Throughout the past year, I experienced some tough conversations with my colleagues. Before every conversation, I always had butterflies in my stomach.

<aside> 🌴 What if they feel hurt? What if they take it personally? What if they stop liking me?

</aside>

Questions, thoughts, fear were often prevalent.

However, when done correctly, being honest with each other is the key to building strong relationships within and outside of work. The moment I finished sharing my feedback and we arrived at a common ground, it felt incredible. It’s like finishing a long workout, confessing to your crush, saying sorry to your parents, yeah you know the drill. Some tips on approaching these hard conversations that I have learned:

1. Create psychological safety. Talk in private. Don’t call them out in a group setting or act passive-aggressively. Show them the respect that you want to receive from your manager in the same situation.
2. Justify your feedback with real data and evidence. This will help put more weight on your words and help your colleagues have a clearer picture.
3. Have a structure to the conversation. Here is an example of a structure that I have used before that was proven effective:
   • Give them space at the beginning of the conversation to reflect on their work so far.
   • Share your feedback and ask if anything is unclear.
   • Leave space for any pushbacks or additional explanations from their end.
   • Arrive at a common ground with clear action items moving forward.
4. Check yourself before giving feedback. Make sure you are holding yourself up to the standard you want your teammates to have.

Most importantly, your words hold more weight when your colleagues respect you based on the work ethics and the personality you show, not say. If you care about your colleagues’ personal development and learning opportunities, show them that. Don’t wait until the day you give feedback to show your appreciation or curiosity towards their feelings or personal lives. Building strong relationships and work culture is a process.

Now comes the hardest part of being human: receiving feedback.

It's a natural feeling to get a little defensive when we get constructive feedback from others. We always want feedback to become a better version of ourselves, but we got to admit that it’s not an easy process. The path between taking in the feedback and acting upon it is not a short one. Acting upon feedback right away is not always a good idea either — we also need to have a stance. So what is the right thing to do?

When working at MỞ, feedback that I often hear and one I have also been aware of for a long time is that I need to work on expressing myself more concisely. I tend to accept the feedback and find a way to improve right then because I know it well myself. I think a better way to approach this is to ask back what caused the person to say that and how they think I can improve. The more specific, the better. Different people experience how I talk in different contexts; thus, there are a lot of different lessons from each.

• Asking for clarifications on feedback can shorten the path between the act of taking in and acting upon. If there are no further explanations or specifics on the feedback someone just gives you, you should further consider whether the feedback is actually helpful.
• Knowing that the person giving the feedback has a good intent will also help ease you into the process.