Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

by Douglas Stone

Difference spotting—understanding as specifically as you can exactly why you and they see things differently—is a crucial lens through which to take in feedback. You begin to better understand where the feedback comes from, what the advice is, how to implement it, and why you and the feedback giver see certain things differently. At this point in the process, it can also be useful to make a list of the ways their feedback might be “right.” We need to be careful here, because right spotting can inadvertently lead to wrong spotting. If you’re looking for what’s right, you can fall back into the right-wrong frame and, at least as often, you’ll find what’s wrong. So we’re not using the word “right” to mean some final determination about objective truth. We mean it more as a mindset: What makes sense about what they’re saying, what seems worth trying, how you can shift around the meaning in some way that gives them the benefit of the doubt in terms of how the feedback might be helpful. It’s