Getting the Feedback You Need

AMY GALLO: You’re listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I’m Amy Gallo. Receiving actionable, useful feedback is typically essential to professional growth and advancement. If you aren’t getting examples of your greatness in action or suggestions for how to be even better, the conventional wisdom is that you won’t have the information you need to keep improving and moving up. Jasmine LeFlore is sort of the exception. She’s a rocket scientist who just stepped into a new role after her latest promotion. She went from principal project engineer to senior principal engineer. Jasmine, by the way, averages like one promotion every two years, yet she hasn’t received high quality feedback in most of her roles.

JASMINE LEFLORE: I like feedback, so, I feel like I don’t get enough of it. And when I do get it, it’s based around collaboration or maybe just being organized, but not necessarily the leadership that I’m showcasing.

AMY GALLO: Neither has she been able to draw out much feedback from her virtual assistant or the apprentices at the nonprofit she runs. Yes, on top of her day job as a rocket scientist, she also leads an organization, it’s called Greater Than Tech, and she goes into schools and teaches girls about engineering and entrepreneurship. You may actually remember Jasmine, she appeared in a previous episode of The Essentials, the one on delegating effectively. When we were recording it, she slipped in a question, not quite on the topic of delegation.

JASMINE LEFLORE: With my nonprofit, I want to create that culture of feedback. So, do you have any suggestions on how I could further engage my team to feel comfortable with speaking up and providing feedback to me?

AMY GALLO: A question I promised to cover in a later episode, this episode, where she’d have a chance to ask it again and all her other questions about receiving feedback. Dr. Ella Bell is here to answer them. She’s a professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth who specializes in interpersonal communication and organizational behavior. Ella’s been on the show before, not once, but twice. First in our 2018 episode, We Deserve Better Than Atta Girl.

1. ELLA BELL: The old atta girl. “Oh, you’re so great.” Yeah, I’m so great, but can you be specific on what I’m doing that’s good? Give me, again, I always want to ask for examples. When did I do it so I can do more of it. I need to be aware of what it is so I can do more of it.

AMY GALLO: And now she’s back to help Jasmine, and you too, find validation and direction. Ella, Jasmine, it’s always nice to have friends of Women at Work return to talk about topics they’re excited about. So, thank you.

1. ELLA BELL: Very excited to be here.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Thank you for having me.

AMY GALLO: All right. So, Jasmine, I want to start with you because you’re an interesting case. Your success at work challenges the idea that we actually need feedback. You’ve gotten, I think it’s four promotions in six or seven years, but you’re still wanting feedback. So, what do you think you’re missing out on?

JASMINE LEFLORE: I mean, honestly, I feel like feedback is really a gift, and that’s how you grow and learn. And truthfully speaking, in one of the roles that I applied for, I went through the interview process and I received feedback that was negative and it was a high level role, and the feedback was that I wasn’t closing out projects. So, I felt really embarrassed because I never heard that feedback before. So, one end, it’s like, what do you need feedback for? But when I got feedback, it was negative and at a very high level, and I was pretty embarrassed, and I wish I knew that was the opinion of me from leaders.

AMY GALLO: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So, it’s wanting to know how you’re doing and then also not be taken by surprise when there is something that you could be doing better.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Exactly. Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: I’m just curious, Jasmine, do you know if your colleagues received any feedback? Do you do a performance review annually, or?

JASMINE LEFLORE: You’re asking me this at an interesting time, because I did just finish a performance, we call them performance connections. It’s more about employees evaluating their selves and then their leader providing their context or their feedback as well. So, I would say it hasn’t been done consistently, but I did just do one recently for the last role I was in. So, I felt like the performance connection was relatively procedural just because I’ve already moved on to the new role by the time we were doing that performance connection. So, I had to evaluate myself. Part of the evaluation is list the projects you’ve done or the impacts of the projects as well as your strengths and developmental aspects. So, apparently when I had that performance connection with my former boss, he made me realize that I only put developmental, I didn’t put any of my strengths. And he reached out and said, “Hey, I just want you to know that most people, they do the opposite. They list out all of their strengths and not their developmental, and you only said developmental.” And he gave me some things that he felt like were my strengths. He mentioned collaborating. “You were able to work amongst these two different departments and make us more aligned. You have customer focus.” So, he named some strengths that I didn’t really recognize, and I thought about that a little bit more, and it made me think, did I not see that as strengths in my career? Because those aren’t actual attributes I’ve really heard from my organization that I’m good at. I just mentioned that the feedback I got was I don’t close projects. So, my mindset is like, oh, let me just tell you all the things I’m bad at. What are things I need to develop on? Because I’ve heard that I need to develop, but I actually haven’t heard from the organization, Hey, Jasmine, you know what you’re really good at? This and that and this. And it made me think, am I validated by the feedback I hear, or did I personally not think that I had these strengths, regardless of if it was said to me or not. So, I know that’s a long way to tell a story about the culture of feedback. I’m sure my peers, they all have gone through that performance connection. And like my former boss mentioned some people talk about their strengths. So, I definitely believe that there are these conversations happening. But for me, I was very surprised that my old boss said, “Hey, you didn’t list your strengths.” And I’m like, oh.

1. ELLA BELL: That’s not unusual. In performance reviews, we don’t start with our good. We start with, this is what you need to work on. In our society, let’s bring in, I’ve got to bring it in the intersection of race and gender. For women, we’re beat up on all the time in ways that we’re not good enough. And we’ve heard that message a very long time and we internalize it. But another thing I’m curious about, when I asked you in terms of your colleagues, did they get performance reviews? You didn’t give me a response to that, which makes me wonder what kind of conversations are you having with your peers and your colleagues and your network? It’s important to have those so that you know what they’re receiving. I’m going to share a real quick story with you, another friend of this podcast is Maureen Scully. She’s a dear, dear friend of mine. And once upon a time, we were at the same business school together. We put in our annual review reports. Here’s all the research you’ve done, here’s your proposed research and what you’re going to accomplish. And we really worked hard on it. We did it together. Maureen got feedback. I never got any feedback. Never got any feedback. She told me, “Oh yeah, well, the Associate Dean came in and gave me feedback and what I needed to work on.” And I was like, well, I didn’t get a call, I didn’t get a meeting, I didn’t get anything. New term. I’m not even sure my contract is renewed. I’m in the parking lot coming to work, and I happen to see the Associate Dean who gives the report back. And I said to him, “I never met with you.” “Well, when I was walking around the hall to get feedback to meet with you, Maureen was in her office. You weren’t in your office.” I said, “Really?” That told me a whole lot. And of course, the feedback he gave me standing up in the parking lot – which is totally wrong, totally biased in every kind of way… that let me know something. So, it’s important to know what’s going on in the informal community, and we find that out by having peers and colleagues and allies that tell us this, that let us know. Did you get any feedback? I’d be real curious to know what other people received, particularly in your posse.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah. I feel like I heard a lot of different layers in that story. Like I said, the organization does performance connection. So, I would trust that my colleagues were also doing their performance connection with my former leader, but I was not having that dialogue with them. Yeah, Dr. Bell, I would guess that your colleague maybe was not a person of color.

1. ELLA BELL: Nice Irish girl. Maureen is Irish.

JASMINE LEFLORE: So, hearing that she got feedback and it sounded like it was well received and you not getting any, made me think what their relationship was in terms of comfortability of sharing feedback. So, I can relate that to my own story where I don’t know if I have not been getting feedback consistently. I mean, for me to be seven years in the organization, and sure, I have gotten promotions from time to time, and the first feedback that I really got that really said something about how I’m seen in an organization was that I’m not closing projects. And then the next one was, you can collaborate, you’re customer focused. Why have I not known about my viewpoint in the organization for all this time? It seems like I wasn’t getting feedback consistently. And I can definitely say there is a level of ownership I can take on that. I do like to get feedback, but when we talk about the culture of getting feedback in an organization, I don’t feel like it is very normalized to do it unless there is a structured, we have to do this annual review, we have to do this performance connection. And that hasn’t been consistently done, at least in my career.

1. ELLA BELL: The other thing is you’re putting it all on you, which is what we do. It’s my fault, I didn’t, I, I – it’s not about you. It’s more about the culture. It’s more about you being in this culture as a young African American woman. What we often do as women of color, we put our heads down and we just have to perform and perform and perform, and I’ve got to be the best that I can be. Our spirits are just so focused that we forget to check in with others to find out what their experience is. And Maureen is Irish. I said to her, I never got any feedback. And she was like, what? There was a lot that I learned from Maureen in this environment.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

AMY GALLO: But I’m curious, Jasmine, are there folks part of, as Ella calls them, your posse that you could try to level set a little bit and understand what’s going on in your company?

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah, I’ve been a part of a few African American high potential groups where we have done talent development type of initiatives. So, I feel like that’s a good space for me to get that feedback. One of my colleagues – she’s also an engineer – she’s been in the organization a little bit longer than me, but I almost feel like she hasn’t got even the same amount of feedback that I’ve gotten. So, I feel like I’m talking about the minimal that I’ve received, and she’s been there a few years more than me and when we talk about, when we compare notes about our experiences with our bosses and leaders, I feel like her experience is even worse.

AMY GALLO: So, Ella, let me ask you then. If you are in a culture where you’re not getting feedback, perhaps because of who you are, your identity, perhaps because it’s a culture that isn’t good about giving feedback, I heard you clearly, this isn’t Jasmine’s fault, this is not her responsibility, but what can she do in this environment? How can she get what she’s craving?

1. ELLA BELL: There’s something in terms of, this is what I want for my career. And to be able to sit down with your boss, with the seniors and have that conversation with, this is where I’d like to be in three years. And you can initiate that.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: Look, I want to be a team player. I want to be a contributor. I want to make sure that I’m making all of us look good. So, with that said, in three years, I’d like to be in this position. What do I need to do to get in that position, number one? And number two, how can you help me and support me? Now, I think one of the things that you can do is to give me feedback. So, I’d like to sit down with you every six months. That might be too soon, but annually to sit down and see, am I reaching my goal?

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: Do you think this goal is realistic? And can you support me in this goal?

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: And if you can’t support me in this goal, tell me. I’m a grownup. I can handle that and say, “Well, what do I have to do?” You can initiate that. The answers you get are critically important in terms of, yes, I can support you, because once you say you can support me, I’m going to hold you accountable to that.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: Okay.

AMY GALLO: Ella, I’m going to interrupt for just one moment please. Cause I want to hear, please, I want to hear Jasmine’s reaction, what Ella just described. Is that doable to you or do you have any hesitations or concerns?

JASMINE LEFLORE: It’s doable. I am proactive. I’ve had conversations similarly, but to the point about culture of feedback, it is very much based on initiative and being proactive to actually feel confident enough to talk to senior leaders and say, Hey, I want you to know who I am. I want to be here, and I’m looking for your support to get there. That takes a lot of courage.

AMY GALLO: It does. And I love what Ella said about, you say, “this is where I want to go, and the best way you can support me – one of the ways is to give me feedback, right?” But to make that explicit I think is so, so helpful. But I’m curious, Jasmine, if you’ve had those types of conversations and you’re still not getting the frequency or the type of feedback you need, why do you think that is?

JASMINE LEFLORE: I think because the culture isn’t normalized where feedback is just given proactively. And one thing I do want to ask or I guess touch on as we talk about culture of feedback. With me being a co-founder of a nonprofit, I know for a fact I don’t want to have the same type of dynamics of feedback in an organization I’m building. So, how could I make sure that me as a leader in a different space, in the nonprofit space, that people I work with and report to me, feel comfortable and confident to ask me for feedback? And for me to build that culture where I’m giving people feedback and it’s well received?

1. ELLA BELL: You tell your people as the leader, that feedback is important and it’s a two-way street. That you want to hear feedback in terms of what you’re doing, how you’re doing. Do they feel affirmed, appreciated? Most importantly, do they feel valued? All right. So, you want to be able to create that two-way street. You want to be able to schedule, we’re going to have time where we process, where do you want to grow in this organization, in this not-for-profit? Where do you see yourself? How can we help the not-for-profit grow? What’s your contribution to that? So, you want to do that on an annual basis to keep that conversation going. And to start off with the good. Building from what you’re doing well, rather than this is what you need to do better, which is what we too often do.

AMY GALLO: Well, and I think contrasting can be helpful too. And Ella, correct me if you think this isn’t a helpful tactic, but by saying, “I’ve worked in a culture where feedback wasn’t given freely, where I really had to dig for it and I still didn’t get it, and that’s not what I want here.” And just to draw that contrast I think can make it really clear why you’re doing it and that you’re serious about doing it in your nonprofit.

1. ELLA BELL: Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you a hundred percent. I want to go back to the company a minute. It’s one thing to let people know where you want to be. It’s another thing to say to people, “okay, what’s the plan for getting there?”

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: That has to be a second part of the question. And I tell you, any amount of times the men will ask even before they’re ready for the next step, research shows us over and over again that men, okay, I want to be over here. Are they prepared? Heck no. I’ll learn when I get on the job. So, by you just saying, this is what I want to do, and I want them to know what I want to do, I’m not hearing that there’s a plan to get you there.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: So, I want to know, okay, how do we do this? And I don’t mean to be too aggressive, and don’t apologize for being you, but soften it up so they don’t think, oh, here’s this aggressive Black woman coming after us. Because people will think that, all right, we know that from the research too. But you know, what’s the plan for getting me there?

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: This way we’re clearing, how are you going to help me?

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: I just think that all goes together.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah, I was going to say, it sounds like focus on where you want to go and the feedback or the advice will flow based on being directional or intentional about where you want to go, versus what can you tell me today?

1. ELLA BELL: Ah, what’s that word?

JASMINE LEFLORE: Intentional.

1. ELLA BELL: Intentional. Yeah.

AMY GALLO: This portion of our conversation reminds me of a piece of research done by a group of Harvard Business School professors about why asking for advice – I think Jasmine, you just used that word – is better than asking for feedback because it’s future focused rather than evaluative. And I think that is so helpful. I forget, I think especially when we’re thinking about this episode about receiving feedback, really in a way, what we’re talking about is receiving advice, forgetting where you want to go.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah. I was just going to say, I haven’t really said where I want to go with my career, and that’s not intentional. However, I started a new role recently, so I feel like I’m just filling it out. A lot of times. I think engineers, we shoot for that VP of engineering role. That’s where I want to go. And I remember this leader asked me, do you want to be the next this guy, this guy, or this guy? And all of those roles were, one was a CEO, one was a tech leader VP, and one was a CEO of another company, but an entrepreneur. So, it felt like, when I really think about my career in this space, I can look at the senior org chart, especially of technical people, and it feels farfetched because I don’t see anyone that looks like me there.

1. ELLA BELL: Girl, if we all sat around waiting to see someone in our positions as Black women, oh my lord. I look at my background, we didn’t have any PhDs in my family, and I certainly didn’t see myself at any of the schools that I’ve been at.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: MIT, Yale, are you kidding me? I was always the first one. Tuck I was the first one. The reality of it is, guess what? I belong. I think we have to have an attitude of, I belong. It might not have been anybody before me, but I belong. No, I don’t see anybody like me. Let me show you how it’s done.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah, I received that. I think just the comparison of these six foot tall white men who are leaders-

1. ELLA BELL: But there are exceptions to that. And you can be the exception, but you’ve got to believe it. You’ve got to see yourself there before anybody can see yourself there. You have got to see yourself there.

AMY GALLO: And maybe the response to that question of, do you want to be this guy, this guy, or this guy is, I want to do this thing that this guy did, this thing this guy did, and I want to do this thing that this guy did in my own way, and this is what else I’m going to bring because I’m different than them. Right?

1. ELLA BELL: Yep.

AMY GALLO: But I want to pick up on something you said.

1. ELLA BELL: That’s great. Yeah.

AMY GALLO: Thank you. Yeah. I want to pick up something you said, Ella, about knowing what your good is. How do you bridge the gap between knowing what your good is, you internally knowing it, but then also needing or wanting that validation from others if you’re not getting it? And how do you discern between the Yeah, yeah, you’re good, atta girl versus No, this is your unique skill that’s a real strength for you. How do you get from one place to the other?

1. ELLA BELL: I’m going to use the word that I used earlier, your posse, and my posse tells me that I’m good. And I think as Black women and as white women, as women, period. I don’t care what race you are, ethnicity you are, you’ve got to have a group around you that believes in you, and you put that group together. Jasmine, you talked about the woman at your company, the other sister that has gotten less than what you’ve gotten, the two of you could lift each other up. What do you see in her that you can tell her to lift her spirits up and to let her know that she’s making a difference? We’ve got to do that for each other, first and foremost, all ways as women.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: Can’t wait for the men. We’ve got to make it happen for ourselves, with ourselves.

AMY GALLO: So, what then is the real role of feedback coming from our managers or leaders?

1. ELLA BELL: Who you asking?

AMY GALLO: I’m asking you. So, if our posse is the one who can show us, you know what we’re good at – they rise us up, they help us through these organizations. This episode is all about getting feedback. Why do we still need feedback from our managers or leaders?

1. ELLA BELL: Because that shapes our careers. My posse doesn’t have any influence. They’re not in the company. They don’t have any influence. They keep me going. One is to keep you going.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: All right. It’s that emotional link that gives you the courage to go in and have the conversation on the organizational side, in the organizational side if I don’t have the lifting up, then I don’t necessarily have the courage or the wherewithal, the faith to walk in that door and have the conversation about, this is where I want to be and I want to do it this way. This is what I bring to the table. Okay? And I’m not a six foot one white male. No. I bring something else to the table that you haven’t seen before. Ha. You get that from your posse.

AMY GALLO: Right.

1. ELLA BELL: Yep. Yeah, we need both.

AMY GALLO: I’m curious: you know how important, especially if you’re a company, Jasmine’s might be a little hit or miss about the performance review or the performance connection. How important, when she’s receiving feedback, particularly in her day job, is it that it’s written down and stored somewhere for reference? Because a lot of what we’re talking about is verbal, right? These conversations. But how important is it that you get it in writing? And if you don’t get it in writing, do you document it yourself? How do you take care of that?

1. ELLA BELL: I think you document it yourself, whether you get it in writing, when you get back to your office or when you get home, sit down, what did you hear? How did you hear it?

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: Points of agreement in terms of this is where I want to be. What’s the strategy? What I like to do is take notes and then write the notes up and send it to the person. Here’s what I heard. Do you agree? Okay. Don’t expect them to write it up.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: You write it up. “Did I hear this right?” Because it gives you your work plan that we are agreeing on and put in that we will meet X amount of times, or I’m going to go to this workshop or whatever it is that you’ve agreed on, put that in writing and send it to your manager and say, “Did I hear this right, and are we in agreement?” That’s it.

AMY GALLO: The one other question I wanted to ask before, and I want to see Jasmine, if you have any other questions too, but one thing I wanted to get Ella’s perspective on is the common advice about receiving feedback is ask for it. And of course, with all the caveats and strategies we’ve laid out today, but then also if you want to continue to receive it, to follow up on it. And I’m curious what your thoughts are about, how do you actually respond to the feedback and show your manager or your board member that you heard it and you’re either doing it or not doing it?

JASMINE LEFLORE: I was just thinking that, and I mean, you can answer that question, but the way I was going to frame it – I feel like this conversation in general is more around the realm of advocacy, like advocating for yourself, advocating for your career. Let’s say I’m very proactive in spearheading these conversations, and I’m meeting with my leader monthly or my board member monthly, and I always have that list of the things we talked about last time – what we agreed on and just saying, “Here, this what I’m doing, this what I’m doing.” Does that seem like it’s too much? Is it too much of a like, oh gosh, she’s always-

1. ELLA BELL: In my face.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say. That’s what I’m trying to say.

AMY GALLO: That’s right. And that’s a risk of you become the person who’s like, oh my God, Jasmine-

JASMINE LEFLORE: Got to meet with her again.

AMY GALLO: Talk about her career. Right? Ella, what do you think?

1. ELLA BELL: First of all, send emails when you’ve accomplished something. Just an update. Just send a quick update. Performance evaluations are done about once a year. Some organizations, that might be every six months. That’s when you get to do your deep dive. You can do it once a year. You can knock on doors once a year and say, okay, I’ve got to follow up. When you check the box, always let people know you checked the box.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: Okay. “By the way, we talked about this. Done. This is how it turned out. Just wanted to let you know. Done.” You can even drop by the office. “Just wanted to let you know. Done. Bye.” Okay? You can do that. Send a text, send an email. “Just wanted to let you know we talked about this. It’s on the way. It’s in the works. It’s done. This is how it turned out.” Why is that important for you? You have a record the next time you sit down and you talk to the individual, your boss. This is what I’ve done. They might not remember it, but you’ve got your notes there. That’s important that you have the ownership of that, and it’s all right to check in, but you don’t need to be in there, Oh, can we meet every… and that makes you look needy.

AMY GALLO: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: That makes you look needy. All right. And it’s all about you.

AMY GALLO: Yeah. Well, that’s what I love about the way you structured that advice earlier, that conversation, that it’s proactive and it’s collaborative. Here’s what I want to contribute here. Not here’s what I need, here’s what I need, here’s what I need. But I want to ask the question again about receiving feedback and how you respond, because we haven’t quite covered that. So, when someone says, let’s say Jasmine does all of this and says, “What would really help me is to give feedback,” and they say, “okay, here, here’s a piece of feedback.” What’s Jasmine’s goal in that moment in terms of how she responds to that to make sure she continues to get the feedback she’s been wanting?

1. ELLA BELL: That’s a good question.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: “First of all, thank you. Let me think about it for a second. Let me process it. I’m glad that we’re able to talk about this.” “That fits,” or “I hadn’t thought about that before. I missed that. Wow, you caught it.”

AMY GALLO: Oh, those are so helpful.

1. ELLA BELL: “I thought I was doing that. I’m glad you saw it too.” And also, “If you don’t agree, that wasn’t my intention. It’s interesting that you saw it that way. That was not my intention.” You don’t have to drink the feedback like it’s Kool-Aid, yum, yum, yum. Okay? I’m just going to internalize it all.

AMY GALLO: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: You get to think about it. You get to process it, and you can say that. “I need to process that. Need to think a little bit. Do you mind if I come back and talk to you about that?” Those are all good, I think good responses.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah. Yeah. So, the way I started this story of getting feedback that I was embarrassed about, about me not closing projects, and I did feel like it was unfair just because I have been put on different projects and at times, not given the resources to actually fully close out the project properly. But in that particular moment, I did say thank you, but I did not go back and say, “Hey, this is what I’m doing about it.” And just to give a little bit more context, this was not feedback that I knew where the feedback came from directly. So, I also didn’t ask who said that. So, do you think in that particular moment, that should have been a question and should I have followed up and said, Hey, I thought about it more. I did talk to my direct boss at the time and my direct leaders on like, Hey, this is what I heard from another leader. Have you seen this? Do you agree? And they were like, oh, no, I didn’t say that, or I don’t think that, but just it was shocking feedback for me. But I didn’t go back and ask specifics and say, “Hey, this is what I’m doing.”

1. ELLA BELL: And I don’t think specifics, he said, she said, that’s a waste of time, I think.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Okay.

1. ELLA BELL: Sometimes you will know who said it because they’ll say it directly to you. All right? Or the person reporting will say, “well, Bob had this experience, so you don’t have time to play,” and you do find out who… what are you going to do? Nothing. That can be confrontational, to be honest with you.

JASMINE LEFLORE: I mean, I guess examples help me understand.

1. ELLA BELL: Right. And you always want examples, but I think it’s all right to go back if you did know to the person and say, “I heard you had this perception. Well, I needed to tell you, this is why this might be happening.” I think the way you cover yourself is future head. Now, you might find out who that person is one day, all right? And you want to go in and make sure you have a good working relationship with him or her. I think that’s important. But the reality of it is, is that the next time you are in that position is to be able to say, “I’m being pulled.” You need to communicate that. “I’m being pulled to another project. This is what’s left undone.”

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: I think that’s more important than finding out who said that at this point, and playing who said what? You can ask, “I’d be interested in knowing who said that, here’s my reason why this has been happening, and I’d be interested in why this person didn’t share it with me.” You are entitled to say that.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: “Why am I hearing this now?”

AMY GALLO: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: I think you are entitled to say that. What I prefer to do in my own way is, okay, how do I make sure that doesn’t happen again? Yeah. But it’s important to know.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: I like to go the way of relationship building. If you ever do find out who said that, and I think the person should have said that to you, to be honest with you, if you ever do find out, I would want to make sure that you spend some time with that person just to get to know him a little bit better. “Hi, how are you? This is what I’m doing here and I thought maybe we have a chance of getting to know each other,” so that person feels that they can come to you directly.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

AMY GALLO: I think knowing the context in which that feedback was given is helpful. I sometimes ask, “Well, what do you think led to that perception?”

JASMINE LEFLORE: Oh.

AMY GALLO: Because feedback is a perception. It’s not the truth. And so, I think it’s helpful to say, “What do you think led to that perception?”

1. ELLA BELL: I like that.

AMY GALLO: And that allows them to say, “Because you’ve done this,” or also, “Well, I heard it from so-and-so. And I think they perceive that because they’re so focused on closing projects all the time. They close them too early.” Who knows? Right.

1. ELLA BELL: Yeah. I like that. I like that a lot.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah, I like that. That’s real good.

1. ELLA BELL: That’s very good.

AMY GALLO: Jasmine, do you want to ask Ella about, you had a question about one of you get advice that you don’t actually agree with, or that conflicts with something you hold dear?

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah. So, for feedback that can conflict with your priorities. So, as mentioned, I started a nonprofit and we really prioritize the programmatic, the day-to-day, what the students learn. And I had feedback from a board member. She came to the event, we did this thing called Demo Day, where the students were actually showing off what they learned with their robots and actually doing a business pitch. That’s kind of how we merged the technology and the entrepreneurship. And she was concerned on the tablecloths, for example. And with us being a nonprofit, a startup, my co-founder and I, we were both engineers. So, we have our full-time job. So, how to understand and discern feedback that isn’t really a priority for me right now.

1. ELLA BELL: Put them to work. Put them to work. The reality of it is you’re working. This is not your full-time job by no means. You are doing something quite wonderful and creative, and you can’t think of everything. So, for your special events, you have a pre-meeting with your board – “okay, this is what we’re doing, this is how we’re doing it. We can’t think of everything. Did we miss anything? And if we missed anything, can you fill in the gaps? Do you mind if we delegate some of this back to you because we are doing the best we can.” “Oh, we probably won’t remember that. Next time, can you please bring the tablecloth.” Put them to work.

JASMINE LEFLORE: You mentioned Delegate. That was the podcast I was on.

AMY GALLO: That’s right.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Go back to my other episode.

AMY GALLO: Your other episode, delegating. But I also think there’s a way to say, “oh, I’m really focused on the programs. That’s not a priority for me right now, but it’s something we’ll consider for the future.” Well, and also if I think about a day job too, where you’re getting feedback, you know, you should focus on this or do this, and you’re like, that’s not a priority for me in this role, to say to your managers, “If I were to do that, I would have to stop doing this,” or, “I haven’t been able to get to that because I’ve been doing these things. Can you help me figure out how to make that fit in?” Right?

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

AMY GALLO: And I think if you combined what Ella and I just said – “This is not my day job. I don’t have a ton of bandwidth, so that hadn’t been on top of the list. If you can do that, that’d be great. If not, we’ll think about it for next time.”

1. ELLA BELL: That’s wonderful.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Yeah.

1. ELLA BELL: I’m in total agreement with what you just said. I think part of the problem in my head, and I think this happens with Black women, is that just keep giving it to me, and I’m going to try to make everything work instead of setting boundaries and saying, “That’s not realistic right now.” And I think it’s hard. I know it’s hard for me, obviously, I just proved that, to be able to say, I can’t do that. “It’s not in my bandwidth right at this moment.” And to be able to have that… that’s the tougher conversation and it’s very important. So, I thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you.

AMY GALLO: Yeah. Well, thank you. I have to say, I could talk to you both for the rest of the afternoon.

JASMINE LEFLORE: This is fun.

AMY GALLO: You both have done such a wonderful job of poking holes in what our definition of feedback is, but also giving such great strategies for people, Jasmine especially, but all of our listeners, to get what they need to push themselves forward. So, thank you.

1. ELLA BELL: Jasmine, it was great meeting you.

JASMINE LEFLORE: Same. Amazing conversation. Very honored to have it and to be back. And I really appreciate all of the insights. I’m going to listen to this episode like once a week now.

AMY GALLO: Women at Work‘s editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoch, Tina Toby Mack, Rob Eckhart, Erica Truxler, Ian Fox, and Hannah Bates. Robin Moore composed this theme music. This episode is part of our series, the Essentials. In it, we bring together management experts and women working in essential industries in order to cover the fundamentals and nuances of key career skills. Scroll through the show’s feed to find other Essentials episodes. You’ll see ones on giving feedback, managing stress, retaining talent, and being productive. And if you want to go deeper on the topic of receiving feedback and create a plan to practice what you’ve learned, check out Harvard ManageMentor. It’s an online self-directed learning and skill building resource. Visit hbr.org/harvardmanagementor to see all the different skills the program can help you build, broaden, and refresh. Finally, I can’t not mention Ella’s other Women at Work episode, Sisterhood is Scarce. It’s about how race, gender, and class play into the different experiences and relationships white women and Black women have at work. Her best friend slash research partner, Stella Nkomo is in it too, and they tell stories and share insights that you really just shouldn’t miss. I’m Amy Gallo. Thanks for listening. Email us anytime at [email protected].

CreditGetting the Feedback You Need