Your Brain on Feedback: The Science of Belonging at Work

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Anne: Hey everyone, it's your favorite co-worker, Anne, and this is the All Things Work podcast. Today we're recording a special episode in Orlando at SHRM 26 with a special live audience. Give a round of applause, everybody, for being here and being part of the conversation today.

So what happens in our brain when we receive feedback at work? Why do some conversations spark growth and connection, while others leave us feeling defensive or even disengaged? In this episode, we're exploring the neuroscience behind feedback and belonging.

Joining us are two incredible experts on this topic. We have Beth Sirull, President and CEO of the National Organization on Disability, and Ama Agyapong, also known as That Inclusion Lady — and a previous ATW guest, I might add — who is the Principal Training Strategist and CEO of Inclusion Enterprises. Together, we're going to unpack how leaders can communicate more effectively, create workplaces where people feel seen, heard, and empowered to thrive, and better support neurodiverse employees and workers with invisible disabilities. So Ama, Beth, welcome to All Things Work.

Beth Sirull: Thanks for having us.

Anne: We're so excited to have you. I want to jump into the phrase that we hear often — that feedback is a gift. Our brains don't always experience it that way, though. We'll start with you, Ama. Why is feedback such an emotionally charged experience?

Ama Agyapong: Feedback represents different phases of life for people, so I'll start there. Individuals have different relationships with feedback, and it depends on what that represented growing up. Oftentimes, especially in a workplace, when people receive feedback — if not wrapped correctly — they hear that they're not enough, that they're not doing something correctly.

We say feedback is a gift, but it needs to be wrapped correctly to actually be the gift. Oftentimes, that's because not enough has been invested in the relational bank. I like to say invest in your relationship bank, and then when you give constructive feedback, those are the withdrawals. But oftentimes we're not prepping the brain to receive the information, we're not building the relationship so that people know we see the greatness in them, and so there is fear around receiving it.

Beth Sirull: I think sometimes the people who say that feedback is a gift are the people giving the feedback — not the people receiving it, at least in the moment, for all the reasons that Ama just noted. Particularly for someone who's neurodivergent — someone who has ADHD, is on the spectrum — that's like 20% of the workforce. With Gen Z and Gen Alpha, it's climbing to closer to 50%, so this is a big part of the workforce.

For the neurodivergent, the brain processes things differently. Someone who has ADHD might hear positive feedback and get super excited and do great work, but the pendulum will swing when it's constructive, or what they perceive as negative, feedback. Your job as a manager is to enable the people on your team to do their best work, and how you find out what they need to do their best work is that you ask them. But you have to have built trust for people to come forward and give you a full, authentic answer.

Anne: And I see Ama nodding her head.

Ama Agyapong: Yes. You've got to model that. Especially to Beth's point, you should be asking for feedback probably more than you're giving it, particularly in the beginning when you're building those relationships with your team. You must know what motivates them, what they find good, and why they take pride in their work. It's always deeper than just a paycheck.

When you're modeling how to receive feedback, how to respond even when it's difficult, how to acknowledge your feelings in the moment and that you need to take a break just to process and will circle back — modeling those things builds trust within itself. Our teams learn more from what we do than what we say.

Anne: So let's turn it over to our audience now. For those in the audience, please raise your hand if you felt that twist or knot in your stomach when you've had to enter an office to receive feedback, or when you knew feedback was coming. Okay, about more than half the people in the room. Now raise your hand if you felt trust with the person you were receiving feedback from. Okay, still a few hands — that's really good to know. But there are still hands that did not go up, and that's the conversation we're having today. You need to develop that trust.

So Ama, you explore in your work how many people feel this same way. When we receive feedback, what is actually happening in our brains from a neuroscience perspective?

Ama Agyapong: I talked about this yesterday in my presentation — the amygdala hijack. Typically, our brains see feedback as a threat. If you're freaking out because you're receiving constructive feedback, that is your brain doing exactly what it's supposed to do. It's supposed to protect you. So first, let's take the judgment out of that initial reaction.

There is a model called the SARA model — it's the emotional response to receiving feedback. The first stage is shock, the second is anger, the third is resistance, and then we get to agreement. That initial shock is normal, even if you think you deserve the feedback.

So you have that amygdala hijack, and within the amygdala, within the limbic system of your brain, it's fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. A lot of people aren't familiar with the fawn piece. Fawn refers to people who are just overly accommodating. Have you ever given feedback to someone and they say, "Yep, whatever you need. Absolutely. Okay, okay," and then they go and do absolutely nothing? They were in fawn.

Fight doesn't always mean throwing fists — it can mean getting angry or becoming defensive. Freeze is someone who shuts down. Flight is, "I don't have time for this, I'm walking out." All of those are responses. We also tend to judge one person's amygdala response against another's. Just because someone gets angry and yells doesn't mean they care more than the person who shut down and did nothing. That's just our threat response.

When you have that threat response, there are things you can do — take a breath, or tell your brain to listen to understand or listen to help. That puts your brain back into the prefrontal cortex, which is the rational part of your brain, and now you can actually listen and decode the message. We might not always control our feelings or all of our thoughts, but we can control our behavior. When you feel that feeling in your body that signals something's happening, you can tell yourself, "Okay, amygdala — you're trying to protect me, but I've got this." Take those deep breaths, tell your brain to listen to understand or listen to help, and it gets you back into active listening mode.

Anne: I actually do that at work. I was telling my boss the other day — when I feel overwhelmed, or if I'm looking at something with red marks all over it, I put myself in time-out. I will literally go to the work bathroom, look in the mirror, and take three deep breaths. I call it my time-out because I'm gentle parenting myself, and I've got to say, it's a game changer.

And I'm not someone with an invisible disability, so I can only imagine what others are navigating. But like you said, it's the choice. It's a choice I've made that has made a world of difference for me personally.

Beth Sirull: I have a Viktor Frankl quote in large font hanging right where I can see it when I'm not looking at my screen. I won't remember it exactly, but it's from Man's Search for Meaning. It goes something like: between the stimulus and the response, there is a space, and in that space is our opportunity for learning.

I see it all the time because I'm an impulsive person, and I have to be reminded that between the stimulus — the feedback — and the response, there is a space, and you have to seize it.

Ama Agyapong: I love that you named it, though. Like, you name it: "I'm gonna put myself in time-out." For those of you who know how you receive feedback, and even though you might be working on it, announce it. Tell your team, "When I initially get feedback, I'm going to ask a few open-ended questions, and then I'm going to take a deep breath and process. I typically need about 30 minutes, and then I'll circle back to talk about it. I tend to get a little defensive sometimes, and I want to show up as my best self for this conversation — so this is what I typically do. Is that okay with you? How do you typically process your feedback?"

Let everybody know, so they don't think you're being weird when you ask a few open-ended questions and then go into a corner to put yourself in time-out. You are setting those norms on your team to create space to process.

Beth Sirull: That's why I said at the very beginning — you have to ask what works for people. For me, in an ideal world, I like to