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

by Douglas Stone

Your spouse has been complaining about your same character flaws for years. You think of this less as your spouse “giving you feedback,” and more as your spouse “being annoying.”

Pushing harder rarely opens the door to genuine learning. The focus should not be on teaching feedback givers to give. The focus—at work and at home—should be on feedback receivers, helping us all to become more skillful learners. The real leverage is creating pull.

In addition to our desire to learn and improve, we long for something else that is fundamental: to be loved, accepted, and respected just as we are.

Receiving feedback sits at the intersection of these two needs—our drive to learn and our longing for acceptance.

Nothing affects the learning culture of an organization more than the skill with which its executive team receives feedback.

Truth Triggers are set off by the substance of the feedback itself—it’s somehow off, unhelpful, or simply untrue. In response, we feel indignant, wronged, and exasperated.

Relationship Triggers are tripped by the particular person who is giving us this gift of feedback.

Identity Triggers focus neither on the feedback nor on the person offering it. Identity triggers are all about us. Whether the feedback is right or wrong, wise or witless, something about it has caused our identity—our sense of who we are—to come undone.

Our triggers are obstacles because they keep us from engaging skillfully in the conversation.

Broadly, feedback comes in three forms: appreciation (thanks), coaching (here’s a better way to do it), and evaluation (here’s where you stand).

Evaluations are always in some respect comparisons, implicitly or explicitly, against others or against a particular set of standards.

Each form of feedback—appreciation, coaching, and evaluation—satisfies a different set of human needs. We need evaluation to know where we stand, to set expectations, to feel reassured or secure. We need coaching to accelerate learning, to focus our time and energy where it really matters, and to keep our relationships healthy and functioning. And we need appreciation if all the sweat and tears we put into our jobs and our relationships are going to feel worthwhile.

Three qualities are required for appreciation to count. First, it has to be specific.

Second, appreciation has to come in a form the receiver values and hears clearly.

Third, meaningful appreciation has to be authentic.

Most of this book is advice for feedback receivers. But here, we offer thoughts to both giver and receiver. Ask yourself three questions: (1) What’s my purpose in giving/receiving this feedback? (2) Is it the right purpose from my point of view? (3) Is it the right purpose from the other person’s point of view? Is your primary goal coaching, evaluation, or appreciation? Are you trying to improve, to assess, or to say thanks and be supportive?

“Feedback” is really three different things, with different purposes: Appreciation — motivates and encourages. Coaching — helps increase knowledge, skill, capability, growth, or raises feelings in the relationship. Evaluation — tells you where you stand, aligns expectations, and informs decision making. We need all three, but often talk at cross-purposes. Evaluation is the loudest and can drown out the other two. (And all coaching includes a bit of evaluation.)

Coaching What Was Heard What Was Meant Be more confident. Give the impression that you know things even if you don’t. Have the confidence to say you don’t know when you don’t know.

If you already “know” what was meant, there’s nothing to learn and no reason to be curious. “ ‘Be more affectionate’? Excellent, she wants me to initiate sex more often.” But does the label “be more affectionate” actually mean “initiate sex more often”? Here are some other choices: (a) hold hands in public; (b) pitch in more around the house; (c) be more playful and cuddly; (d) tell me you love me at least once a decade.

These are all interpretations of the data. You can’t observe “too laid back”; laid back is itself a judgment about observed behaviors, and too laid back is a judgment about the optimal level of laid back.

It is said that all advice is autobiographical, and this, in part, is what is meant. We interpret what we see based on our own life experiences, assumptions, preferences, priorities, and implicit rules about how things work and how one should be. I understand your life through the lens of my life; my advice for you is based on me.

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.

It’s reasonable to wonder: If subjectivity and interpretation make feedback so hard, why not just be objective and stick with the facts? Many organizations are trying to do just that by developing competency models and behavioral guides and using formulas and metrics for measuring performance. These can be helpful to align expectations and clarify criteria. But they don’t take the subjectivity out of feedback. Nothing does.

Feedback is delivered in vague labels, and we are prone to wrong spotting. To understand your feedback, discuss where it is: Coming from: their data and interpretations Going to: advice, consequences, expectations Ask: What’s different about The data we are looking at Our interpretations and implicit rules Ask: What’s right about the feedback to seek out what’s legit and what concerns you have in common. Working together to get a more complete picture maximizes the chances you will (both) learn something.

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.

Who can see your face? Everyone. Who can’t see your face? You.

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

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). We say something as noncommittal as “So how am I doing?” or “Do you have any feedback for me?,” which leaves our giver guessing about what we really want—How are you doing with what? This project? Our relationship? Your leadership? Your life?—and

When we are under stress or in conflict we lose skills we normally have, impact others in ways we don’t see, are at a loss for positive strategies. We need honest mirrors in these moments, and often that role is played best by those with whom we have the hardest time.

What to the giver seems like a recommendation for a small behavioral tweak may feel to the receiver like a rejection of Who I Am.

At the point at which you realize there are two topics running simultaneously, say that out loud and propose a way forward. Just like the signal that directs train traffic at the switch, you’re offering a directional sign to mark the junction where two tracks—the two topics—are splitting.

We can be triggered by who is giving us the feedback. What we think about the giver: Are they credible? Do we trust them? Did they deliver our feedback with good judgment and skill? How we feel treated by the giver: Do we feel accepted? Appreciated? Like our autonomy is respected? Relationship triggers create switchtrack conversations, where we have two topics on the table and talk past each other. Spot the two topics and give each its own track.

When we are the ones giving the feedback, we know we are offering “constructive criticism” and helpful coaching. We’re confident that we’ve correctly identified the cause of the problem, and we’re stepping up to address it. Yet when we’re on the receiving end of this kind of feedback, we don’t hear it as “constructive” anything. We hear it as blame: This is your fault. You are the problem. You need to change.

Sometimes role clashes arise not from confusion but from clarity. The tension is embedded in the organizational structure itself. Compliance officers and traders at a bank will often be in conflict, not just because of rogue traders or overly cautious compliance officers, but because the very nature of their roles puts them at odds. Other common examples are Sales and Legal, surgeons and anesthesiologists, architects and engineers, and HR and everyone. As one HR executive joked, “In HR, we’re not happy until you’re not happy.”

There are two common feedback profiles that are particularly challenging to deal with on the topic of accountability: shifters and absorbers. A systems perspective helps us fight these tendencies in ourselves and understand them in others as we talk about feedback.

How do we get ourselves caught up in fixes that fail? By focusing on only one player in the system and papering over the real problem with a solution that is fundamentally unsound.

To understand the feedback you get, take three steps back: One Step Back: You + Me intersections. Are differences between us creating the friction? Two Steps Back: Role clashes. Is this partly a result of the roles we play in the organization or the family? Three Steps Back: Big picture. Are processes, policies, physical environment, or other players reinforcing the problem?

Looking at systems: Reduces judgment Enhances accountability Uncovers root causes

Doing what feels good now (finding a way to make negative feedback stop) may be costly in the long run (you are left, fired, or simply stagnate). And what is healthy in the long run (understanding and acting on useful feedback) may feel painful now.

“Responses to threats and unpleasantness are faster, stronger, and harder to inhibit than responses to opportunities and pleasures.”

There is a two-way street between emotions and conscious thoughts: Thoughts can cause emotions (as when you reflect on a foolish thing you said), but emotions can also cause thoughts.

If our stories are a result of our feelings plus our thoughts, then we can change our stories by working to change either our feelings or our thoughts. So there are two ways in.

What’s the actual feedback? Our mind takes what was said and immediately tells a story. It’s important to peel back that story and ask yourself, what exactly was the feedback? What was said?

Time: The present does not change the past. The present influences, but does not determine, the future.

Specificity: Being lousy at one thing does not make us lousy at unrelated things. Being lousy at something now doesn’t mean we will always be lousy at it.

People: If one person doesn’t like us it doesn’t mean that everyone doesn’t like us. Even a person who doesn’t like us usually likes some things about us. An...

So when we think about the consequences of feedback, the goal is not to dismiss them or pretend they don’t matter. The goal is to right-size them, to develop a realistic and healthy sense of what might happen and respond in line with these reasonable possibilities.

Before we can decide what we think of the feedback we get, we need to remove the distortions: Be prepared, be mindful — recognize your feedback footprint. Separate the strands — of feeling / story / feedback. Contain the story — what is this about and what isn’t it about? Change your vantage point — to another, to the future, to the comedy. Accept that you can’t control how others see you.

Identity is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves—what we’re like, what we stand for, what we’re good at, what we’re capable of. I’m a strong leader; I’m an involved grandmother; I’m rational; I’m passionate; I’m always fair.1 When feedback contradicts or challenges our identity, our story about who we are can unravel.

In Difficult Conversations we offered three things to accept about yourself, and we include them here: You will make mistakes, you have complex intentions, and you have contributed to the problem. Accepting these is a lifelong project, but working on them makes hard feedback easier to take in.