Why Feedback is so Critical to your Career
When I first started my career as a UX researcher, I worked on a small team at Microsoft where I was very much the greenest person on the team. All the researchers and designers I worked with were so much more experienced than me. While at first it was a bit intimidating (imposter syndrome anyone?), it was also so freaking awesome!
When you’re the greenest person in the room (and everyone knows it), you have permission to ask lots and lots of questions — even if your questions are really, really basic. And when a team hires someone that green (especially in comparison to everyone else), they’re making a commitment to mentor that person and give them feedback. And that’s exactly what I got — a lot of opportunities to shadow senior researchers, have them observe my work, and then get lots and lots of feedback. That feedback that I got early in my career formed the foundation of my research skillset and I’m forever grateful that my colleagues took the time to mentor and support me.
But a few years into my tenure as a researcher, there were times when I really hated getting feedback. I felt like I had worked so hard on a research plan or report … only to be told everything that was wrong with it. At that point I had a few years of research under my belt — I knew what I was doing! I didn’t need that kind of feedback anymore!
Fifteen years into my research career and now I see how immature and naive I had been. I also see a lot of this same behavior and attitude in a lot of early career researchers.
Here’s the hard truth about becoming a UX researcher — it takes a long time (years!) to master the discipline. You’re not going to learn everything about being a researcher in school. Masters programs are usually only two years (some are less!) and that’s not nearly enough time to get a good grasp of different methods and learn about seminal theories and research in the field. Even if you graduated from a PhD program, there’s a good chance that your program didn’t prepare you for a career as a product researcher in industry.
To get better, you have to put in the time. The time to conduct study after study. To learn new methods. To shadow and learn from more senior researchers. To get feedback, internalize it, and act upon that feedback.
I didn’t know it at the time but the times in my career when I advanced my skills were the times when I was consistently getting developmental feedback. And the times when I was frustrated and worried that my career had plateaued were the times when I wasn’t getting developmental feedback. There’s nothing more frustrating than having ambition but not finding good guidance or mentorship.
That’s the core premise of Kim Scott’s wildly popular book Radical Candor. A few years ago a colleague and friend recommended that I read it. I had pretty low expectations — a book about feedback? Is there anything possibly more boring?
That book literally changed my life.
What makes Radical Candor so good is that as you’re reading it, you feel like Kim Scott is letting you in on all of Silicon Valley’s secrets — here’s how things work, here’s how to be successful. Sure, she’ll teach you how to be a good manager. But she’ll also spend a big portion of the book telling you about how critical getting feedback is to your career development and how important giving direct yet kind feedback is to your relationships with other people. She also stresses the importance of proactively seeking feedback, something that seems intuitive yet few people practice.
Radical Candor taught me to regularly ask for feedback (although recently I haven’t been as consistent in doing so). It taught me to see feedback as a gift. And to recognize that in times when I’m not getting developmental feedback, to reflect on why that might be? Am I not pushing myself enough to do new hard things? Am I not getting the appropriate guidance or mentoring that I want? Or have I been less proactive in seeking criticism?
There are still days when I get annoyed with feedback (heck, just last week I was frustrated by some feedback I received). We’re all human and it’s natural to feel defensive, frustrated, or emotional when confronted with feedback. But I find that once I’ve let myself feel whatever emotions I’m feeling and processed the feedback, I usually learn something from the feedback. Sometimes the feedback is totally off the mark but that’s so rare. There’s usually some truth to the feedback or at least something I can learn from it.
I encourage you to proactively seek feedback from your colleagues. And when they provide you with criticism — thank them!
Further reading:
There’s been a lot of writing and thinking about feedback in the past year or so. Here’s a selection of readings and podcasts that have helped me get a better grasp of this topic:
- Book: Radical Candor
- Podcast: Radical Candor (I especially love season 1)
- Podcast: Kim Scott on HBR IdeaCast
- Podcast: Work Life — How to Love Criticism
- Podcast: How to Become More Self-Aware — HBR IdeaCast
- Podcast: We Deserve Better than “Attagirl” — HBR Women at Work
- Podcast: Speak Out Successfully — HBR IdeaCast
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