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A review by davidfranklin88
Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well by Douglas Stone
5.0
An invaluable book which uses examples to great effect to teach us how we can understand feedback better. I really needed this book: I’m bad at receiving feedback, and the authors helped me to figure out why. It will be helpful for everyone, but it's particularly important reading for those who are used to being ‘right’ and find it hard to make concessions.
Self-help books often consist of a couple of good ideas expanded into 300 pages. In this book I never felt like information was superfluous or repeated. The frameworks are concisely stated and then supported with helpful examples. Those examples cover a range of personal and professional scenarios, and this is highly effective in showing us how much our resistance to feedback can stifle us in every aspect of life.
I found the discussion around ‘switch-tracking’ especially helpful. I had been told that I react to feedback by de-authorising the person giving it: “but you do that too!”. This book helped me to understand that even if they are guilty of the same thing, that’s a different conversation. The ability to separate discussions into their components, rather than dealing with all the identity and relationship triggers at once and throwing one’s own observations into the mix, comes as something of a relief and helps discussions to be more productive.
There are plenty of other insights: often we expect to be appreciated or coached, and we get evaluated instead. Sometimes it’s the other way round. The role of those expectations is huge in determining people’s reactions to feedback. And since we have much more access to behaviour than intentions, we often fill the gap with suspect inferences. Breaking these mismatches down is a central part of the book, and the advice the authors give is clear and actionable.
In professional life, most of us learn how to look like we’re being receptive to feedback. This book goes further than that, and teaches us how to have a conversation that will actually make us better.
Self-help books often consist of a couple of good ideas expanded into 300 pages. In this book I never felt like information was superfluous or repeated. The frameworks are concisely stated and then supported with helpful examples. Those examples cover a range of personal and professional scenarios, and this is highly effective in showing us how much our resistance to feedback can stifle us in every aspect of life.
I found the discussion around ‘switch-tracking’ especially helpful. I had been told that I react to feedback by de-authorising the person giving it: “but you do that too!”. This book helped me to understand that even if they are guilty of the same thing, that’s a different conversation. The ability to separate discussions into their components, rather than dealing with all the identity and relationship triggers at once and throwing one’s own observations into the mix, comes as something of a relief and helps discussions to be more productive.
There are plenty of other insights: often we expect to be appreciated or coached, and we get evaluated instead. Sometimes it’s the other way round. The role of those expectations is huge in determining people’s reactions to feedback. And since we have much more access to behaviour than intentions, we often fill the gap with suspect inferences. Breaking these mismatches down is a central part of the book, and the advice the authors give is clear and actionable.
In professional life, most of us learn how to look like we’re being receptive to feedback. This book goes further than that, and teaches us how to have a conversation that will actually make us better.