Max just closed his laptop after a brutal weekly check-in with his boss. The entire conversation focused on Max’s performance: how he’s missing deadlines and turning in subpar work, and how it’s forcing other team members to pick up the slack. But instead of thinking of ways to improve, Max begins coming up with all the reasons his boss is wrong and to whom he can complain. How can he focus his attention on turning things around?
Negative feedback—even so-called “constructive” feedback—is highly stressful. When a manager tells us what we’re doing wrong or how to improve, our heart rate increases, our breathing quickens, and our thinking goes haywire. These are not conditions to do great work.
To sharpen our focus and improve our performance in the face of negative feedback, we need brain-friendly tools for calming our minds and bodies. The next time you receive negative feedback, here’s how you can quickly bounce back so you can formulate an action plan.
What negative feedback does to your brain
The stress we feel during and after a negative feedback conversation is a form of a threat state—in particular, a threat to our sense of status. The brain senses danger, so it shuts down precious cognitive resources and diverts energy toward worrying about our standing and reputation. Cognition and threat, therefore, work as a kind of seesaw. As one is high, the other necessarily is low.
If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of negative feedback, you’ve probably felt this brain drain firsthand. You’re supposed to be actively listening to how you can do better, but all you can focus on is the hit to your reputation. You might wonder if you’re in danger of losing your job.
In this threat state, you cannot engage in a crucial aspect of receiving feedback: mental contrasting. This is the practice of comparing your current reality to a more desirable future state. When you receive negative feedback, your brain is so preoccupied with processing the bad feelings, that you’re not thinking straight. This is why Max had trouble accepting his boss’s feedback, and instead resorted to explaining away the feedback as inaccurate. In a threat state, mental contrasting never takes place. The goal, then, is to remove the threat so our brain can get back to working order.
So, what’s a frazzled employee to do?
Assess, label, reappraise
Research suggests that there isn’t just one level of threat—there are three. A level 1 threat means you’re alert but not alarmed. This is akin to a hurricane developing miles offshore. Level 1 threats aren’t necessarily bad; they can be beneficial for sharpening our focus on something important. A level 2 threat means you’re alert and somewhat alarmed. The hurricane has made landfall. Your cognition has started to become impaired. A level 3 threat means you’re alert and highly alarmed. The hurricane begins ripping through your town. Your thinking is totally scrambled.
After a feedback conversation, the first step is to assess your threat level. If you find a level 3 threat, you may need a biological intervention to calm your physiology. This can include taking a nap, eating, or going for a walk. Once your bodily response has returned mostly to baseline, you can move on to the next strategies.
If you find yourself at a level 1 creeping into a level 2 threat, try a practice called labeling. This is when you identify the specific emotions you feel so that you can begin to work through them. Labeling works to reduce small threats because it clarifies an abstract feeling. In the brain, labeling seems to disrupt the fear center —the amygdala—from focusing on the threat.
If you’re already at a level 2 threat, however, try a more advanced practice called reappraisal. This is an active process in which you reframe part or all of the negative situation in a more positive light.
For instance, if you’re given feedback that you don’t speak up enough in meetings, instead of feeling embarrassed or dejected, can you reappraise the situation as a positive in that your manager respects your opinions? Or, if your manager says you need to hold your employees more accountable, rather than feeling seen as uncommitted to your goals, can you recognize—and celebrate— your capacity for empathy and kindness?
Together, these techniques work to dial down a person’s sense of threat in a stepwise fashion. Each step of threat reduction brings us—and our brains— closer to a place where negative feedback can be heard, processed, and used.
Making the most out of feedback
Let’s revisit Max moments after he closes his laptop following the meeting with his boss. He’s charged up. The overwhelming fear and stress of being seen as a low performer makes his brain feel like it’s on fire, a clear level 3 threat. He has an hour until his next meeting, so he decides to grab a snack and go for a walk to clear his head.
When he returns, he still has 30 minutes left. He’s feeling better but still uneasy, so he reflects on the specific emotions he’s feeling. He labels one of them as an embarrassment. He labels another as insecurity. Overall, he’s self-conscious that he’s seen as bad at his job.
This labeling exercise helps, but he still feels pretty threatened. So he begins reappraising his self-consciousness by reminding himself that everyone has moments of struggle. He acknowledges that work is hard, and humans are bound to mess up. He also reminds himself that he isn’t alone; his team members and his manager are there to support him.
With this reappraisal, Max shifts into a mindset that views the feedback less as a personal attack or a hit to his reputation, and more of a reminder that growth happens in a process—a shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. And with a calmer mind, he engages in mental contrasting to imagine himself getting better over time, and really visualizing what improvement looks like in his role.
Max is now in a place to view the feedback dispassionately; he doesn’t take it personally. This helps him reflect on why his performance slipped in the first place. In this case, he realizes he’s fallen into the habit of getting wrapped up in emails all morning and leaving cognitively demanding tasks for the afternoon when he’s depleted. This realization allows him to restructure his day to frontload the harder tasks that demand more focus. He also decides to ask his boss in ongoing check-ins for further direction on how to keep excelling.
By putting the feedback to the side for the moment so that he could focus on reducing his threat level, Max honored the natural wiring of his brain. Fighting the bad feelings, and trying to suppress them, seldom works. But by giving himself space to calm down, articulate specific emotions, and reframe the situation, he was able to refocus and commit to getting better over time.
