Somewhere between your last final exam and your first performance review, the feedback you’re used to changes shape. A grade is something you dread that closes the book on an assignment. At work, on the other hand, feedback is rarely the end of something. It’s frequent and carries forward into the next deck, pitch or project.
Most people don’t notice the shift until they’re rereading a manager’s comment as if it were a punishment, unsure whether to defend themselves or say thank you. The good news is that giving and receiving effective feedback is a skill, and it’s one you can start building before your first job.
Most people treat feedback as a necessary evil that’s best avoided. A comment or review arrives, it stings or doesn’t and then it’s over. But in reality, effective feedback is a discipline built through repetition.
The people who are good at both giving and taking feedback aren’t naturally thicker-skinned or more articulate than everyone else. They’ve simply had more practice and built more resilience.
The problem isn’t that most people don’t get thoughtful feedback before graduation. Plenty of project-based classes offer detailed notes and real critiques, and a good comment from a professor can change how you approach the next assignment. The difference is how that feedback arrives.
A grade tends to land on its own. It closes out one piece of work. Typically, you receive a grade, react to it and then forget about it soon after. At work, feedback is an ongoing exchange, especially in New York, where agencies and investment banks turn work around fast. A manager’s comment on a deck carries over into the next one, and how you respond shapes what your manager trusts you with next.
One habit that makes this shift harder is mixing criticism of the work with self-judgment. After years of grades deciding scholarships and admissions, it’s easy to start treating a strong grade as proof you’re smart and a weak one as proof you’re not. But a comment on the work is not a verdict on you.
When you interpret a note on a report as a comment on your competence, the instinct is to defend yourself instead of absorbing the information. Do that enough, and colleagues start treating you as someone who can’t take direction, which quietly limits how much responsibility comes your way.
Trying to talk yourself out of feeling stung rarely works. The most reliable move is to translate the note into a task. “This analysis is thin” becomes “add two more data points to section three.” After enough practice, you’ll catch yourself fixing the problem before you’ve finished feeling bad about it.
Early-career professionals tend to over-soften feedback. The instinct is understandable. They haven’t built up the standing yet to feel safe being blunt, and a nagging sense that they haven’t fully earned their place can make directness feel risky. So “this doesn’t work” turns into “this is interesting, maybe tighten it up,” and the actual message gets lost.
The irony is that vague feedback tends to eventually strain a relationship more than direct feedback does. It wastes the other person’s time and leaves them guessing at what you actually meant. Being the person whose feedback is worth asking for is a real professional asset, and effective feedback is a skill you build through practice.
It’s also rarer than you’d think. In 2024 research, only about one in four US employees strongly agreed they get valuable feedback from the people they work with. Those who did were five times as likely to be engaged at work.
These habits can be developed in the classroom, long before your first performance review.
Ask beyond the compliment. When someone praises your work, follow up: “What would have made it better?” It turns a nice moment into information you can use.
Practice giving feedback, not just absorbing it. A classmate’s project is a low-stakes place to learn how to be specific and honest without hedging.
Name the change, not just the problem. “This section doesn’t work” leaves someone guessing. “This section makes three arguments, and I only followed the second,” gives them somewhere to go. That’s the difference between a reaction and effective feedback.
Keep a short log. Note the critique, what you changed, and what happened next. Months later, you have proof of how much you’ve grown.
Notice the sting before you respond to it. When a comment hurts, let it sit for a few seconds. Ask yourself whether your reaction is about the work or about how it feels to hear it. If it still seems wrong after the pause, ask a clarifying question rather than a defensive one. Most feedback that feels unfair in the moment turns out to be underspecified rather than wrong.
Go looking instead of waiting. Volunteer to present first, ask a professor for a second read on a draft and join the group project instead of working alone.
Three qualities in an academic program make it easier to practice giving and receiving effective feedback:
A strong program will expose you to all three.
Practicing in a classroom presentation or a mock pitch means you’re not learning how to take criticism for the first time in front of a client or boss. By the time the stakes are real, giving and taking feedback is already a habit rather than a skill you’re improvising under pressure.
Who delivers the feedback matters too. A professor who also runs a team in Midtown or advises founders in the Flatiron District during the week has no reason to soften their critiques, because that isn’t how they work outside the classroom either. The comment comes with the same directness you’d get from a manager: specific and aimed at the next draft.
A smaller group builds its own feedback culture over a few months, because you end up exchanging notes with people whose work you know well and who know yours. That familiarity is what makes specific, actionable critique feel routine rather than confrontational.
It’s worth weighing programs on those three things. Ask how much of the coursework gets presented and critiqued rather than just submitted, whether the faculty are still running teams or advising companies and how many people are in the program.
The professionals who get ahead in their first few years aren’t the ones who avoid criticism. They’re the ones who’ve practiced, who don’t get knocked down by a tough comment and can lift up the rest of their team with insightful comments.
That fluency is what a program built around real stakes, practitioner faculty and a small cohort is designed to produce well before you need it on the job. If you want to build that habit before your first role, IENYC’s master’s programs are built around presenting real work and getting candid feedback from faculty who practice what they teach.
Effective feedback is specific enough to act on and arrives while the work is still fresh. It describes the work, not the person, and points to what the receiver has to do next. “This section loses the reader after the first chart” is effective feedback. “This needs work” isn’t.
Treat it as a conversation rather than a verdict. Rephrase the comment aloud so the other person can correct you if you’ve misunderstood. When you get several notes at once, ask which one matters most. Circle back a week later to show what you changed.
Ask within a day or two of finishing something, while the details are fresh. “What would you do differently on the next one?” gets a more candid answer than “How did I do?” because it isn’t asking your manager to criticize finished work. Narrow it down to a single decision rather than the whole project.
Harshness usually comes from timing, not directness. A comment made a week after something was submitted feels like a complaint, so give it soon and say what your goal is up front, as in “I want this to land with the client.” Keep the focus on the work: “this slide buries the number” lands better than “you buried the number.”
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Emma is a writer, translator, linguist and editor from Washington, DC, USA. Her career has taken her from social media management to copywriting, inventory buying for a major retail chain, events management and even teaching.
Emma received a B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in marketing and a minor in French from Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. During that time, she studied abroad in York, England and Rennes, France, where she developed an interest in cross-cultural communication and linguistics. After relocating to Madrid, Spain, she began specializing in writing, focusing on topics like travel, marketing and culture.
Currently, Emma works full-time for IE University’s narrative team. In her free time, she enjoys reading, hiking and exploring the city.
