How do we react to feedback?

That depends a lot on the personality of the feedback receiver. Some people are more inclined towards hearing comments regarding their performance and how to improve it than others. As an instructor, it is important to be aware of and understand the psychology behind reactions to feedback. You should know how to adjust your communication depending on the student’s reactions. The whole point of giving feedback is to give the student their keys to success, so there’s no point trying to force criticism in a way that doesn’t serve our cause.

We’ll be looking at some common reactions to feedback and how to handle them.

Fight or flight

Some people consider feedback automatically as a threat. This is a completely natural reaction; we’ve evolved to be social creatures, and our brains have been wired to unconsciously look for social threats, such as criticism. For cavemen, rejection by the pack was a matter of life and death, and that’s why modern humans still react to these cues as a matter of survival. Depending on the situation you might witness a student start to challenge (or fight) your feedback strongly, in an attempt to redirect the attention away from their actions. Others might close down emotionally, or even want to end the discussion completely and leave the situation, just as prey fleeing a predator.

If your student shows this kind of behaviour, it is important to react in a way that restates trust and puts the student back in a safe environment. Make sure the student understands that the feedback is not personal, and concentrate on their performance instead of the person. Be calm and assertive. A person in fight or flight mode needs calming, and they mirror your personal reactions when assessing the situation. So don’t push their limits, but bring them back from their state of alert.

Avoiding

Sometimes we start avoiding the critique, by reasoning and seeking explanations from external factors that would make our performance shortcomings more understandable. This might involve students twisting the feedback information in their mind to better fit their understanding of their performance. After all, it is easier to alter the received information than yourself. That is why students may “hear what they want to hear” because it is more comfortable for them. While it is important to reflect and understand why we function how we function, focusing on external conditions doesn’t help us alter our own behaviour. 

When a student is avoiding your feedback, it is important to draw attention to the goals and objectives; the external conditions will be the same the next time, and to achieve different results (the goals/objectives) need a change in the student’s actions, not the surroundings. Ask questions to make sure the student understands clearly what you are trying to communicate to them as feedback and to see they are not just bending the message in their mind to better suit their own (flawed) perceptions.

Blaming

This is a more active version of avoiding; your student might start blaming you and everyone else (i.e. pilots and colleagues) for their poor performance. “The separation on the final wouldn’t have been too tight had the pilots just slowed down in time.” This way we try to shift the focus away from ourselves to protect our own ego.

When a student starts to point fingers at others, ask questions regarding the student’s performance. “What could’ve YOU done differently in the situation?” Forcing the student to think about their own performance will help them reflect as well as assume responsibility for their actions.

Defensive coping

Sometimes a student might start completely ignoring the feedback over a longer period of time, combined with a notable performance decline. When confronted, the student might seem to think everything is going well. He/she might even agree with your feedback, but still, no observable change in behaviour is achieved. This is called defensive coping; a survival strategy in which the student has adopted a false positive perception of his/her performance, based on a self-protective pattern that defends the student’s self-confidence from outer threats.

In this case, the student is not receiving your feedback but has logged off completely. They will not be able to meet any performance or training objectives unless helped back on track. If suspecting that a student is in this mode, a comprehensive assessment of the student’s situation needs to be performed by the training organisation and made sure that the student understands the severity of the situation as well. This will require putting the training on hold and reviewing the whole training process for the said student. Still, if dealt with accordingly, there is no reason why the student would not perform after taking care of the situation.

Inspired by: https://medium.com/seek-blog/learn-how-people-really-respond-to-feedback-822de0f46c87