More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The evaluation conversation needs to take place first.
We can’t focus on how to improve until we know where we stand.
Shift from “That’s Wrong” to “Tell Me More”
We listen to the feedback with this question in mind: “What’s wrong with this feedback?” And as it turns out, we can almost always find something.
WE’RE GOOD AT WRONG SPOTTING
we first have to understand it. That sounds pretty obvious, but in fact, we usually skip understanding and dive in with instant judgments.
When we use a label, we’re seeing that movie, and it’s painfully clear. It’s easy to forget that when we convey the label to someone else, the movie is not attached.
They’ll say things like, “Let me describe what I mean and you can ask me questions to see if I’m making sense.”
The surest way of doing that is to spot the label in the first place.
After you spot a label, there’s a second step: You have to fight the temptation to fill in your own meaning.
If we strip back the label, we find that feedback has both a past and a future. There’s a looking-back component (“here’s what I noticed”), and a looking-forward component (“here’s what you need to do”).
on the “going to” side, we’ll consider the difference between feedback that is coaching, which aims at advice, and feedback that is evaluation, which clarifies consequences.
It is said that all advice is autobiographical, and this, in part, is what is meant. We
human intelligence is organized around stories.
any given case, you might or might not choose to follow someone’s advice. But we can test whether advice is clear by asking this: If you do want to follow the advice, would you know how to do so?
Yet it’s particularly important to understand the forward-looking part of feedback when it’s evaluation. What does this mean for me? What will happen next, what is expected of me? Given where I stand, what should I do now?
SHIFT FROM WRONG SPOTTING TO DIFFERENCE SPOTTING So far, we’ve been talking
we make a key shift—away from that’s wrong and toward tell me more: Let’s figure out why we see this differently.
If the reason we see a particular piece of feedback differently isn’t simply that one of us is wrong, then what is the reason? There are two: We have different data, and we interpret that data differently.
Because wrong spotting is so much more compelling than difference spotting. Being aware of what they see that we don’t is just not as delicious as listening for how they’re wrong.
We remember what we got right, and as we’ll explore in the next chapter, we ascribe generally good intentions to ourselves.
One of the primary reasons we interpret data differently is that we have different rules in our heads about how things should be.
principle for how we organize our experiences is this: We are (usually) the sympathetic hero of the story.
there is “no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute center of.” We are each “lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms.”
At this point in the process, it can also be useful to make a list of the ways their feedback might be “right.”
Looking for what’s right about the feedback is a place where the conversation between them has traction to explore joint solutions, and one where Davis’s feedback
That might be a frustrating and difficult place for the two of you to be, but from a communication standpoint, you’ve succeeded.
Being transparent and honest about your reactions is not inconsistent with being open and curious, by the way. You can say what’s going on in your head: Wow. That’s upsetting to hear. I never would have imagined that. That is so far from how I see myself—or hope to be seen—that I’m almost speechless. I want to explain why, but I also want to make sure that I really understand what you’re saying.
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.
An app can’t tell you whether you are leading effectively, creating cohesion, persistence, or energy.
Let’s get specific. What does it mean that they’re feeling “disempowered and out of the loop”?
The key is purpose and mindset. Paul is not looking to agree or disagree, defend or accept. He’s trying to understand.
In fact, there is always a gap between the self we think we present and the way others see us. We may not recognize ourselves in others’ feedback, even when everyone else would agree that it’s the conventional wisdom about who we are and how we are.
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.
But get this: When we ourselves speak, the STS turns off.
Even the big patterns in our lives that are almost comically obvious to others may be blind spots
We know what they said; we want to know what they meant.
When we are angry, we are focused on the provocation, the threat. And it’s the threat that we remember later. For our colleague, our anger is the threat.
But situations are not tense. People are tense.
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 character.10
We judge ourselves by our intentions (arrow 2), while others judge us by our impacts (arrow 4).
The “fix” is to separate intentions from impacts when feedback is discussed.
they should share the impact the behavior had on them:
When you notice yourself wondering What was their agenda? and What’s wrong with them?, make sure your next thought is I wonder if this feedback is sitting in my blind spot.
The feedback we ask for is usually too general, or others assume that what we are really inviting is appreciation (and sometimes they’re right).
your nine-year-old): “What do you see me doing, or failing to do, that is getting in my own way?”
kinds of mirrors—Supportive Mirrors and Honest Mirrors.
Consciously or unconsciously, we often ask the people closest to us to be supportive mirrors. We share a piece of feedback from
Pentland and colleagues have developed electronic badges and smartphone apps that gather data as people interact throughout the day. Designed to track tone, pitch, pace, gestures, and other nonverbal cues, these devices help the researchers examine how such social signals influence productivity and decision making.12 Some of their initial findings are startling:
Blind spots are amplified by: Emotional Math: We discount our emotions, while others count them double. Attribution: We attribute our failure to the situation, while others attribute it to our character. Impact-Intent Gap: We judge ourselves by our intentions, while others judge us by our impact on them.
