Feedback - Why It Is Important To Not Overly Justify Yourself

Short: This week you learn about the most common and passively disruptive feedback faux-pas on the side of the feedback taker: overly justifying yourself.

When others tell you about yourself in (opinionated) information statements you are receiving feedback. Feedback is an important way to increase your knowledge about yourself, and often it is the only way to learn some things about yourself.

If it is constructive, you should love people that are giving you feedback. Your self-improvement, as well as your capability to successfully achieve your goals, will depend on it. Lucky you, most people love to give feedback. The biggest thing for you will be to not hinder feedback being given to you. Which takes us to the most common impediment for re-occuring feedback: overly justifying yourself when receiving feedback.

At best, feedback statements are to be viewed as opinionated information statements about a given circumstance with the intent of closing in on a common understanding. The feedback giver often indirectly implies to know something that the feedback taker does not know. This is the main reason for self-justification in the face of critical/negative feedback

Example:
1) “You’ve got dirt on your shirt.” - “I didn’t get to wash the shirt, because my mother had me bring the car to the mechanic.”

2) “You’ve got dirt on your shirt.” - “Thanks, I didn’t see that.”

While it is understandable to want to justify yourself as a feedback taker, when faced with (negative) feedback; if you overdo it, you deflect the input of the feedback giver. More and more you will frame feedback as critizism - likely because you already frame it as critizising you (why else would you overly justify yourself?). Feedback givers will feel discouraged in giving you feedback in the future, fearing their wish to give you information will be misconstrued as (mean) critizism.

When hearing feedback and feeling the need to respond, don’t present it as a justification but rather as contextual information.

Example:
3) “You’ve got dirt on your shirt.” - “Oh. Thank you. That must have been, from when I fell down in the grass this morning.”

4) “You’ve got dirt on your shirt.” - “Thanks, I know. I didn’t get to wash the shirt yesterday but had nothing else to wear.”

This way you even start a feedback ping-pong, informing the other person about something they might not have known or considered. Now it’s you that is the feedback giver and more potentially vital information is getting exchanged.

Try to check, how much you tend to overly justify when faced with feedback. Can you just accept the feedback? Can you - instead of justifying yourself - just give context information? Or could you even give context information in a way to start a feedback ping-pong? You are bound to be better informed and better liked if you can.

Thanks for reading! Stay beautiful <3