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

by Douglas Stone

So feedback givers rarely share the raw observations behind their labels because they simply aren’t aware of them. It’s up to you to help them sort it out. Your goal here is not to ignore or dismiss the interpretation. Data is crucial, but so is the interpretation. At the very least, it’s one person’s view of things. So you want to get a clear picture of both data and interpretation.

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?

“I don’t say yes or no to a request in the moment. Instead, I ask some sorting questions.” The questions she finds most helpful are these: “Is this more or less urgent than what you needed yesterday?” and “Are there pieces of this that are more important than other pieces, and why?” She then tells the requester: “I want to take a careful look at what’s on my plate before I get back to you.”

The evaluation: Margie is not tapped as the new department head. What Margie says: That’s disappointing. Who got it? What Margie later wishes she had asked: Can you say more about what you felt I was missing as you looked at my fit for the job? What concerns did people have? Do you have suggestions for how I might fill in some gaps in my experience or skill set? How will this decision affect my project mix? How about my compensation, now and in the coming year?

Missed job promotion

it’s useful to have a short list of good questions in your back pocket before you walk into any evaluation conversation.

All the sorts of things that form the giver’s feedback in the first place are also going on in your head.

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 the feedback might be helpful.

If you don’t, at least you’ll understand where the feedback comes from, what they were suggesting, and why you’re rejecting it.

sharing your reactions and continuing to try to understand.

the better you understand the feedback, the more likely you are to find something in it that is useful, or at the very least to understand the ways in which you are being misunderstood, and why.

It’s not a problem-solving session, it’s an understanding session.

Surprisingly, even on e-mail, people try to read emotions and tone.

We subtract certain emotions from the equation: “That emotion is not really who I am.” But others count it double: “That emotion is exactly who you are.”

Anger, too, is often invisible to its owner in the moment.

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.

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.

We judge ourselves by our intentions (arrow 2), while others judge us by our impacts (arrow 4).

“I’ve been working hard to be more patient [arrow 2, my intentions]. And yet it sounds like that’s not the impact I’m having [arrow 4]. That’s upsetting. Let’s figure out why.”

Their feedback is packed with assumed intentions.

Telling this latter group not to bully others is no solution, because they don’t realize that they’re doing so. Instead, discussing the impact of specific behaviors (and prohibiting them when appropriate) helps the offending party see themselves in the moment and begins to illuminate their blind spot.

When we’re on the giving side, we often withhold critical feedback because we don’t want to hurt others’ feelings or start a fight. We figure they must already know, or that it’s someone else’s job to tell them, or that if they really wanted to hear about it, they’d ask.

Instead of dismissing the feedback or the person giving it to you, use these thoughts as a blind-spot alert.

The feedback we ask for is usually too general, or others assume that what we are really inviting is appreciation

“What do you see me doing, or failing to do, that is getting in my own way?”

but if you respond with genuine curiosity and appreciation, they’ll be able to paint you a picture that is clear, detailed, and useful.

Our usual response to upsetting feedback is to reach for other feedback that contradicts it, in order to protect ourselves.

Instead of whipping out contradictory feedback, take a breath and look for consistent feedback—consistent

The feedback is not initially what you expect, but once it’s reinterpreted, you can at least identify the behavior being discussed.

“Here’s feedback I just got. It seems wrong. My first reaction is to reject it. But I wonder if this is feedback in a blind spot? Do you see me doing this sometimes, and if so, when? What impact do you see it having?” You have to let your friend know that you want honesty, and here’s why.

But her colleagues didn’t want her to seem respectful; they wanted her to feel respectful.

There’s nothing wrong with that reaction or that topic, but it has zero overlap with Kim’s topic. Now we have two people giving feedback and no one receiving it.

A key part of the dynamic here is that the person receiving the original feedback is unaware that they are changing the subject.

The negative impact is that because we now have two topics, the conversation gets tangled.

And once we disqualify the giver, we reject the substance of the feedback without a second thought. Based on the who, we discard the what.

The giver fails to handle the giving with appropriate care; how they give it shows a lack of skill; when and where they give it shows a lack of judgment.

We are (often justifiably) outraged by where, when, and how, and a classic switchtrack ensues.

we can often benefit from the insight of newcomers or outsiders unencumbered by knowledge of “the way things are done.”

Want to fast-track your growth? Go directly to the people you have the hardest time with. Ask them what you’re doing that’s exacerbating the situation. They will surely tell you.

The goal is to get better at realizing when we’ve got two topics on the table, and to address each on the merits rather than letting one get tangled up in, or cancel out, the other.

At the point at which you realize there are two topics running simultaneously, say that out loud and propose a way forward.

“I see two related but separate topics for us to discuss. They are both important. Let’s discuss each topic fully but separately, giving each topic its own track. After we’ve finished discussing the first topic, we’ll swing back around and discuss the second one.”

emotion. If your relationship trigger reaction is so strong that it gets in the way of your being able to take in what they are saying, then you should say so and propose that your topic be discussed first.

We stay on the giver’s topic (their track), but we misunderstand what that topic is.

when you receive coaching, a question to ask yourself is this: Is this about helping me grow and improve, or is this the giver’s way of raising an important relationship issue that has been upsetting them?

Each part in the system influences other parts in the system; changing one thing has a ripple effect elsewhere.

When something goes wrong in a system, we each see some things the other doesn’t,

Each of us is part of the problem.

It helps us identify root causes and the ways everyone in the system is contributing to the problem.

Accidental adversaries are created by two things: role confusion and role clarity.

How are our roles contributing to how we see each other, and to the feedback we give each other?