This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Thanks for the Feedback" by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here .
What is Thanks for the Feedback about? How can becoming a better receiver of feedback help you in your life?
In their book Thanks for the Feedback, Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, two of the co-authors of the bestseller Difficult Conversations, walk you through how to become a better receiver of feedback. You’ll learn what feedback is and how it works, how we typically react, triggers that cause us to react badly, and specific techniques you can use to successfully discuss feedback and then incorporate it into your life.
Here is a brief overview of Thanks for the Feedback by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen.
Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well
It can be hard to hear feedback, and consequently, there’s often a disconnect between a feedback-giver and a feedback-receiver: When a person receives feedback, she feels it’s unfair or untrue. But when she gives feedback, she feels the other person isn’t properly listening or understanding it. To reconcile this disconnect, organizations and self-help books often focus on teaching how to give feedback better. The key, though, is learning how to receive it better. After all, it is the receiver who controls whether or not feedback is understood, accepted, and adopted.
In their book Thanks for the Feedback, Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen walk you through how to become a better receiver of feedback so that you can more effectively incorporate it into your life and in doing so, improve your job performance and strengthen your personal relationships.
Here’s a quick summary of the key points.
What Is Feedback?
Feedback tells you how other people see you. People who consistently take feedback better are more successful in their lives and work. Being open to feedback allows for learning and growth. Being resistant to it allows problems to fester and escalate, and can ultimately destroy relationships.
There are three types of feedback:
- Evaluation is assessment. It tells you where you stand in relation to expectations and to other people. It aligns expectations between two people and clarifies consequences.
- Coaching is advice. It is feedback aimed at helping you improve, learn, grow, or change, either to meet new challenges or to correct an existing problem.
- Appreciation is recognition, motivation, and thanks. It lets you know that your efforts are noticed, making you feel worthwhile.
It’s important when seeking feedback that you are clear about what you’re looking for: evaluation, coaching, or appreciation. This will prevent confusion or frustration if you receive a different type of feedback than you’re expecting.
Understanding Triggers and Our Reactions
The primary difficulty when we receive feedback is that it triggers emotional responses that cloud our judgment and prevent us from properly comprehending the feedback. Understanding what sets you off and how your own particular wiring affects your reactions can help you get control over those reactions.
Our Instinctive Reactions
Your instinctive reaction to feedback involves three variables:
- Your baseline: your default emotional state. Some people are more naturally optimistic, others have more general anxiety.
- Your swing: the amount you move off your baseline when you receive feedback. Some people react more strongly than others to either positive or negative feedback.
- Your recovery: the duration of your reaction. Some people bounce back from setbacks faster than others. Some people maintain a positive boost for longer.
These three elements are heavily influenced by our emotions, which are often set off by certain triggers activated by feedback. Gaining control of your emotions involves fully understanding the triggers that produce them.
Three Triggers
“Triggers” are instinctive and usually negative knee-jerk responses that cause us to dismiss feedback or get angry about it. Triggers fall into three general categories:
- Truth triggers are our emotional responses to feedback we feel is wrong, unhelpful, or unfair.
- Relationship triggers are our emotional responses to the person giving the feedback more than the content of the feedback itself.
- Identity triggers happen when feedback threatens our sense of who we are.
Let’s explore each trigger in more detail.
Understanding Truth Triggers
When our truth trigger is activated, we object to the content of feedback, labeling it wrong, unhelpful, or unfair. To counter this instinct, fully examine the feedback so that you can properly decipher the “truth” of it.
Feedback Has Two Elements
Feedback generally has two elements: an element that looks back (“Here’s what I noticed”) and an element that looks forward (“Here’s what you should do”). The “looking back” piece is made up of observations and interpretations of those observations—how a person feels about them. The “looking forward” piece of feedback is about next steps: advice, consequences, and expectations.
To find common ground, recognize that different people have different “truths”: Your views on another person are subjective, your interpretations are not necessarily more correct than other peoples’, and your judgment of how to correct problems might differ.
Controlling Truth Triggers
Understanding feedback involves examining not only the other person’s thoughts and feelings, but also your own. There are two key strategies: finding your blind spots and looking for differences instead of “wrongs.”
Strategy 1: Find Your Blind Spots and Tells
A “blind spot” is something we ignore or attribute little importance to but that other people see clearly. When people give us feedback about a trait we’re blind to, we dismiss it as untrue. Recognizing our blind spots can prevent this. There are different categories of blind spots:
- Emotional distortion: Our emotional reaction to a situation usually seems much more intense to the person on the receiving end than it seems to the person giving the feedback.
- Behavioral patterns: A person often engages patterns of behavior that she herself is unaware of but others around her see clearly.
- Character versus circumstance: When we run into difficulty, we tend to attribute it to the circumstances around us, but other people might blame it on our character.
- Impact versus intent: We judge ourselves by our intentions, but others judge us by how our actions impact them.
- Your “tells”: Your face, voice, and other non-verbal behaviors can betray your true thoughts and emotions.
To become aware of your blind spots:
- Watch for your defensive reactions.
- Look for patterns of feedback that you receive from several sources.
- Record yourself so that you can see any tells you aren’t aware of.
- Get a second opinion if feedback still isn’t sitting right.
Strategy 2: Look for Differences and Rights, Not Wrongs
Instead of asking yourself why the feedback is wrong (“That’s not relevant”; “It’s right for you but not for me”; “You’re not understanding the full context”), acknowledge that you and the other person see things differently and try to figure out why. By mastering “difference-spotting” in this way, you will be able to better understand the other person’s views and move from “No, that’s wrong” to “Tell me more.”
Finally, ask yourself what’s right about the other person’s feedback. Figure out what about the feedback makes sense, what might be worth trying, and how you can find some meaning that might be helpful.
Understanding Relationship Triggers
Sometimes we react to feedback not because of the content of the feedback itself, but because of who gave it to us: It becomes about the who rather than the what. We can manage these relationship triggers by disentangling our reaction to the feedback from our reaction to the person giving it. There are two primary relationship triggers.
Relationship Trigger #1: Our Opinion of Them
When receiving feedback, we’re often quick to look for something that disqualifies the person from giving it. These are commonly:
- The giver’s skill or judgment: Did she give feedback in an appropriate way, at an appropriate time? (“How dare she bring this up in front of the client?”)
- Her credibility: Does she have relevant experience? (“She doesn’t have kids, what does she know?”)
- Her trustworthiness: (“She’s only saying that so that she can get the promotion.”)
Relationship Trigger #2: Their Treatment of Us
Our perception of how the other person treats us often determines whether or not we accept or ignore their feedback.
There are three general relationship elements that commonly affect us:
- Appreciation: If we feel we’ve gone to great efforts in some way, and those efforts are not acknowledged, we often react emotionally to that snub rather than listen to the other person’s feedback.
- Autonomy: When we feel someone is telling us what to do but does not have the authority to do so, we may reject her advice on the grounds of, “Who does she think she is?”
- Acceptance: We find it hard to take feedback from a person who doesn’t accept us as we are now, which is, ironically, what feedback is all about—change.
Switchtracking: A Common Response to Relationship Triggers
Often when we are relationship-triggered, we “switchtrack”: We respond to a piece of feedback with a reciprocal piece of feedback that is usually aimed at the person raising the issue rather than the issue itself. The conversation splits and starts following two entirely different tracks. For example, if your roommate tells you she’s tired of you not cleaning up the kitchen, and you respond, “Why are you always so critical of me?”, you’ve just switchtracked the conversation. When we don’t realize we are dealing with two separate topics, we end up talking over one another instead of resolving problems.
———End of Preview———
Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen's "Thanks for the Feedback" at Shortform .
Here's what you'll find in our full Thanks for the Feedback summary :
- How to better receive feedback, rather than just giving it
- Why people tend to respond negatively towards feedback
- How to successfully incorporate feedback into your life
