I’ve got a client right now that has experienced an extremely deep conflict. The conflict started in earnest nearly a year ago, but I’m just now getting called in. In talking to one of the participants, he lamented that when this conflict started, no one on the team knew how to talk to other members of the team about what was going on and why it upset them. In short, the team was unable to give each other feedback.

Feedback is so critical. Whenever I do ANY kind of facilitation, I bring with me a simple model for giving feedback that focuses on behavior and impact (as opposed to judgment). It usually comes in handy as a tool I can give them to help them move through tough conversations.

In Harvard Business Review this month there is a brief piece in the “Forethought” section that cites research on feedback, particularly how good leaders can take bad feedback (which, in my opinion, is the norm) and find the good in it.

Their method has an emotional component that enables them to be aware of and manage their visceral reactions and a cognitive component that allows them to extract the useful information intelligently. They neither become obsessed with the feedback nor ignore it. The result is that they distinguish the message from the medium and focus on the information they need for the problems they face. They are able to look beyond the literal meaning and find valuable second- and third-order data about people’s perceptions, assumptions, and attitudes. They are able to focus on their strengths and place negative messages in the context of the positive feedback they have received in the past.

It’s a great point. My approach has been to teach people to give better feedback (which is fine), but there is also value in learning how to receive feedback when it is poor (which will happen more often).