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

by Douglas Stone

Absorbers will tend to see their own contribution to the problem and stop there. They quickly accept feedback and cut the conversation short, failing to explore the intersections, roles, choices, and reactions that created the problem under discussion.

If you soak up all the responsibility, you let others off the hook. Responsibility for learning and fixing the problem is hoarded and the best solutions less likely to emerge.

You might think this stance would be relaxing; after all, feedback simply bounces off you and nothing is ever your fault. But the experience is ultimately exhausting. Shifters find themselves constantly assaulted by everyone else’s incompetence or treacherousness. They are victims, powerless to protect themselves. Life happens to them. In fact, life happens at them.

Figure out your

contribution to the problem and take responsibility for it.

First, I take responsibility for my part, and second, we are both contributing to this.

in the wake of upsetting feedback, our upset itself distorts what we think the feedback means.

How you feel in that moment has a big impact on the story you tell yourself.

OUR PAST: THE GOOGLE BIAS Today’s upsetting feedback can influence the story we tell about yesterday: Suddenly what comes to mind is all the damning evidence of past failures, earlier poor choices, and bygone bad behavior.

But if you’re in the grip of strong emotion, negative feedback floods across boundaries into other areas of your self-image:

Flooding can also drown out any positive attributes that might lend balance to the picture.

When we feel bad, we assume we will always feel bad.

A specific and contained piece of feedback steadily turns into an ever more ominous future disaster:

Some of us kick and claw in the moment but over time come around to accepting the possibility of change.

It’s especially important to figure out how you tend to respond during that first stage—I run, I fight, I deny, I exaggerate—so that you can recognize your usual reaction and name it to yourself in the moment. If you name it, you have some power over it.

If you’re having trouble discerning your footprint, ask those around you. As they describe your defensive behavior, you can notice yourself getting defensive about it. Then you’ll know.

Second, you can think through in a balanced and unhurried way what the news might mean for you and what actions you would take if you received it.

During the feedback conversation itself, periodically check in on yourself and slow things down. Self-observation awakens your left prefrontal cortex—which is where the pleasures associated with learning are located.

As you get better at slowing things down and noticing what’s going on in your mind and body, you can begin to sort through your reactions.

What do I feel? What’s the story I’m telling (and inside that story, what’s the threat)? What’s the actual feedback?

it. Pay special attention to the threat. It could be about a bad thing that might happen as a result of the feedback, or about what this means for how others see you or how you see yourself.

The point is not that everything we add to the story is wrong. But we have to be clear about what we’ve added, and be aware of our patterns over time for the kinds of things we tend to add.

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. And people’s views of us can change over time.

One way to do that is by noticing which of the above rules your story is violating and revising your story to be consistent with them.

we often fail to distinguish between consequences that will happen and consequences that might happen.

they consistently overestimate how awful they’ll feel and how long they’ll feel awful.”2 And that’s further compounded by our tendency to underestimate how resilient we are likely to be in the face of actual loss.

comedy is tragedy plus time.

Humor—even or especially gallows humor—offers a release from the emotional tension of a miserable moment,

If you can see humor in the situation, it means you’re succeeding in gaining perspective. The ability to laugh at yourself is also an indicator that you are ready and able to take feedback. Laughing at yourself requires you to loosen your grip on your identity.

When you think something is funny, you are helping to disrupt the panic and anxiety that are taking hold, and to calm down those upsetting signals.

empathy can have a profound effect on how we see another person and hear their feedback.

So don’t dismiss others’ views of you, but don’t accept them wholesale either.

Emotional distress can send us under the covers for weeks, but it can also cause us—force us—to reevaluate ourselves and our lives in ways that we otherwise simply would not.

we often learn the most from the feedback that in the moment is the most distressing.

You might think those around you should know you’re having trouble, but they may not. You might have to say the words: I need help. I need you to be supportive right now. Ask those around you to be supportive mirrors.

If you can’t find self-acceptance right now, get self-acceptance by proxy.

allow them to help you find ways to make meaning out of the pain you’re experiencing by doing something useful with it in the next chapter of your life.

Some people tell their identity story in ways that cause their identity to be brittle, while others tell their identity story in ways that allow it to be robust.

Yet simple labels also present a problem. They are simple because they are “all or nothing.”

Here’s the bottom line: As long as you tell your self-story in these black-and-white terms, you will find no peace. You can’t choose between whether you’re a good person or a bad person. Whichever you select, there is evidence for the opposite conclusion.

Accepting the fact that you will make mistakes takes some of the pressure off. Any given mistake may still have the capacity to shock and dismay you,

Pursuing a certain amount of self-interest is a requirement of being alive, and occasionally that self-interest will conflict with someone else’s self-interest, and occasionally that will be pointed out to you.

Accepting that we’re not perfect also means giving up the idea that being perfect is a viable way to escape negative feedback.

If you have a fixed mindset, every situation you encounter is a referendum on whether you have the smarts or ability that you think (or hope) you have.

But the bottom line is this: People do get better when they apply themselves, and people apply themselves when they believe they can get better.

If you’ve got a growth identity, it’s easier to understand the mixed data.

did. Growth identity folks aren’t thrown by the contradiction and are motivated to seek accurate information in order to adjust and learn.

Force yourself to try things you aren’t good at, and when you fall on your face, make a list of three ways you could do better next time. Rinse and repeat, and see what happens.

As feedback receivers, we are always sorting feedback into coaching and evaluation bins. Your choice of bin makes a huge difference in your ability to take in feedback productively.

We snatch defensiveness from the jaws of learning.