What we’ve read: “Thanks for the Feedback” by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen

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BlindfeedHQ

7 min readOct 10, 2018

This book on the best practices of receiving feedback and developing growth mindset was an obvious choice for the first session of our Blindfeed Book Club (the epic story of setting up and conducting the club, including how to make sure that all people read the agreed book, is a separate topic that deserves a dedicated post). Here’re some of the notes we’ve taken while reading and discussing it.

Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen have spent the past fifteen years working with corporations, nonprofits, governments, and families to determine what helps us learn and what gets in our way. In Thanks for the Feedback, they explain why receiving feedback is so crucial yet so challenging, offering a simple framework and powerful tools to help us take on life’s blizzard of offhand comments, annual evaluations, and unsolicited input with curiosity and grace. They blend the latest insights from neuroscience and psychology with practical, hard-headed advice. Thanks for the Feedback is destined to become a classic in the fields of leadership, organizational behavior, and education.(Summary from the publisher)

What is feedback and why we all need to learn to receive it properly

The term ‘feedback’ was coined in the 1860s, during the industrial revolution to describe the way in which outputs of energy, moments or signals are returned to their points of origin in a mechanical system. Having undergone a gradual transformation, this term started to be used in industrial relations, particularly in performance management, after the World War II.

If you are interested in the phenomenon of feedback, you’ll sooner or later realize that most of the books and articles on this subject are focused on giving the feedback effectively and productively. But what about receiving feedback? Authors of ‘Thanks for the Feedback’ point out that the real focus should be on receiving feedback (creating a pull instead of the push attitude). “Creating pull is about mastering the skills required to drive our own learning; it’s about how to recognize and manage our resistance, how to engage in feedback conversations with confidence and curiosity, and even when the feedback seems wrong, how to find insight that might help us grow”.

In other words the ability to receive and actively seek feedback is likely to create higher job satisfaction, greater creativity, faster adaptation to the new position or company and in the end more meaningful work.

Benefits of receiving feedback well:

Your relationships become richer.
You learn and get better at things.
Other people find it more enjoyable to work around you.
It is easier for you to work with others to solve problems.
By your example, you help others see the value in seeking feedback for themselves.

Whenever we are asking, receiving or giving feedback we need to ask ourselves about the purpose we have. Are we trying to improve, assess or say thank you? Do we want our work to be recognised, or we are more interested in some advice? Depending on the answer we can talk about three types of feedback:

Appreciation is giving thanks to you and encouraging you to keep doing what you are doing. For it to be effective, it needs to be specific, authentic, and in a form that you find satisfying.
Coaching is showing you a better way to do something to help you grow. Coaching can be related to improving your skills or at fixing a perceived imbalance in a relationship.
Evaluation is telling you where you stand compared to a standard or compared to others. Evaluation aligns expectations and clarifies consequences.

Once the type of the feedback is defined we need to be extremely clear about what we’re trying to do:

What’s my purpose in giving/receiving this feedback?
Is it the right purpose from my point of view?
Is it the right purpose from the other person’s points of view?

We can’t focus on how to improve until we know where we stand.

How to better receive feedback

When you receive feedback, you need to ask yourself

• What make sense about what they are saying

• What seems worth trying

• What’s right about {name}s feedback?

One way to keep and open mindset while receiving feedback is to understand when you are triggered:

Truth triggers — we view the feedback as wrong, unfair or unhelpful. Thus we are either defensive, or completely rject the information.
Relationship triggers — we question the person giving the feedback or the relationship itself. Thus we can view the giver as less trustworthy.
Identity triggers — something about the feedback causes us to question ourselves. Thus we can think of ourselves as a ‘failure’ in case the feedback is true.

It is definitely a challenge to understand what the feedback giver is trying to convey. Part of the problem is that we use labels which represent a collection of our impressions. We think the label describes what’s in our head, but it doesn’t.

Beware of the blind spots. Blind spot is something we don’t see about ourselves that others do see.

Blind Spot-Your Face: People react to subtle nuances in your eyes and facial expressions that convey your mood to them. You are largely unaware of the messages your face sends.
Blind Spot-Your Tone: You are unable to hear your voice the way others do. Your tone, pitch, and cadence convey your emotional state to them.
Blind Spot-Your Patterns: You often don’t realize that you have establish behavior patterns which have affected others’ opinion of you.

There are also blind spot amplifiers.

Emotional Math: Others count your emotional state at double the rate of anything else in the interaction. If they see you as angry or tense, that is what they will primarily take away from the interaction.
Your Character: While you tend to attribute your actions to the situation, others tend to attribute your actions to your character.
Your Impact: You tend to judge yourself by your intentions. Others tend to judge you by the impact you have on them. Despite your best intentions, you may have a negative impact on others.

Cultivate the growth identity

Give up simple labels. You are a complex blend of things. Your intentions are a mix of purely positive and some less than noble. You have contributed to the problems you are having.
Shift to a growth mindset. View tough situations as learning opportunities. Praise yourself(andothers) for how much effort they put into learning rather than natural ability.
Move toward a growth identity. See yourself as a person who is eager to put effort into learning. Try to find something you can learn from feedback.
Encourage people to discuss your blind spots with you
Shift from blame conversations to joint contribution conversations, and start by asking what you might have contributed to the problem.
Hold people accountable by showing them how you hold yourself accountable alongside them.
Give yourself a second score. Evaluate yourself on how well you handled the evaluation. This score is as important to your growth as the evaluation itself.

Avoid being an Absorber or a Shifter:

If you absorb all the responsibility for the relationship issues, you will become resentful. You cannot solve the problem on your own because you are only part of the problem.
If you shift the blame to the other person, you make yourself a victim. You become helpless and unable to see the part you play in the problem.

Manage Feedback in Conversations

You have the right to choose whether to apply feedback.
You have the right to stop receiving feedback.

Four Skills to Manage the Body of the Conversation:

Listen. Your purpose in listening should be(1)to be sure you understand what the other person means by what they are saying and(2)let the other person know you understand what they are saying.
Assert what’s left out. Avoid telling the feedback giver that he is wrong. Instead, add your perspective to the conversation.
Be your own process referee. Pause the action to diagnose where you are in the conversation and propose a way to get things on track.
Problem solve to create possibilities. Invite the other person to think with you about different ways to meet the underlying interests.

Take action upon receiving feedback

Name One Thing. You can get overwhelmed by too much feedback. Look for themes that reveal key areas to address. Ask,“Whatis one thing I could change that would make a difference for you?”
Try Small Experiments. Run through a scenario in your head of how a change might work. Pick one small change to try for a set period of time.
Ride Out the J-Curve. Sometimes you struggle to make a change you know is right because it is an unpleasant change to make. Consider the reality that things will get worse before you begin to see improvement. Increase the positive appeal of the change. Increase the cost of not changing.
Coach Your Coach. Tell your coach how you tend to react to feedback. When you request feedback, state how getting the feedback would help you serve the coach more effectively. Avoid excessive requests for feedback.
Invite Them In. Come to people with a specific feedback request and explain why you think they have a perspective that would be helpful.

Additional Info

1. Discussion Guide from Triad Consulting Group

2. Study Guide from Gracelead.

3. Harvard Negotiation Project

4. Talks at Google Video with Doug Stone and Sheila Been.

‘Thanks for the Feedback’ is full of helpful techniques that can be used by anyone seeking to build meaningful realtionships, lead a team or leverage the value of feedback we all receive every day. This post is just a brief summary of the topics and actionable points covered in the book (e.g., I didn’t mention the last chapter of the book with suggestions for HR and management) and hopefully it persuaded you to read the book in full.