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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Henry Cloud
The junior member of the team went on to describe how he felt—that there was no way to win with her, that she was always so “harsh.” The rest of the team and I just listened. I could see that there was more going on here than just his relationship with her. While she was very direct and her feedback was often served without cookies and milk, her intentions were good. She could be forceful
“But it seems when she does it to you,” I continued, “it hurts instead of feeling helpful.”
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As we talked more, he revealed that he had never worked in a culture like this, one where real, honest feedback was freely shared but where no one constantly felt threatened. At the places where he had worked before, everyone tried to be nice, but often they weren’t honest.
key
What’s more, he was able to see now that some of the resistance and defensiveness he’d been expressing stemmed from his own tendency to take well-intentioned comments as put-downs. This was an important insight for him, because to truly benefit from Corner Four relationships, we must realize that this inner dialogue can interfere with giving and taking feedback.
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Some people have spent their whole lives submerged in Corner Three flattery. No one has ever told them that
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We often filter current relationships through the cloudy lens of the past.
junior executive copped to his need to work on hearing things differently, being honest at the moment when something doesn’t feel good, and asking the other person
“And by the way, he’s not making all of this up, you know. I know you don’t mean it in a mean way, but you
As Catmull points out, we all need to be able to tell each other that “the film sucks” but know that it isn’t personal and we all want the same thing, to make it better. Corner Four is a both/and place.
We need kindness to grow. We need a lot of it, and if we get a lot of it, we
1. Standards for how we communicate that we want something to be better. 2. Monitoring how well that communication is being done.
We need some operating standards, values, or behavioral rules to help good feedback thrive. At Pixar, for example, they all assume that there’ll always be problems and they’ll always be addressing them.
pixar
ideas have no rank or position.
Moreover, Pixar placed equal emphasis on giving and getting feedback. That was part of everyone’s job—not just to give it but to receive it in a way that would serve the greater
“We engage in respectful, collaborative, timely, and complete dialogue. We clearly and directly convey ideas and share our points of view, while maintaining openness to different perspectives.
standard
Focus on the problem, not the person. Let’s love every idea for five minutes (or some amount of time—forty-five seconds?). Say it with respect, but say it all. Listen and think about it before negating or disagreeing. No zingers or over-the-line personal attacks. No back-channeling or side conversations.
courtesy rules
