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

by Douglas Stone

But even “actual size” feedback can destabilize our sense of ourselves. Feedback can contradict or undermine the story we tell about who we are, or it can confirm our worst fears about ourselves. Learning profitably from feedback is not only about how we interpret the feedback; it’s also about how we hold our identity. In this chapter we’ll examine how to build an identity that is robust, not brittle, feedback friendly rather than feedback averse.

While some of us do it naturally, we can all learn to hold our identity in ways that make us more resilient. We can’t control the feedback life throws at us, but we can make some specific shifts in assumptions that can improve our ability to take it in, stay balanced, and learn from it. Two shifts are crucial. We need to: (1) Give up simple identity labels and cultivate complexity; and (2) Move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.

You Have Complex Intentions This observation gets less airplay than the one about mistakes, although it’s probably even harder to accept. Mixed in with our positive intentions are less noble ones—we can be self-promoting, vengeful, shallow, vain, greedy. We get tired and cut corners. We try not to lie, but forgive ourselves for occasionally landing just shy of the full truth. When we receive negative feedback about our intentions, without exception we take exception. We had good intentions. We know we had good intentions because that’s what good people have.

If you’re confused about whether a particular trait or ability is capable of growth, that’s okay, too. These aren’t easy questions. But just because the answer is not a clear yes does not mean it’s a clear no. Try experimenting: Set out to change a habit or improve one of your skills. Find a coach and get your hands dirty. Force yourself to try things you aren’t good at, and when you fall on your face, make a list of three ways you could do better next time. Rinse and repeat, and see what happens.

If you run through this sorting exercise a few times, you’ll notice three things. First, you’ll see that with some effort you can hear most feedback either way. Second, if you’re successful in hearing it as coaching, you’ll notice that your identity reaction is diminished or gone. And third, you’ll start to notice patterns—your own tendencies. Not uncommonly people have this insight: Wow, I oversort toward evaluation way more than I realized. Whether you do that only one out of ten times or eight out of ten times, each of those oversorts is a potential meltdown that didn’t need to happen, and feedback you could have been learning from. There are enough real challenges in life. You don’t need to create imaginary ones.

As we figure out how to hear evaluation, it’s helpful to break evaluation itself down into three constituent parts: assessment, consequences, and judgment.

shot at figuring out what there is to learn from the failure. I’m actually pretty good at that. You might even have a kind of Second Score Scorecard set up in your mind. That will make this particular part of your identity easier to keep track of. The scorecard reminds you that the initial evaluation is not the end of the story. It’s the start of the second story about the meaning you’ll make of the experience in your life. A strong second-score identity can help you deal with even the most challenging life events. Heather recalls the day her longtime girlfriend left her, and the weeks and months that followed: “All I had control over was my reaction, and I got up every morning and went to work. I treated everyone around me respectfully. Actually, working to ‘handle it well’ gave me something to focus on and to feel good about. And I do.”

Summary: SOME KEY IDEAS Our ability to take in and metabolize feedback is affected by how we tell our identity story. Shift from: Simple all-or-nothing to realistically complex. Fixed to growth — so that you see challenge as opportunity, and feedback as useful information for learning. Three practices help: Sort for coaching. Hear coaching as coaching, and find the coaching in evaluation. When evaluated, separate the judgment from assessment and consequences. Give yourself a second score for how you handle the first score.

Being able to say no is not a skill that runs parallel to the skill of receiving feedback well; it’s right at the heart of it. If you can’t say no, then your yeses are not freely chosen. Your decision may affect others and it will often have consequences for you, but the choice belongs to you. You need to make your own mistakes and find your own learning curve. Sometimes that means you need to shut out the critics for a while so you can discover who you are and how you are going to grow. Writer Anne Lamott puts it this way: . . . Every single one of us at birth is given an emotional acre all our own. You get one, your awful Uncle Phil gets one, I get one. . . . And as long as you don’t hurt anyone, you really get to do with your acre as you please. You can plant fruit trees or flowers or alphabetized rows of vegetables, or nothing at all. If you want your acre to look like a giant garage sale, or an auto-wrecking yard, that’s what you get to do with it. There’s a fence around your acre, though, with a gate, and if people keep coming onto your land and sliming it or trying to do what they think is right, you get to ask them to leave. And they have to go, because this is your acre.1

Being in a relationship—whether at work or at home—means being cognizant of the cost of our behaviors and decisions to those around us. If you’re not going to change, you still have a “duty to mitigate.” That means you need to do what you can, within reason, to reduce the impacts of your actions (or inaction) on others.

Summary: SOME KEY IDEAS Boundaries: The ability to turn down or turn away feedback is critical to healthy relationships and lifelong learning. Three kinds of boundaries: Thanks and No — I’m happy to hear your coaching . . . and I may not take it. Not Now, Not About That — I need time or space, or this is too sensitive a subject right now. No Feedback — Our relationship rides on your ability to keep your judgments to yourself. When turning down feedback, use “and” to be appreciative, and firm. Be specific about: The request The time frame The consequences Their assent If you’re not changing, work to mitigate the impact on others. Ask about the impact

Coach them to deal with the unchanged you Problem solve together

THE ARC OF THE CONVERSATION: OPEN-BODY-CLOSE Broadly, feedback conversations are made up of three parts: Open: A critical piece, oddly often skipped when we jump right in without getting aligned: What is the purpose of the conversation? What kind of feedback would I like, and what kind is my giver trying to give? Is the feedback negotiable or final, a friendly suggestion or a command? Body: A two-way exchange of information, requiring you to master four main skills: listening, asserting, managing the conversation process, and problem solving. Close: Here we clarify commitments, action steps, benchmarks, procedural contracts, and follow-up.

BODY: FOUR SKILLS FOR MANAGING THE CONVERSATION There are four skills you need to navigate the body of the conversation: listening, asserting, “process moves,” and problem solving.

Listening includes asking clarifying questions, paraphrasing the giver’s view, and acknowledging their feelings. Asserting is a mix of sharing, advocating, and expressing—in essence, talking. Don’t confuse asserting with “asserting truth” or with being certain. You can be assertive about your point of view even as you are aware that it’s your point of view and not necessarily the entire story; you can be assertive about your ambivalence; you can be assertive about feeling doubt. We’re using the term “asserting” because it captures a sense of leaning in, of sticking up for yourself, though without being combative. The third skill involves process moves—hinges that turn the conversation in a more productive direction. You are acting as your own referee, stepping outside the conversation, noticing where you and the giver are stuck, and suggesting a better direction, topic, or process. Getting good at the oft-neglected art of process moves can have a huge impact on the success of your interactions. Finally, problem solving turns to the question: Now what? Why does this feedback matter, and what should one or both of us do about it? You assert that I am too risk averse. And maybe I am, but not to the degree you suggest. It’s important that we discuss this, but merely talking it through doesn’t end the matter. We need to make a decision together about whether to invest in this new venture, and that will require problem-solving skills.

solving. But real conversations are rarely so neatly ordered. They tend to jump around, and that’s okay. The order in which you use the skills is less important than that you use them. All the listening in the world can’t make up for failing to assert the one issue that matters to you, and there’s nothing you can assert that will make up for failing to listen to what really matters to them. And if there are problems to be solved, but you put them off, the glow of understanding will soon fade, and you’ll wonder what all that talking actually accomplished.

Find the Trigger Patterns When you tune in to your internal voice, you’ll notice that there are patterns; when we’re triggered, we don’t think just anything, we think specific and predictable things. Knowing that gives us some traction on the challenge of handling our triggers. There are endless variations, but each kind of feedback trigger—truth, relationship, and identity—produces its own characteristic internal voice patter.

Sarcasm is always inconsistent with true inquiry (“No, no, I love getting eviscerating feedback from you. Do you have more?”), as are questions that cross-examine (“But isn’t it true that . . . ?” “If so, how do you explain . . . ?”). These are external signs of the wrestling match going on between you and your internal voice. Your internal voice is saying, “Can you believe this guy? Let me at ’em!” and you are replying, “Hold up! We’re supposed to be asking questions!” The result is “inquiry” that’s loaded with frustration and assertion. What to do, then, when you are experiencing strong feelings? If you’re overwhelmed, don’t try to fight through it and inquire. Instead, assert. Replace hot inquiry like this: “Do you actually think that what you’re saying is consistent or fair?” with a thoughtful assertion like this: “What you’re suggesting seems inconsistent with the criteria you’ve used for others in my position. That doesn’t seem fair to me.” You can then circle back to listening: “Are there aspects of this that I’m missing?”

The most common pitfall is slipping back into a “truth” mindset. Pitfall: “That advice is wrong.” Better: “I disagree with that advice.”

We ourselves have gotten better by listening attentively to what process moves sound like, and so can you: “We’re both making arguments, trying to persuade the other, but I don’t think either of us is listening to, or fully understanding, the other. I know I’m not doing a good enough job of trying to understand what your concerns are. So tell me more about why this is so important to you and to the shop steward.” “I see two issues here, and we’re jumping back and forth between them. Let’s focus on one at a time. The first is that you’re upset because you think I didn’t tell you about my upcoming trip to D.C. and I’m upset because I think I did. The other is that you’re worried about how you’re going to manage the kids’ schedules while I’m gone. Do you agree, and if so, which do you want to talk about first?” “You’re saying I’ve been treating Mom unfairly, and that any normal person would know that. I disagree with both parts of that: I don’t think I treat Mom unfairly, and I don’t think ‘any normal person’ would think I do. I’m not saying my view is right and yours is wrong. I’m saying we see it differently. I wonder if there are aspects of how you see this that I’m not fully understanding, as opposed to simply disagreeing with? What would you add?”

All of these examples have two things in common. The first is that none of the comments are about the substance of the discussion per se. Each contains an observation about some aspect of the process that is stuck or off track. And each contains a suggestion for how to move forward or an invitation to problem solving. The second is that they all sound slightly awkward—not how regular people talk. And paradoxically, that’s one of the reasons these kinds of interventions can be so powerful.

You are pausing the action of the conversation to step back and consider how it’s going and how you might correct course. These moves can short-circuit an escalating cycle of frustration or disagreement, and they give both people a chance to make a purposive choice about how to go forward together.

at any time you are changing your habits or approach, or working on a new skill, you are likely to get worse before you get better. And more important, you are likely to feel worse before you feel better. In these moments, it’s useful to know that a common trajectory isn’t further downward, but—eventually—back up.

This suggests that committing in advance to working at something for a specific amount of time—a time that reaches past that most challenging first stage—can be useful.

coaching your coach—discussing the process of what helps you and why—is one of the most powerful ways to accelerate your learning.

I tend to get defensive at first, and then I circle back later and figure out why the feedback is helpful. So if I seem defensive, don’t be put off. I’ll be thinking about what you’ve said, even if it doesn’t sound like it. I react better when you present your advice as an idea that might help, rather than as “the obviously right answer.” In that frame, I notice that I get hooked into arguing about whether it’s “obvious” or “right,” rather than just considering whether it’s worth trying out. Here’s what I’ve been working on lately, in terms of self-improvement: ___. That’s the area I need the most help with right now, and I’ve been putting other things on the back burner, even though I know I need to work on them, too. I’m really sensitive to negative feedback. So don’t give it in the middle of a presentation unless it’s urgent and immediately actionable.

Sometimes the person giving you feedback actually is a mentor or executive coach, or perhaps a peer or friend who is particularly inclined to give you advice. In these cases, it can be useful to talk more broadly about feedback styles and preferences and the challenges of learning. Three topics should be kept front and center. The first two are about the receiver: (1) Your feedback temperament and tendencies; (2) Growth areas you are currently working on. The third is about the coach: (3) Their philosophy, strengths and weaknesses, and requests.

Asking others what they think of you, and how they can help you, is not the only way to learn. Try asking them questions about themselves: What do they think about the business problem you’re facing together? Have they seen a similar problem in the past, and what mistakes have they seen people make in this situation? What gave them the insight to respond to the media the way they did this morning? People enjoy talking about their own thoughts and experiences. By tapping into their wisdom, you can learn as much as you might by asking for explicit coaching.

When we are asked to make a choice about a subject we’re worried about, and we are presented only with the benefits, we supply the potential drawbacks on our own—some real and some imagined. And then we construct an imaginary way out: Why accept a plan with so many drawbacks when we could accept a plan with no drawbacks?

Jane found a way to bring the internal voices of the committee members—their fears and concerns—into the room, so they could be weighed and assessed. When you do this, it could be that the drawbacks do outweigh the benefits, but at least people can now evaluate the real choices involved. We aren’t choosing between this and some fantasy plan yet to be discovered; we’re choosing between this plan and other comparable plans that have both benefits and drawbacks. In general, when selecting or implementing an organizational system, HR and senior leaders should provide the following to employees at all levels of the organization: Clarification of the various goals of the system; An explanation of why this system was chosen over other systems; Transparency about potential costs as well as benefits; A description of the costs of half-hearted participation; and An invitation for ongoing discussion, suggestions, and feedback. When handling complaints or concerns about the system, make sure to listen and acknowledge. Ask for specific suggestions that might improve the system. If you decide to reject an idea that’s been proposed, it’s crucial to explain why: “We discussed it at length. It fixes this problem over here, but creates this other problem over there. On balance, we decided not to implement it.” If you don’t explain why, people assume you didn’t fully understand the benefits of their suggestions, were just going through the motions of asking for input, or don’t care about the...

Sharing the problem can generate new ideas, but it also shifts the roles from the standard oppressor-victim dynamic to that of mutual problem solvers.

Regardless of context or the company you keep, you are the most important person in your own learning. Your organization or team or boss might support or stifle feedback. Either way, they can’t stop you from learning. You don’t have to depend on your annual review or your boss’s willingness to mentor. You can watch, ask questions, and solicit suggestions from coworkers, customers, partners, and friends. You don’t have to wait around for someone to train you to sell more shoes. Observe whoever sells the most and try to figure out what they’re doing differently. And ask them to watch you. Whatever they suggest, try it on. Experiment with the advice, and if the shoe fits, wear it.