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

by Douglas Stone

At this point in the process, it can also be useful to make a list of the ways their feedback is “right.” We need to be careful here, because right spotting can inadvertently lead to wrong spotting.

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...

Noticing the birds doesn’t make the t...

Sometimes you will get to the point of fully understanding where a giver’s feedback comes from and what it is they’re suggesting, and you will simply disagree with

Wow. That’s upsetting to hear.

better you understand the feedback, the more likely you are to find something in it that

reasonable to wonder: If subjectivity and interpretation make feedback so hard, why not just be objective and stick with the facts?

Whatever metric you come up with, there will always be subjective judgments behind that metric:

No matter how clearly you define the criteria and the metrics, somebody has to apply the criteria to a person’s performance, and that involves making judgments.

People who are skilled coaches or evaluators are valuable precisely because their gifts of judgment are strong.

An app can’t tell you whether you are leading effectively, creating cohesion, persistence, or energy. The people you lead can.

The goal shouldn’t be to remove interpretation or judgment. It should be to make judgments thoughtfully, and once made, to have them be transparent and discussable.

Paul’s initial reaction is that the feedback doesn’t square with his sense of the organization.

Let’s get specific. What does it mean that they’re feeling “disempowered and out of the loop”?

What do you mean by messaging versus attitude?

Annabelle knows how she intends to come across. But she is blind to her actual impact on others. Annabelle is not alone.

fact, there is always a gap between the self we think we present and the way others see us.

Let’s start on the far left with our own thoughts and feelings. From these, we formulate intentions—what we’re trying to do, what we want to have happen. To achieve our intentions, we do and say things, we put behavior out into the world. These behaviors have an impact on others, and based on this impact, others develop a story about our intentions and character.

They then offer some version of these perceptions to us as feedback.

may bear only vague resemblance to the “you” you know. We fl...

shake our heads. We don’t recogni...

What are Annabelle’s actual thoughts and feelings about her team? They are embedded in expectations and assumptions that have accrued over many years.

Annabelle is often dismayed when team members come to her with the kinds of questions that she would have felt eager to figure out on her own.

She believes they aren’t trying or don’t care enough. As a result she often feels impatient, annoyed, and disappointed in her team.

observe about us that we can’t—our blind spots—and

A blind spot is something we don’t see about ourselves that others do see. We each have our own particular items in our blind spot basket, but there are some blind spots that we all share.

We all know this about human interactions, and yet somehow it comes as a surprise that our own behavior is largely invisible to us.

It’s because most humans are so wonderfully good at reading other people’s faces.

We succeeded because we could cooperate with one another.

This cooperation-competition dance rewards those who can reliably distinguish friend from foe. And that requires the ability to make smart guesses about the feelings and motivations of others.

The human deftness at reading people is most visible in its absence. Those who fall on the autism spectrum often struggle with exactly this. They often don’t look others in the eye and can’t read the social cues transmitted by faces or tone.

Surprisingly, even on e-mail, people try to read emotions and tone. Or more precisely, despite lacking

“That emotion is not really who I am.” But others count

it double: “That emotion is exactly who you are.”

When we are angry, we are focused on the provocation,

And it’s the threat that we remember later.

When something goes wrong and I am part

of it, I will tend to attribute my actions to the situation; you will tend to attribute my actions to my

charac...