't think the feedback is correct?

I like to look at feedback as a gift and approach it with an open mind. How I would approach this is:

1. Do some soul searching :) understanding your own communication style. How do you communicate? How do you like to be communicated to? What things help you stay open minded? What things make you shut down? What are your values?

2. Once you have that. Setup a meeting with your manager and thank them for being open to giving you feedback but that you are having a bit of trouble understanding how to apply. In this meeting, share with them what you learned about yourself around communication. THEN you want to ask them how they too, would like to receive feedback.

3. Now that you have built your foundation of trust. Pick a specific bit of feedback you were given and ask to do a deep dive. Remember to be open minded. Sometimes when we receive feedback, we over personalize when that was not the intent. Understand what is trying to be communicated and then work together to understand how it could have been better communicated.

4. At the end of the meeting, share how you are feeling about the session. Ask your manager to do the same.

5. At the end of every 1:1 with your manager, ask them for feedback. In the moment, offer feedback on how it is being delivered if you feel it is not matching what was previously discussed.

This is a fascinating one to investigate! The first thing I can say is that I understand your plight since I've been there before (probably on both sides) and I know it's not an enjoyable or enriching place to be.

In spite of this, receiving feedback from team members, cross-functional partners, and leaders is inevitable. When you change your perception of feedback and how you use it, it can become your superpower. If someone has positive intentions, they are giving you a gift by giving you feedback. Distinguishing intent is the tricky part.

There is a misunderstanding around feedback that I often encounter when I speak with people. There seems to be a widespread perception that a growth mindset requires you to accept all feedback and act on it without question. In reality, just as in human relationships, there is often much more complexity. Sometimes feedback is just the symptom you need to diagnose the real problem, and it might not even be related to the symptom at all.

Within an organization, people have a limited perspective. Our view of the world is colored by the tasks we are responsible for, the people we collaborate with, the subsets of company strategy we encounter, and many other factors. Feedback disconnects most often occur because of misunderstandings related to different perspectives or experiences within an organization. As an example, your manager might tell you that you aren't detail-oriented enough when in reality your project was much earlier in its progression and at this stage, you wouldn't expect to have all of the answers. As this example illustrates, there is a disconnect between a manager's expectations and how work is actually being undertaken by the team.

This kind of feedback does not necessarily indicate that someone is doing something wrong, but it does indicate a misalignment somewhere. Either a misalignment of values and working styles, processes, information, altitude visibility, or something else. What feedback that you don't agree with can give you is the opportunity to dig deeper.

Get curious, and take a step back (this may require stepping away from the issue for a few days). Then, when you're ready, have a conversation with your manager and ask them the following:

• What makes them believe what they believe? (You should ask for examples and data points.)
• Can they give you an example of how they think things should be done? (Find out what they would have done differently.)
• Don't hesitate to ask for clarification if something they say doesn't make sense to you.

It's uncomfortable, but a decent leader will lean in and help you close the understanding gap. It's important to keep a positive mindset here, being genuinely curious to understand will go a long way. As you ask questions, provide context as well. Talk to your leader if you have tried a suggestion and it didn't work out because of something your leader isn't aware of. Get their help and leverage their experience. Their job is to help you set priorities, remove roadblocks, and help you perform at your best. Be brave and ask for what you need/want.

Not all of these scenarios end well. Sometimes it's a sign that you and your manager do not share the same philosophy on getting work done. You won't be the first or last to experience this. This is a great way to evaluate the fit between yourself, your team, your organization, and your reporting structure.

This is a challenging one, as people's problems could be mentally draining and less exciting to deal with. 

Tactically, I'd advise speaking with your HR business partner and seeking their advice by sharing specific examples. 

Longer term, I'd suggest practicing radical candor with your manager. This process takes time & energy as you need to build trust. If you haven't yet, I suggest reading Radical Candor by Kim Scott.

Feedback, as they say, is a gift. Research bears this out, suggesting that it’s a key driver of performance and leadership effectiveness. Negative feedback in particular can be valuable because it allows us to monitor our performance and alerts us to important changes we need to make. But processing and acting on negative feedback is not always easy. It can make us defensive, angry, and self-conscious, which subsequently impairs our effectiveness.

1. Dont rush to react

2. Get more data

3. Dont be a lonely martyr

As you are receiving critical feedback from your manager, ask them to follow the STAR format. Situation, Task, Action and Result. Make the manager accountable on what they want you to accomplish from this task. You can definitely provide proposals using the STAR format based on what you think. But ask the manager to align on those actions, and what you will chase and try to improve on. Ask them to share what they think you can do. Align with them on all the proposals and then start working towards it.

Re: to the feedback which you don't agree on, you can try to nicely ask them to clarify and share your thought process. If the manager still pushes on it, try to think from their perspective. If none of the ways work, then either you are too stubborn to see through things or your manager is incompetent that they can convince you on their feedback.

When you receive critical feedback that you don't fully agree with or don't know how to act on, it can be challenging and discouraging. For feedback to be effective, I find it needs to be timely and based on examples. It can be helpful to have a conversation with your boss about working styles and preferences around giving and receiving feedback.

You might suggest:

• Timely feedback: Requesting that feedback be given closer to the event (e.g., after a meeting or presentation) so you can act on it more effectively.

• Concrete examples: Asking for specific examples of where you could improve, especially when themes or patterns emerge in the feedback. This helps ensure the feedback is actionable.

• Written feedback plan: Suggesting a written development plan to ensure both of you are clear on what needs to be addressed and how you’ll work on it.

• Requesting positive & improvement feedback: Important in feedback is to have a kind and respectful relationship. Often it is good to call out to your manager how positive feedback helps you do your job better and this can also help provide a more balanced view.

This can help you and your boss understand each other’s communication style better and make the feedback process more productive. It also gives you a chance to reflect on whether the feedback is valid or if you need to discuss your perspective more clearly. If you still don’t agree with the feedback you can push back with examples of why you see things differently.

The book Radical Candor has some great tips on this topic.

This is a hard situation. My recommendation would be to do two things:

1. to spend time deeply understanding and reflecting on the feedback. Identify what pieces feel resonant and what pieces feel like you don't want to action on.

2. to ask for feedback from others - peers or leaders who you've worked with - and understand if there are patterns in the feedback from your manager. Sometimes we have blindspots and its helpful to get other perspectives to understand if you have those.

To provide an example: I had a situation where a manager provided feedback to me to stop asking so many questions in meetings. I asked why and she shared that sometimes it was disruptive. I reflected on the feedback and it felt misaligned to me - one reason that I'm a good product manager is that I'm deeply curious and want to understand why. I like that I ask questions! However, I also heard that maybe in a meeting setting this could be disruptive so I asked other meeting participants to see if they found my approach disruptive. I heard from others that there were cases where I derailed the discussion because I was so excited to learn more. That's not cool! Ever since then, I've been more conscious about when to ask questions and when to allow a meeting to progress to an outcome. I probably still don't find the perfect balance always but it has increased my awareness.

However, if you're not hearing the same pattern from others. It may be the case that the feedback you're getting from your manager is misaligned with the way that you want to do work. This may indicate that its worth discussing this with your manager and identifying a path forward. Bring examples of people who you talked to to get other perspectives. If you can't build alignment with your manager, it might be time to find your next job.

First of all, you have to truly believe that feedback is a gift and that there is always room for improvement. That doesn't mean that it's always easy to hear and digest upon first receiving critical feedback.

Here are the steps I suggest you take:

1. Listen openly. It may be hard not to have an immediate defensive reaction, but try to deeply understand the problem.

2. Be curious. Ask questions about examples and try to learn more.

3. Understand the impact. Don't focus on the advice of the feedback, ask and understand more about the impact of your actions/inactions.

   1. For example, your manager might give you feedback like, "You need to be more open to other people's ideas." This is advice. Ask questions to understand where this is coming from and the impact. Perhaps it was because at a meeting, an Engineer had suggested an alternative solution approach to your proposal and you immediately responded with all the reasons why it wouldn't work because you already had thought of that. The impact of that might be a teammate who doesn't feel safe to challenge or bring different approaches throughout the development cycle and the impact might be tech debt, longer development times, or a worse user experience for your customers.

4. Ask for some time to digest if you need it. If you're unable to process feedback in the moment, possibly in person or over Zoom, ask for some time to process and return back to the conversation at a later time. It's always better to have a constructive conversation than one where emotions are high.