"You're doing fine; just keep doing what you're doing," my manager told me in my first performance review.
That praise left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied. I quickly tamped down that feeling because no bad news was good news, right?
At the time I received that feedback, I was working on two small projects. Fast forward six months, and I had acquired several additional projects. I was working evenings and weekends to keep up, doing the same things I had been doing on the earlier assignments.
Focused on getting more hours in, I stopped going to the gym, and there was no time for meal prep. I quickly put on 20 pounds which would ultimately balloon to 50.
I believed that the only solution to the problem was to work more. At the same time, I had no clue what part of "doing what you're doing" was most important to my projects' success.
Then, I was assigned a project with a different project manager. I'd never designed this particular type of engineering system before and was excited about the challenge. I sat down with the lead engineer, who explained how to approach this kind of technical design.
I spent the next two weeks completing and documenting that analysis. We needed to submit calculations to external reviewers, which meant the documentation process was almost a rigorous as the technical analysis.
When I was done, I sat down for a work review with that manager. I expected it to go well, as I mentally congratulated myself on completing the work well before our deadline.
"One of your inputs is wrong," my manager said. "I thought I had explained this to you earlier," surprise evident in her voice.
I had no recollection of that explanation, and I was sure I'd asked all the questions necessary to proceed. I got defensive. I thought:
Wasn't it my manager's job to check-in, see how things were going, verify I was on the right track, and give me feedback otherwise?
I hadn't bothered to check in with her either, a fact I quickly dismissed as irrelevant in my mind.
I ended up needing to redo the entire analysis.
Two weeks of work went down the drain, and I now had to scramble to have any chance of meeting the deadline. It was more hours and more exhaustion. I learned a valuable lesson.
It all could have been avoided had I asked for feedback. I also learned that if I wanted feedback, I had to ask for it.
Feedback is critical to career growth + stopping overwhelm
Individual contributors in STEM fields are routinely promoted to management with minimal, if any, management training. As a result, managers don't know how to give ANY feedback, let alone good feedback. Often, you don't receive any feedback at all unless you make a mistake.
The problem here is that you don't know how you're doing at work without feedback.
I'm a tennis player, so I'll use a tennis analogy. Tennis requires at least one partner to play. There are some general parameters as to what is “in” and “out” of bounds. Beyond those rules, you don't know if you hit a "good" shot until you see if (or how) the person you are playing with returns that shot.
I’ve had the experience of hitting what I thought was a fantastic shot, only to have it whiz back and lose the point. Often, you simply don't know how good your shot is until you see the return shot from the other person.
Feedback is similar in that you can't know how you are doing without a "receiver." Your perceptions of your performance and if you're doing well are purely a guess without that information.
When you guess how you are doing, you end up trying to do everything. That rarely works out well for a technical professional because there is always more work to be done. You try time management and productivity tactics, putting your head down and speeding as rapidly as possible through your to-do list.
More and more piles up, and you find yourself worn down, exhausted, and with more things piling onto the list than you can check off. You end up reworking things and making mistakes because you aren't clear on what's important.
“Learning to ask for and solicit actionable feedback is a critical non-technical skill. This is a primary reason technical professionals struggle. A good feedback session can IMMEDIATELY reduce overwhelm and improve your stress levels, in addition to helping you get clear on your value in your organization.” - Stephanie Slocum, Founder Engineers Rising LLC
At the same time, many technical professionals don't ask for feedback. Here are a couple of reasons I've heard from clients as to why:
You didn't realize it is important
You think you don't have the time
Fear of "negative" feedback
"It's not my job to ask… shouldn't my manager provide it?"
Not sure how to ask
You have asked in the past and gotten “atta-girl” feedback that wasn’t useful, like "you're doing well" and "keep doing what you're doing." You're not sure where to go from here.
Feedback is the currency on which you can measure your career progress so you can either continue doing the things you're already doing that will allow you to be successful or improve on those things that may be holding you back.
Why don't women get good feedback?
Feedback is so important that a lack thereof is cited as a leading indicator that a woman will leave engineering specifically. I suspect I'd find similar data for other technical fields if that data were available.
In addition to the challenge of managers with no training in providing feedback, statistically speaking, women are 1.4x more likely to receive subjective critical feedback. At the same time, men are more likely to receive objective critical feedback.
Subjective critical feedback often is presented as a character or internal trait flaw. When you hear it, it can make you feel like there is something wrong with you. It is rarely actionable feedback and is not valuable to your career growth.
Objective critical feedback is specific, situational, and includes an action you can take to improve next time.
This type of feedback can act as rocket fuel for your growth, exposing your blind spots and highlighting your unique value within your organization.
Examples of subjective critical feedback include:
"I wish you'd act more confidently in that meeting."
"You don't speak up."
"You're too pushy/aggressive/direct."
"Why are you being so difficult?"
Examples of objective critical feedback include:
"You didn't seem prepared for that meeting. Next time, please practice what you're going to say in advance."
"When you don't speak up in meetings, it seems like you're not interested in the discussion or have expertise to contribute. Can you come to the next meeting with a written list of talking points and make sure to interject at appropriate times?"
"When you put that question directly to the client in the meeting, it seemed to put him on the defensive, which doesn't help maintain our client relationships. Next time, try wording that question or a similar one like this [Example].
"During our last team brainstorming session, it seemed like your only goal was to argue for your idea instead of actively participating in the discussion. That brought down the entire team dynamic. I appreciate your participation and would also like you to try using the "yes-and" approach in our next meeting when a new idea is suggested."
Image Source: Licensed from Canva Pro
How to get helpful feedback
Objective critical feedback is the feedback you need to grow.
The first step in getting feedback is to ask for feedback immediately where possible. Examples of times you could ask for feedback include:
After meetings
After milestone deadlines
After presentations
Performance reviews
During a weekly check-in with your manager
Don't wait until you are up for a promotion or a once-a-year performance review to get feedback. Otherwise, you could spend an entire year “busy” yet focused on tasks that don't matter as much as others.
If you ask for feedback and get the subjective, unactionable kind, ask for specifics.
Two examples:
1. Feedback: "You are too direct" or "You are too aggressive."
Response: "Thank you for that feedback. To help me understand better, can you give me a specific example of where I went wrong and what I should have specifically done differently?"
2. Feedback: You don't get any feedback, or when you ask, you're told: "You're doing well."
Possible Response 1: "Thank you for that feedback. To help me understand better, can you please share an example of something I already do well, that you'd like to see more, and an example of something I've done that I should do differently next time."
Possible Response 2: "I'd really like any specific feedback you can share. I'm always looking to improve, and I'm particularly interested in things that you see me doing now that may hold me back from growth down the road."
Giving feedback is a skill
Feedback is an essential skill that promotes personal and professional growth. Moreover, it allows a better understanding of what everyone can do to improve focus and performance. Asking for and providing feedback is about actively listening, analyzing, and then coming up with the best way to improve.
If you are a manager, I wrote an entire previous blog on how to give feedback which you can see HERE.
If you're an individual who is not getting feedback, your goal is to keep digging until you find specific examples of things you've done well and places improvement is needed. Additional examples of how you can ask for feedback are shown in the graphic below.
Feedback is a gift + help for the conflict-avoidant
It can be uncomfortable to both ask for and give feedback. Supervisors can experience the same deep reluctance to provide constructive criticism that individuals experience when asking for it.
It is not unusual for technical professionals to be conflict-avoidant. Conflict avoidant managers will generally not provide feedback at all (unless required by a performance review process or anonymous), rather than sharing feedback perceived as potentially provoking anger, tears, or defensiveness in others.
Three effective strategies for soliciting feedback from someone who is conflict-avoidant or is not giving you any feedback include:
1. Explicitly and routinely asking for feedback. If the conflict-avoidant person is your manager, start by asking once per week.
2. Ask for specifics. Ask for specific examples and suggestions from the person giving feedback as to what they would have done differently in the example situation.
3. Be explicit that you WANT feedback to improve. This busts unconscious assumptions held by some that "women are emotional." One way you can broach this topic professionally:
"I read a study that women often don't get feedback because others are afraid of upsetting them, while their male counterparts get feedback that is specific and allows them to grow. I know from our conversations that you value [fairness] [gender equity] at work, and just wanted to make sure you knew that I invite your feedback – and especially things I need to improve - as critical to my learning and growth."
Feedback is a gift on all sides and should be treated as data by the receiver. It's not negative or positive; it's simply data. As with all data, some data is junk, and some are valuable. More data points from multiple relevant sources are always better than having only one data point.
You would never complete an entire design without having any data or parameters or defining success, yet that is what we do when we don't solicit and receive feedback. There is someone in your career that you know you need to get more feedback from, but right now, you’re flying blind.
Who is that person, and what can you do TODAY to reach out and get that conversation started so you can excel in your STEM career?
If you enjoyed this blog, you may also be interested in this one: How to Give and Receive Feedback that Doesn’t Suck
