Feedback Reflection Worksheet

Your client received pointed feedback from a peer they respect less than they respect themselves. The feedback named a real pattern - they interrupt and redirect conversations before others finish - but your client's first move was to discredit the source. 'He's not technical enough to evaluate what I'm doing.' The feedback may be accurate from an incomplete observer, but the dismissal keeps them from extracting what is useful. They have brought three separate pieces of feedback to coaching in the past six months and found reasons to dismiss all of them.

Frame this as separating the signal from the source. 'You can have serious doubts about someone's expertise and still get accurate feedback from them - those are two different questions. The worksheet lets us look at what the feedback is actually saying before we decide what to do with it.' The resistance pattern to name: clients who are high performers often develop a sophisticated-sounding critique of feedback sources as a way of preserving their self-image. Naming it directly - 'I notice that feedback tends to get discredited before it gets examined' - is useful data for the client.

Watch how your client fills in the 'Evidence that supports it' section. High-dismissal clients often write one thin example or skip it entirely while filling the 'complicates or contradicts' column in detail. The asymmetry is diagnostic. If three consecutive feedback items have zero supporting evidence in your client's account, you are not in an accuracy-assessment process - you are in a protection process. Name that observation, not as a judgment, but as a pattern you are seeing.

Start with the accuracy rating - not the score, but how they arrived at it. Ask: 'Walk me through why you landed on that number.' Then look at the supporting evidence column together. If it is sparse, ask: 'What would someone who agreed with this feedback point to?' That question often surfaces evidence your client is aware of but has not named. Close with the pattern check: 'Have you seen this in other feedback, and what do you make of it showing up more than once?'

Your client received feedback in their 360 that team members find them unpredictable - warm one week, cold the next, with no apparent trigger. They were blindsided and are still in the emotional aftermath two sessions later. They can quote the feedback verbatim but cannot engage with it analytically. Every attempt to examine the accuracy moves back into the hurt. The client genuinely wants to process this but cannot seem to get past their reaction long enough to do so.

Frame the worksheet sequence as a way to work with the reaction rather than around it. 'The first section is not the accuracy section - it's the reaction section. We name what happened in you when you heard this before we do anything else. That order is deliberate.' The resistance pattern here is not dismissal but flooding - the emotional response is so present that analysis cannot happen yet. The 'initial reaction' section of the worksheet gives the feeling somewhere to land, which often frees the client to engage analytically with the rest.

Watch whether naming the reaction in writing produces visible relief or redoubles the emotion. If your client writes in the reaction section and becomes more dysregulated, the worksheet is not yet the right move - the session itself may need to stay at the feeling level longer. If writing it settles them enough to continue, the structure is working as intended. Also watch the accuracy rating: clients in emotional flooding often swing to extremes - rating feedback as completely accurate (self-criticism loop) or completely inaccurate (protection loop). A middle rating with nuance is a sign the analytical part is coming online.

Read the reaction section aloud together if your client is willing. Then ask: 'Now that it is on paper - does the feedback still feel the same size?' That question distinguishes emotional intensity from informational accuracy. Move to the pattern check only if the earlier sections have produced some settling. The question that often opens the session's real work: 'Across the people who know you best at work, is there anyone who would not be surprised by this feedback?'

Your client received feedback that they need to be more decisive. They immediately added 'be more decisive' to their development plan, began pushing through decisions faster, and within three weeks received feedback that they were not listening to their team. They have now added that feedback too. The list grows; the clarity does not. Your client does not discriminate between feedback that is accurate and feedback that is contextual or stakeholder-specific. Every piece of input gets the same weight, which means no piece actually shapes anything.

Frame this as building a practice of assessing feedback rather than accumulating it. 'You are very good at receiving feedback - maybe too good. The worksheet is designed to help you evaluate what each piece is actually telling you rather than treating all of it as equally valid.' The resistance pattern to name: clients who define themselves as growth-oriented sometimes use openness to feedback as an identity - disagreeing with feedback feels like failing to grow. Name that agreeing with everything is not actually growth, it is responsiveness without direction.

Watch the accuracy rating section closely. If your client rates every piece of feedback as 4 or 5 out of 5 accurate regardless of source or context, the tool is not doing its work. A realistic process produces some 2s and 3s - feedback that contains a partial signal or is stakeholder-specific. Also watch the 'evidence that complicates or contradicts' column: clients who accept everything indiscriminately often leave this column empty, as if looking for contrary evidence is the same as being defensive.

Start with the pattern check. Ask: 'You have received a lot of feedback in the past year. If you look across it, what is actually consistent versus what is contradictory?' Help your client build a discrimination function: consistent feedback across sources is different from one stakeholder's reaction. Then ask about the decisiveness feedback specifically: 'Is there evidence that your team was underinvolved in decisions, or was the feedback about speed rather than inclusion?' The goal is a client who can differentiate signal from noise.