Often, it’s not the feedback we are fearful of, it’s the emotions that we experience before, during and after feedback conversations we are trying to avoid. We are apprehensive about feedback conversations because we are afraid of how the feedback might make us (or the other person) feel.

When people fear feedback conversations, it’s often because they believe the feedback has the power to ‘make them feel something’. 

Some common examples are:

In feedback conversations I don’t want to feel:

• Uncomfortable

• Embarrassed

• Awkward

• Fearful

• Overwhelmed

• Like a failure

• Useless

• Ashamed

• Worried

• Stupid

• Not good enough

• Anxious

• Guilty

• Humiliated

Many people try to control the emotions they feel in feedback conversations. If people have limiting beliefs about feedback, they can experience anxiety and dread in the lead up to a feedback conversation (even when they don’t know what the conversation is about!). You may have experienced these feelings, then sweet relief when the other person reassures you at the start of the conversation, ‘I just wanted to pass on some great feedback from the CEO about your work’. 

I was delivering a Feedback Fitness workshop and one participant said she would never tell anyone if she was great at receiving feedback. Curious, I asked what she meant. ‘If I say I’m great at receiving feedback and open to it, people will give me lots of direct feedback, and I’m worried how that will make me feel’.

It wasn’t the feedback she was worried about; it was how the feedback will make her feel. Her language gave a clue that she believes feedback can make her feel something she does not want to feel.