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

by Douglas Stone

DIFFERENT DATA We each observe different data because we’re different people. We have different roles, live in different places, inhabit different bodies. We have different educations and training, different sensitivities, and care about different things. Sometimes different data is a matter of access:

Where you sit in an organization affects what you see.

Even when we have access to the same data, we tend to notice different things.

We’re engulfed by information—far too much to take in—and so we select small samples to pay attention to and ignore the rest.

We don’t notice what we don’t notice, so we don’t notice that we don’t notice.

“Why do we see this differently? What data do you have that I don’t?”

Life would be a lot easier if we routinely asked that question about different data. But we don’t. Why? 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. And once we spot an error, we can’t contain ourselves; we have to jump in and set things straight. But we have to fight that instinct. We have to consciously and persistently choose to ask about their data and share our own.

Biases Drive Data Collection

There’s another factor that makes difference spotting tough. What we do and don’t notice isn’t random. If your giver likes you and thinks you’re terrifically competent, they’re going to notice all the fantastic things you do. They’ll go out of their way to find them. Your radiance also influences how they interpret what they see. That mistake you made is simply the exception that proves just how competent you usually are, and maybe it wasn’t really a mistake at all. But if friction develops in the relationship—when the infatuation of new love fades, the stakes rise, or humidity sets in—biases shift. Now your giver begins to focus on the things you messed up while ignoring those you got right. Your “willingness to take risks” is now seen as “risky,” your “firm hand on the tille...

In a 2007 BusinessWeek poll, 90 percent of the managers surveyed believed their performance in the workplace to be in the top 10 percent.4 These biases can make difference spotting tougher still since we each feel it’s the other who is biased. In fact, we’re both biased, and we each need the other in order to see the whole picture more clearly.

DIFFERENCES IN INTERPRETATION The second reason why feedback that makes sense to the giver might not make sense to you is this: Even when you are both looking at the same data, each of you can interpret them differently.

Implicit Rules One of the primary reasons we interpret data differently is that we have different rules in our heads about how things should be. But we don’t think of them as our rules. We think of them as the rules.

Organizational culture, regional culture, and even family culture are all collections of implicit rules for “how we do things around here.” But everyone has their own individual set as well.

Feedback that isn’t making sense can suddenly fall into place when we understand the implicit rule underlying the interpretations. I assumed that asking questions at the company meeting showed engagement; I learn that it’s read as rude and contrarian.

Heroes and Villains One principle for how we organize our experiences is this: We are (usually) the sympathetic hero of the story.

In his speech to a graduating class at Kenyon, writer David Foster Wallace observed that 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.”5 In our story we are Dorothy, the Princess, or Rudolph, not the W...

ASK: WHAT’S RIGHT? 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.

we’re not using the word “right” to mean some final determination about objective truth. We mean it more as a mindset: 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.

WHEN YOU STILL DISAGREE Sometimes you will get to the point of fully understanding where a giver’s feedback comes from and what it is they’re suggesting, and you will simply disagree with it. In fact, now that you really do understand it, their feedback might seem even further off target or more unfair than before. That might be a frustrating and difficult place for the two of you to be, but from a communication standpoint, you’ve succeeded. Your goal is to understand the feedback giver, and for them to understand you. If you end up thinking the feedback is helpful, then you’ll take it.

you don’t, at least you’ll understand where the feedback comes from, what they were suggesting, and why you’re rejecting it. The same is true of evaluation. The better you understand the origins and consequences of the evaluation, the better able you are to explain why you disagree with it. 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:

“WHY CAN’T FEEDBACK JUST BE OBJECTIVE?” 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. Whatever metric you come up with, there will always be subjective judgments behind that metric:

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. If advice is autobiographical, so is evaluation.

The goal shouldn’t be to remove interpretation or judgment. It should be to make judgments thoughtfully, and once made, to have them be transparent and discussable.

This conversation between Paul and Monisha is not easy, but it’s important. The key is purpose and mindset. Paul is not looking to agree or disagree, defend or accept. He’s trying to understand. It’s not a problem-solving session, it’s an understanding session. If Paul had followed his instincts, he would have disagreed with Monisha at the outset, and the conversation might have ended there. Instead, he listens for labels and works hard to look under them, and when he’s unsure about what Monisha means, he doesn’t let it slip by. He asks. Giving up wrong spotting isn’t easy, and you don’t have to give it up altogether. You can still indulge in recreational wrong spotting on the weekends, with friends over a beer. Argue, accuse, vent, deny—give each other a hard time. If it’s fun, it’s fun. But when it matters, when you’re getting feedback that is important to the giver or potentially helpful to you as receiver, put the wrong spotting aside.

Summary: SOME KEY IDEAS 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.

See Your Blind Spots Discover How You Come Across

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. Why is it that there is such a gap between our self-perception and others’ stories about us? The good news is that the ways we are understood and misunderstood by others are amazingly systematic and predictable.

THE GAP MAP The Gap Map highlights the key elements that factor into the way I mean to be seen versus the way I am actually seen. Read from left to right, the Gap Map makes the cause of our blind spots visible.

let’s jump onto the map to see what happens. Annabelle’s focus is on changing her behavior (arrow 3); but her thoughts and feelings (arrow 1) remain unchanged. And this is a problem.

BEHAVIORAL BLIND SPOTS A 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.

my behavior is in your awareness and mostly not in my awareness. We all know this about human interactions, and yet somehow it comes as a surprise that our own behavior is largely invisible to us.

YOUR LEAKY FACE Who can see your face? Everyone. Who can’t see your face? You. We convey a tremendous amount of information through facial expressions. But our own face is a blind spot. The culprit is human anatomy: We’re trapped inside ourselves looking out.

Why is so much communicated through facial expression?

It’s because most humans are so wonderfully good at reading other people’s faces.

But we don’t only cooperate; we also compete. And when some people are trying to help you and other people are trying to hurt you, your social life gets complicated quick. This cooperation-competition dance rewards those who can reliably distinguish friend from foe.

we developed the ability to read nuances in faces and tone, and through this we formulate a “theory of mind”2 about those we interact with. The human deftness at reading people is most visible in its absence. Those who fall on the autism spectrum often struggle with exactly this. They often don’t look others in the eye and can’t read the social cues transmitted by faces or tone.3 This language that seems so natural to most people can be a struggle for them to learn. The rest of us read those cues constantly and largely unconsciously.

YOUR LEAKY TONE Tone of voice also conveys a surprising amount of information about our feelings. Others get meaning not just from what we say but how we say it. The precise percentage is impossible to determine (one study suggests 38 percent),5 but the point remains: Tone says a lot.

Tone, pitch, and cadence—what linguists call intonation contours—enhance or subvert meaning, and transmit rich information about the speaker’s emotions. Infants sort what they hear through the superior temporal sulcus (STS), located just above the ear. At four months all auditory information—whether their mother’s voice or a car horn—is attended to by the STS. But by seven months, babies start singling out human voices as the only sounds that trigger attention from the STS,6 and the STS shows especially heightened activity when that voice carries emotion. This little piece of our brain is dedicated to taking in language and reading tone and meaning. But get this: 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.

This explains why we are so often surprised when we get feedback based on how we said something.

So, like our facial expressions, our tone often betrays our thoughts and feelings in ways we don’t realize. We try to sound relaxed, but come across as uncomfortable;

YOUR LEAKY PATTERNS It’s easy to understand how the subtle things we do can fall into a blind spot—a furrowed brow here, an edgy tone there. What’s astonishing is that we can be unaware of even big, seemingly obvious patterns of behavior.

When his five-year-old son mimes a person pacing while barking into a cell phone, his daughter lights up: “It’s Daddy!” Bennett winces: “How is that me?” “Because,” she says, “you’re always on your cell phone!” He is? Bennett works hard to minimize time on his cell when his kids are around. But that’s not how they see it: In their minds he is constantly interrupting family time to make or take a call. One reason for the difference in their views is the perception of time. When we are on the phone, we’re immersed in the conversation taking place, and time moves along. Those around us overhear the dreaded half-a-logue; there’s no story, just an unintelligible half conversation, and time creeps.

E-MAIL BODY LANGUAGE Surprisingly, even on e-mail, people try to read emotions and tone. Or more precisely, despite lacking access to the sender’s face and voice, we retain the desire to know their mood and intentions, so we gather what clues we can. E-mail can provide obvious clues, like ALL CAPS, lots of !!??!s, and who is suddenly (strategically?)

cc’ed, as well as more subtle ones, like word choice or timing. We wonder why they responded instantly, or why they waited so long. Was their three-word response pointed or merely to the point? Was their outpouring of words just thorough, or a sign of exasperation? We know what they said; we want to know what they meant.

THEY MAY SEE EXACTLY WHAT WE ARE TRYING TO HIDE The fact that others are always reading our faces, tone, and behavior doesn’t mean they are always reading us right. They can often tell when what we say doesn’t match the way we feel, but they can’t always tell quite how. Sometimes people simply read us wrong. You are feeling shy at cocktail hour, wishing someone would approach you. But as you linger by the door, others see you as “aloof” ...

THREE BLIND-SPOT AMPLIFIERS Others observe things about us that we literally can’t observe about ourselves. Our blind spots are their hot spots. But differing observations are only part of the blind-spot disconnect. There are three dynamics that amplify the gap between how we see ourselves and how others see us. The three amplifiers are interrelated, but each is worth examining on its own.

AMPLIFIER 1: EMOTIONAL MATH Emotions play a huge role in the gap between how others see us and how we assume we are seen. 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 your colleague mentions your outburst and the way you “stormed” out of the room, you are in disbelief: “I’ve never once raised my voice at you,” you assert. “And I don’t ‘storm.’ ” And in your mind, you never have. 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. It’s not just part of the story, it’s the heart of the story. Your anger is integral to how your colleague sees you and interacts with you. As the example above reveals, strong emotions can seem as if they are part of the environment rather than part of us. It’s not that I was angry, we think, it’s that the situation was tense. But situations are not tense. People are tense.