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

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

DOUGLAS STONE and SHEILA HEEN are lecturers on law at Harvard Law School and cofounders of Triad Consulting. They both live in New England.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Before you tell me how to do it better, before you lay out your big plans for changing, fixing, and improving me, before you teach me how to pick myself up and dust myself off so that I can be shiny and successful—know this: I’ve heard it before.

I’ve been graded, rated, and ranked. Coached, screened, and scored. I’ve been picked first, picked last, and not picked at all. And that was just kindergarten.

We swim in an ocean of feedback.

Each year in the United States alone, every schoolchild will be handed back as many as 300 assignments, papers, and tests. Millions of kids will be assessed as they try out for a team or audition to be cast in a school play. Almost 2 million teenagers will receive SAT scores and face college verdicts thick and thin. At least 40 million people will be sizing up one another for love online, where 71 percent of them believe they can judge love at first sight. And now that we know each other . . . 250,000 weddings will be called off, and 877,000 spouses will file for divorce.1

More feedback awaits at work. Twelve million people will lose a job and countless others will worry that they may be next. More than 500,000 entrepreneurs will open their doors for the first time, and almost 600,000 will shut theirs for the last. Thousands of other businesses will struggle to get by as debates proliferate in the boardroom and the back hall about why they are struggling. Feedback flies.2

Did we mention performance reviews? Estimates suggest that between 50 and 90 percent of employees will receive performance reviews this year, upon which our raises, bonuses, promotions—and often our self-esteem—ride. Across the globe, 825 million work hours—a cumulative 94,000 years—are spent each year preparing for and engaging in annual reviews. Afterward we all certainly feel thousands of years older, but are we any wiser?3

Margie receives a “Meets Expectations,” which sounds to her like “Really, You Still Work Here?”

Your second grader’s art project, “Mommy Yells,” was a hot topic at the school’s Open House Night.

Your spouse has been complaining about your same character flaws for years. You think of this less as your spouse “giving you feedback,” and more as your spouse “being annoying.”

Rodrigo reads over his 360-degree feedback report.4 Repeatedly. He can’t make head or tail of it, but one thing has changed: He now feels awkward with his colleagues, all 360 degrees of them.

Thanks for the Feedback is about the profound challenge of being on the receiving end of feedback—good or bad, right or wrong, flippant, caring, or callous. This book is not a paean to improvement or a pep talk on how to make friends with your mistakes. There is encouragement here, but our primary purpose is to take an honest look at why receiving feedback is hard, and to provide a framework and some tools that can help you metabolize challenging, even crazy-making information and use it to fuel insight and growth.

• • •

In 1999, along with our friend and colleague Bruce Patton, we published Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most. Since then, we’ve continued to teach at Harvard Law School and to work with clients across continents, cultures, and industries. We’ve had the privilege of working with an amazing assortment of people: executives, entrepreneurs, oil rig operators, doctors, nurses, teachers, scientists, engineers, religious leaders, police officers, filmmakers, lawyers, journalists, and relief workers. Even dance instructors and astronauts.

Here’s something we noticed early on: When we ask people to list their most difficult conversations, feedback always comes up. It doesn’t matter who they are, where they are, what they do, or why they brought us in. They describe just how tough it is to give honest feedback, even when they know it’s sorely needed. They tell us about performance problems that go unaddressed for years and explain that when they finally give the feedback, it rarely goes well. The coworker is upset and defensive, and ends up less motivated, not more. Given how hard it is to muster the courage and energy to give feedback in the first place, and the dispiriting results—well, who needs it?

Eventually, someone in the group will pipe up to observe that getting feedback is often no easier. The feedback is unfair or off base. It’s poorly timed and even more poorly delivered. And it’s not clear why the giver thinks they are qualified to offer an opinion; they may be the boss, but they don’t really understand what we do or the constraints we’re under. We are left feeling underappreciated, demotivated, and more than a little indignant. Who needs it?

Interesting. When we give feedback, we notice that the receiver isn’t good at receiving it. When we receive feedback, we notice that the giver isn’t good at giving it.

We wondered: What is it that makes feedback such a conundrum for both givers and receivers? We started listening closely to people as they described their dilemmas, struggles, and triumphs, and noticed those same struggles in ourselves. As we worked to develop ways to approach feedback differently, we soon realized that the key player is not the giver, but the receiver. And we came to see how this could transform not just how we handle performance reviews on the job, but how we learn, lead, and behave in our professional roles and in our personal lives.

Feedback includes any information you get about yourself. In the broadest sense, it’s how we learn about ourselves from our experiences and from other people—how we learn from life. It’s your annual performance review, the firm’s climate survey, the local critic’s review of your restaurant. But feedback also includes the way your son’s eyes light up when he spots you in the audience and the way your friend surreptitiously slips off the sweater you knitted her the minute she thinks you’re out of view. It’s the steady renewal of services by a longtime client and the lecture you get from the cop on the side of the road. It’s what your bum knee is trying to tell you about your diminishing spryness, and the confusing mix of affection and disdain you get from your fifteen-year-old.

So feedback is not just what gets ranked; it’s what gets thanked, commented on, and invited back or dropped. Feedback can be formal or informal, direct or implicit; it can be blunt or baroque, totally obvious or so subtle that you’re not sure what it is.

Like that comment your spouse made a moment ago: “I don’t like the way those pants look on you.” What do you mean, you don’t like the way these pants look on me? Is there something wrong with this particular pair of pants, or was that a passive-aggressive reference to the weight I’ve put on? Another dig about how I’m living in the past or can’t dress myself, even as an adult? Are you trying to help me look nice for the party, or is this your way of easing into asking for a divorce? (What do you mean I’m overreacting?)

The term “feed-back” was coined in the 1860s during the Industrial Revolution to describe the way that outputs of energy, momentum, or signals are returned to their point of origin in a mechanical system.5 By 1909 Nobel laureate Karl Braun was using the phrase to describe the coupling and loops between components of an electronic circuit. A decade later the new compound word “feedback” was being used to describe the recirculating sound loop...