Have you ever had someone point out a problem and, before they even finish explaining it, you’re already explaining yourself?
You know exactly what I mean.
“Well, the reason I did it that way was…”
“Normally that doesn’t happen…”
“I was going to fix that, but…”
Maybe everything you’re saying is true.
That’s the funny part.
You’re not necessarily making excuses or trying to get out of something. You may have a completely reasonable explanation for why the thing happened.
But did you actually hear what they said first?
A client once told me she couldn’t find a button on our website.
That was it.
She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t insulting the site. She wasn’t questioning whether I knew what I was doing.
She just couldn’t find the button.
And I could feel myself getting defensive.
My brain immediately started supplying all the reasons the button made sense where it was. Why we designed the page that way. Why other people seemed to be finding it just fine.
Basically, I was prepared to defend this poor little button with my life.
Okay, slight exaggeration.
But I definitely wasn’t listening anymore.
I was listening for the part I needed to answer.
And there’s a difference.
Once I stopped preparing my defense long enough to actually hear her, the problem was pretty simple:
She couldn’t find the button.
Maybe the design made perfect sense to me because I already knew where everything was.
She didn’t.
That didn’t mean the whole website was terrible.
It didn’t mean I failed.
It meant one person trying to use something I created got confused.
That was useful information.
We changed the design, and the experience was better for the people who came after her.
Such a small thing.
But working in customer experience taught me to see moments like that differently.
Feedback is a gift.
I know. It doesn’t always feel like one.
But especially when someone tells you what isn’t working, they’re giving you information you didn’t have before. They’re showing you the experience from the other side.
If ten people love something, that feels great. I’ll happily take those comments too.
But the person who tells me, “I couldn’t find the button”?
She gave me something I could actually fix.
And that started changing the way I thought about feedback outside of work too.
What if I didn’t have to hear every piece of negative feedback as a criticism of me?
What if sometimes it was simply information about someone else’s experience?
My intent can be good and something still not land the way I meant it to.
I can work hard on something and there can still be a better way to do it.
I can be good at what I do and still have a blind spot.
Those things can all be true at the same time.
And maybe that’s the real opportunity in feedback.
If I spend the whole conversation proving why I did what I did, I might successfully defend myself...
and completely miss the thing that could have helped me grow.
I started noticing how often I did some version of that outside of work too.
Someone tells me something bothered them and I explain what I meant.
Someone points out something I missed and I explain why I missed it.
Someone says something didn’t work for them and I immediately start telling them why I thought it would.
Again, the explanation may be completely true.
But sometimes I’m so busy making sure the other person understands why I did what I did that I never stop to understand what they’re trying to tell me.
And those are two different conversations.
I think part of the problem is how quickly feedback can start feeling like a verdict.
If you tell me something I did didn’t work, my brain can very quickly turn that into:
You did something wrong.
And then:
You should have known better.
And if I’m really on a roll:
What does this say about you?
Well, now we’re not talking about a website button anymore.
Which is why the conversation from Episode 15 matters here too. Sometimes feedback touches something much bigger in us than the actual words being said.
But there’s another side to it.
Sometimes nothing deep or terrible is happening at all.
Sometimes someone is simply giving us information we didn’t have before.
And if I can stay in the conversation long enough to hear it, I might actually learn something.
That doesn’t mean every piece of feedback is correct.
Someone can misunderstand you.
They can have incomplete information.
They can prefer something different.
They can even be completely wrong.
Listening doesn’t require agreeing.
That distinction has helped me a lot.
Because I think I used to treat listening as if I were conceding the argument.
If I really let your criticism in, maybe that meant I was admitting you were right.
So I’d start defending myself before I even decided whether there was anything to defend.
Now I’m trying to create a little more space between hearing something and deciding what I think about it.
What are they actually telling me?
Is there something here I didn’t know?
Is there a part that’s true even if I disagree with the rest?
Do I need to explain myself right now, or do I just really, really want to?
That last one gets me.
Because sometimes the explanation matters.
Context matters. Intent matters. There are absolutely conversations where I need to clarify what happened or correct something that isn’t true.
But I don’t have to do that in the first five seconds.
And I’ve found that when I stop rushing to prove why I did what I did, I can hear things I would have missed otherwise.
Maybe your version of this has nothing to do with a website.
Maybe it’s your spouse telling you something you said hurt their feelings.
Your boss pointing out something that needs to change.
Your kid telling you that you weren’t really listening.
A friend saying something you did bothered her.
And maybe you have an explanation.
A really good one.
Before you give it, what if you let yourself hear the whole thing first?
You can decide what you think about the feedback afterward.
You can keep what’s useful.
You can disagree with what isn’t.
You can explain yourself if the explanation still matters.
But maybe you don’t have to decide any of that while the other person is still talking.
That’s probably one of the biggest things customer experience taught me that I’ve carried far beyond work:
The feedback I least want to hear might be the feedback that shows me something I couldn’t see on my own.
I don’t have to agree with all of it.
I don’t have to make it mean something about who I am.
But I do want to hear it before I decide what to do with it.
Because if there’s something in there that can make me better, I don’t want my need to defend myself to be the reason I miss it.
Want to keep going with this conversation?
🎧 Listen to Episode 16: How Great Leaders Reframe Feedback to Strengthen Their Impact →