Thanks for the Feedback Quotes

“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”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“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. (“Tone? I’m not using some kind of tone!”) It also helps explain why our voice sounds so unfamiliar when we hear ourselves on an audio recording. When transmitted from a speaker, our own voice gets routed through our STS, and we suddenly hear ourselves the way others do. (“I sound like that?!”) We’ve been hearing ourselves every day of our lives, and yet we haven’t.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“YOUR LEAKY FACE Who can see your face? Everyone. Who can’t see your face? You.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“Like a town that slowly takes shape on the curve of a river, these experiences accumulated into a village of values, assumptions, and expectations about what it means to be “good” or “competent.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“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.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“If advice is autobiographical, so is evaluation. The evaluation we give people is a reflection of our own (or our organization’s) preferences, assumptions, values, and goals. They might be broadly shared or idiosyncratic, but either way, they are ours.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“All things being equal, we’ll find a sympathetic story that explains and justifies our own behavior. We remember what we got right, and as we’ll explore in the next chapter, we ascribe generally good intentions to ourselves. Ninety-three percent of American motorists believe they are better-than-average drivers. 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.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“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.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“Even when we have access to the same data, we tend to notice different things. We are all moving along the same sidewalk, but the historian may notice the brickwork, the jogger the impact on her knees, and the fellow in the wheelchair the areas that are less accessible. 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.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“There’s another way to think about it. As receivers, we shouldn’t use our views to dismiss the giver’s views, but neither should we discard our own. Working to first understand their views doesn’t mean we pretend we don’t have life experiences or opinions. Instead, we need to understand their views even as we’re aware of our own. And that’s almost impossible to do unless we make a key shift—away from that’s wrong and toward tell me more: Let’s figure out why we see this differently.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“When Receiving Coaching: Clarify Advice In any given case, you might or might not choose to follow someone’s advice. 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? Too often the answer is no, because the advice is simply too vague. “If you win a Tony award, be sure your speech sparkles.” “Children need love, but they also need predictability and limits.” “If you want to shine at work, make yourself indispensable.” There are two problems with these: (1) We don’t know what they actually mean, and (2) even if we did, we wouldn’t know what to do to follow the advice. What does “sparkles” mean, and how would our speech acquire this magical glow?”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“Artificial intelligence expert Roger Schank has an observation about this: He notes that while computers are organized around managing and accessing data, human intelligence is organized around stories.2”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“So to clarify the feedback under the label we need to “be specific” about two things: (1) where the feedback is coming from, and (2) where the feedback is going.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“Labels do serve some useful functions in feedback. Like the soup label, they give us a general idea of the topic, and they can act as shorthand when we return to that topic later. But the label is not the meal.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“Why is wrong spotting so easy? Because there’s almost always something wrong—something the feedback giver is overlooking, shortchanging, or misunderstanding. About you, about the situation, about the constraints you’re under. And givers compound the problem by delivering feedback that is vague, making it easy for us to overlook, shortchange, and misunderstand what they are saying. But in the end, wrong spotting not only defeats wrong feedback, it defeats learning.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“The evaluation conversation needs to take place first. 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.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“Be explicit about what you think the conversation is about, and be explicit about what would be most helpful to you. Then discuss and, if you each need something different, negotiate. Remember: Explicit disagreement is better than implicit misunderstanding. Explicit disagreement leads to clarity, and is the first step in each of you getting your differing needs met.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“Over time, appreciation deficits set in. And these often become two-way: I think you don’t appreciate all I do and all I put up with, and you think I don’t appreciate whatever-it-is you do. Call it Mutual Appreciation Deficit Disorder (MADD), and you have the ingredients for a troubled working relationship. Second, appreciation has to come in a form the receiver values and hears clearly. Gary Chapman makes a similar point about love in his book The 5 Love Languages. Some of us take in love through words (“I love you”), while others hear it more clearly through acts of service, quality time, physical contact, or gifts.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“satisfies a different set of human needs. We need evaluation to know where we stand, to set expectations, to feel reassured or secure. We need coaching to accelerate learning, to focus our time and energy where it really matters, and to keep our relationships healthy and functioning. And we need appreciation if all the sweat and tears we put into our jobs and our relationships are going to feel worthwhile.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“And it is the bullwhip of negative judgment—from ourselves or others—that produces much of our anxiety around feedback. Surprisingly, reassurance—“You can do this” and “I believe in you”—also falls into the category of additional judgments, but on the positive side.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“The “problem” the coaching is aimed at fixing is how the giver is feeling, or a perceived imbalance in the relationship.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“As you approach these chapters, have this question marinating in the back of your mind: Why is it that when we give feedback we so often feel right, yet when we receive feedback it so often feels wrong?”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“Research conducted at Stanford points to two very different ways people tell their identity story and the effect that can have on how we experience criticism, challenge, and failure. One identity story assumes our traits are “fixed”: Whether we are capable or bumbling, lovable or difficult, smart or dull, we aren’t going to change. Hard work and practice won’t help; we are as we are. Feedback reveals “how we are,” so there’s a lot at stake.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“Trying to talk about both topics simultaneously is like mixing your apple pie and your lasagna into one pan and throwing it in the oven. No matter how long you bake it, it’s going to come out a mess.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“Relationship triggers produce hurt, suspicion, and sometimes anger. The way out is to disentangle the feedback from the relationship issues it triggers, and to discuss both, clearly and separately. In practice, we almost never do this. Instead, as receivers, we take up the relationship issues and let the original feedback drop.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“Managing truth triggers is not about pretending there’s something to learn, or saying you think it’s right if you think it’s wrong. It’s about recognizing that it’s always more complicated than it appears and working hard to first understand. And even if you decide that 90 percent of the feedback is off target, that last golden 10 percent might be just the insight you need to grow.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“Because feedback givers are abundant and our shortcomings seemingly boundless, we imagine that feedback can trigger us in a googolplex of ways. But here’s more good news: There are only three. We call them “Truth Triggers,” “Relationship Triggers,” and “Identity Triggers.” Each is set off for different reasons, and each provokes a different set of reactions and responses from us. Truth Triggers are set off by the substance of the feedback itself—it’s somehow off, unhelpful, or simply untrue. In response, we feel indignant, wronged, and exasperated. Miriam experiences a truth trigger when her husband tells her she was “unfriendly and aloof” at his nephew’s bar mitzvah. “Unfriendly? Was I supposed to get up on the table and tap dance?” This feedback is ridiculous. It is just plain wrong. Relationship Triggers are tripped by the particular person who is giving us this gift of feedback. All feedback is colored by the relationship between giver and receiver, and we can have reactions based on what we believe about the giver (they’ve got no credibility on this topic!) or how we feel treated by the giver (after all I’ve done for you, I get this kind of petty criticism?). Our focus shifts from the feedback itself to the audacity of the person delivering it (are they malicious or just stupid?). By contrast, Identity Triggers focus neither on the feedback nor on the person offering it. 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. We feel overwhelmed, threatened, ashamed, or off balance. We’re suddenly unsure what to think about ourselves, and question what we stand for. When we’re in this state, the past can look damning and the future bleak. That’s the identity trigger talking, and once it gets tripped, a nuanced discussion of our strengths and weaknesses is not in the cards. We’re just trying to survive.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“Nothing affects the learning culture of an organization more than the skill with which its executive team receives feedback. And of course, as you move up, candid coaching becomes increasingly scarce, so you have to work harder to get it. But doing so sets the tone and creates an organizational culture of learning, problem solving, and adaptive high performance.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“impact. Feedback-seeking behavior—as it’s called in the research literature—has been linked to higher job satisfaction, greater creativity on the job, faster adaptation in a new organization or role, and lower turnover. And seeking out negative feedback is associated with higher performance ratings.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“So here we are. Torn. Is it possible that feedback is like a gift and like a colonoscopy? Should we hang in there and take it, or turn and run? Is the learning really worth the pain? We are conflicted.”
― Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well