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

by Douglas Stone

It’s about managing your emotional triggers so that you can take in what the other person is telling you, and being open to seeing yourself in new ways. And sometimes, as we discuss in chapter 10, it’s about setting boundaries and saying no.

Trying to ignore a triggered reaction without first identifying its cause is like dealing with a fire by disconnecting the smoke alarm.

triggers are obstacles, but they aren’t only obstacles. Triggers are also information—a kind of map—that can help us locate the source of the trouble.

“Truth Triggers,” “Relationship Triggers,” and “Identity Triggers.”

Truth Triggers are set off by the substance of the feedback itself—it’s somehow off, unhelpful, or simply untrue.

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

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.

Receiving feedback well is a process of sorting and filtering—of learning how the other person sees things;

of trying on ideas that at first seem a poor fit; ...

Separate Appreciation, Coaching, and Evaluation

The first challenge in understanding feedback is that, surprisingly often, we don’t know whether it is feedback, and if it is, we’re not sure exactly what kind it is or how on earth it’s supposed to help us.

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

Know what you want, and know what you’re getting. The match matters.

First Understand Sounds obvious, seems easy: Before you figure out what to do with the feedback, make sure you understand it.

The first step is for him to work harder to understand exactly what Nancy sees that is causing concern.

We’re not only blind to certain things about ourselves; we’re also blind to the fact that we’re blind. Yet, gallingly, our blind spots are glaringly obvious to everybody else.

Don’t Switchtrack: Disentangle What from Who

It is the nature of our particular pairing—rather than either of us individually—that creates friction.

So feedback in relationships is rarely the story of you or me. It’s more often the story of you and me. It’s the story of our relationship system.

Identity is the story we tell ourselves about who we are and what the future holds for us, and when critical feedback is incoming, that story is under attack.

Cultivate a Growth Identity

How they are now is simply how they are now. It’s a pencil sketch of a moment in time, not a portrait in oil and gilded frame.

Cultivate a Growth Identity: Sort toward Coaching We are always learning and growing. Challenge is the fastest track to growth, especially if we can sort toward coaching.

Coaching can be sparked by two different kinds of needs.

One is the need to improve your knowledge or skills in order to build capability and meet novel challenges.

In the second kind of coaching feedback, the feedback giver is not responding to your need to develop certain skills. Instead, they are identifying a problem in your relationship: Something is missing, something is wrong. This

Part of what can be hard about evaluation is concern about possible consequences—real or imagined. You didn’t qualify (real), and never will (predicted or imagined).

Type of Feedback Giver’s Purpose Appreciation To see, acknowledge, connect, motivate, thank Coaching To help receiver expand knowledge, sharpen skill, improve capability Or, to address the giver’s feelings or an imbalance in the relationship Evaluation To rate or rank against a set of standards, to align expectations, to inform decision making

(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?

“I’m intending to give you coaching. Is that how you’re hearing it? From your point of view, is that what you need?”

the evaluation conversation and the coaching conversation should be separated by at least days, and probably longer.

When a professor hands back a graded paper, the student will first turn to the last page to check their grade. Only then can they take in the instructor’s margin notes. We can’t focus on how to improve until we know where we stand.

Now is when that driver needs to move, now is when they need the “coaching.”

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.

In our minds, we have a high-definition movie that captures all that we mean by those labels—the

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.