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

by Douglas Stone

Fifty-one percent of respondents in one recent study said their performance review was unfair or inaccurate, and one in four employees dreads their performance review more than anything else in their working lives.

Sixty-three percent of executives surveyed say that their biggest challenge to effective performance management is that their managers lack the courage and ability to have difficult feedback discussions.7

Explicit disagreement is better than implicit misunderstanding.

Now is when that driver needs to move, now is when they need the “coaching.”

I understand your life through the lens of my life; my advice for you is based on me.

Being aware of what they see that we don’t is just not as delicious as listening for how they’re wrong.

Others seek data that confirm their preexisting view of us, whether that view is good or bad. It’s human nature.3

It’s like walking through a forest and identifying birds instead of trees. Noticing the birds doesn’t make the trees “wrong.”

Annabelle’s focus is on changing her behavior (arrow 3); but her thoughts and feelings (arrow 1) remain unchanged. And this is a problem.

When we ourselves speak, the STS turns off. We don’t hear our own voice, at least not the same way we hear everyone else.

But situations are not tense. People are tense.

Happiness is believed to be one of the most highly heritable aspects of personality.

Bad is stronger than good.

Researcher Richard Davidson has found that the amount of time that we sustain positive emotion, or need to recover from negative emotion, can differ by as much as 3,000 percent across individuals.

If you name it, you have some power over it.

They weren’t just players in the game, they were also referees.

Positions are what people say they want or demand. Interests are the underlying “needs, desires, fears, and concerns” that the stated position intends to satisfy.7 Often interests can be met by a variety of options, some different from what anyone sees at the outset.

And researcher Brené Brown observes that a lack of meaningful feedback was the number-one reason cited by talented people for leaving an organization.3

coaching is a relationship, not a meeting.

“Mistake stories” that ultimately result in “what we learned” stories are abundant—probably every successful employee and team has some—but they are too rarely shared.

Cialdini’s studies demonstrate that highlighting good norms does more to change disliked behavior than calling out bad norms. Rather than issuing a reproachful “31 percent of you still haven’t completed your reviews” it’s more effective to crow, “69 percent of you have completed your reviews. Thank you!”

Hold people accountable by showing them how you hold yourself accountable alongside them.

you are the most important person in your own learning.