You often hear the concept that feedback is a gift, and it truly is yet we cannot use that approach as some reactive way to facilitate a positive relationship with feedback when so often it is perceived as negative. A positive cadence of feedback structured by the recipient is the secret sauce. There is such a simple concept called WIIFT, what is in it for them.

Recently I was teaching this concept to a bunch of individual contributors at a client of ours. I said think about feedback as something that you need to structure and receive before somebody needs to provide you feedback. After making this statement people looked at me very puzzled. I said think about your childhood when you knew you were going to get in trouble, but you went and told your parents before they could even get angry about it. After this comment people started to nod. I said how many of you know what your strengths are and have those been validated by your manager? Everybody in the room started to shake their head. I then asked how many of you know areas where your manager feels you need to improve through some feedback you have received? All the people started to nod. Therein lies the problem.