Sheila HeenBesprekingen

Overall, I liked this book and it did have some good advice on feedback -- giving and receiving.

When they look at what can go wrong with feedback, they broadly break it down into content, relationship, and identity.

Under the 'content' category, the first chapters had some really good insights about different types of feedback:

- coaching
- evaluation
- affirmation

Many problems come when there are mismatches around this area, and I think this book offered some very good and very unique insights here.

The other two general categories ('relationship' and 'identity') were also ok, but there are many other books out there that cover these areas better, more exhaustively and in much more detail. If you've never dug into those areas of literature before, though, this does give an ok view of them.

Mostly common sense advice - easy to read about, hard to put into practice.

Feedback is one of biggest topics between humans, most important and destructive sometimes.
This book is about receiving feedback.
The book starts with classifying feedback into different categories and going throw the process of understanding how feedback works, how we receive it, how we should receive each category and how we think about it.
The book is a bit hard to read, some parts can be smaller and more to the point.

This book takes a different perspective than most books on feedback and tries to help the reader get better at taking feedback rather than giving it. This was valuable to me in two ways. First, I am terrible at taking feedback, and this book helped me see ways I could improve and understand the patterns that make feedback hard for me (my tendency is to take feedback too seriously and become discouraged by my lack of competence at anything ever). Second, although the authors are mainly concerned helping the reader get value out of feedback no matter how badly presented, it's also useful for givers of feedback, which we all are at one time or another.

The book starts with the framing that feedback is not always valid, but feedback that seems invalid at first often has at least some elements you can learn from.

Receiving feedback well doesn’t mean you always have to take the feedback. Receiving it well means engaging in the conversation skillfully and making thoughtful choices about whether and how to use the information and what you’re learning. It’s about managing your emotional triggers so that you can take in what the other person is telling you, and being open to seeing yourself in new ways.

Then we get into the meat of the book. First up is understanding why feedback can be so hard to accept. The authors discuss three categories of triggers that block our ability to listen to feedback. The first are truth triggers.

Truth triggers are when your resistance to the feedback comes from the substance of the feedback: the feedback just seems wrong or not helpful. One common way that feedback can be unhelpful is when you get feedback that's different than what you need at the time. Appreciation tells the receiver that something about them is valued. Coaching aims to help the receiver get better. Evaluation tells the receiver where they stand relative to some standard. Often, these are mixed together or given at the wrong time, both of which can trigger a negative response. For example, if you're just starting working on something that's intimidated them, you may be more in need of appreciation than coaching. You just want to know it's ok to keep going, and that you're not a complete failure. As a receiver, you can deal with this trigger in two ways. One, when you're asking for feedback, be explicit about whether you want appreciation, coaching, or evaluation. Second, when you're getting feedback, label it according to these types and either respond in a way that helps you get the most out of that feedback type or make it clear what you need right now.

The second response to a truth trigger is shifting from a mindset of evaluation to curiosity when you receive feedback. Instead of immediately concluding that feedback is wrong (or, more rarely, right), take the hard step of being authentically curious about the feedback and trying to understand it. Instead of asking "why is this wrong?" (wrong spotting) ask "what might be right about this?" Part of what is useful here is to separate the data the giver is working with from their story about that data, from the label they reduce it to, and from the behavioral consequences they think should result. Asking questions which help clarify these distinctions requires engaging with the feedback is a more useful way than wrong spotting. Another useful tool is switching from wrong spotting to difference spotting: when you have a strong reaction to feedback you've been given, figure out the difference between your data, interpretation, label, and consequences rather than just dismissing theirs as wrong. Then figure out why you see those things differently.

The third response is to realize that we all have blind spots. When we look at our own behavior, we have a rich internal world to explain it. Others only see what we present externally, our behavior. This gap in visibility can cause dramatic differences in how we see ourselves and how others see us. We can't see our own behavior, especially things like tone of voice, body language, and facial expression, but others are hyper-aware of these details. Merely understanding that such a gap does exist can help temper our response to "invalid" feedback. Instead, we can use the possibility of such gaps as a prompt to start looking for other ways to validate or invalidate the gap such as asking someone we trust to be candid about the behavior.

The second category of triggers is relationship triggers. Sometimes, who is giving the feedback matters just as much as the content of the feedback. The same relationship advice from a partner, parent, or good friend will feel completely different. The most important thing to do when confronted with a relationship trigger is to avoid switchtracking, the tendency to switch the conversation from being about the content of the feedback to the emotional context of the feedback. Both conversations are important, but tangling them leads to endless confusion and disagreement. Instead, it should be an explicit decision between the giver and receiver to focus first on whichever issue seems most important and come back to the other. The authors then cover a number of specific emotional triggers that can result in switchtracking such as threats to the receiver's autonomy or feedback which makes the receiver feel rejected by the giver.

Relationship triggers exist within the broader context of the relationship, so the second topic of this section is discussing ways to look at the relationship as a system rather than just at the individual moment. Problems in relationships are rarely caused by you xor me. They're usually caused by you and me. While you may have some behavioral tendencies that are universally annoying, usually it's a combination of two people's behaviors, expectations, and context that causes something to turn into a problem. By seeing the relationship as a system, you can get beyond who is right and who is wrong and instead try to see the larger patterns and the opportunities everyone involved has for change.

The book views the relationship system on three levels. First is the You Me level -- how is it that we're both contributing to this situation? Second is looking at our roles. Our roles influence how we interact. E.g., two people whose behavioral patterns might not cause problems in most situations can be destructive if one ends up in a position of authority over the other. Understanding how roles contribute to interactions can provide a valuable shift in perspective. The broadest level is looking at the system that the relationship exists in -- the broader culture, other people involved, where you currently are, anything which might contribute to the feedback.

The commonality of these three steps back is that by looking at the relationship in a broader context, you can move beyond right and wrong and try to understand the root cause behind the feedback and your response to it.

The third class of relationship triggers is identity triggers. These make the receiver's sense of self feel threatened. Feedback which makes you feel like you might not be the person you thought you were -- good, respectable, valuable -- can be crushing.

Much of this section discusses the different ways people respond to feedback and varying sensitivity to identity triggers. Everyone has a different baseline for how good they feel about themselves, different magnitudes of emotional response, and different durations of that response -- note that the second and third can be different for positive vs negative feedback, usually with negative feedback causing larger, longer swings than positive. I, for example, tend to have a fairly high baseline opinion of myself, high swings for negative feedback, moderate swings for positive feedback, and fairly short duration for both.

Our reaction can distort our interpretation of the feedback. For example, if feedback tends to cause you large emotional swings, you may tend to exaggerate it. "You were a little brusque in that meeting" becomes "You're a terrible mean person who can't treat others with respect." Common distortions negatively reinterpreting your whole past based on feedback, expanding it to apply to everything you do, and assuming that the feedback dictates your destiny. Understanding how you react to feedback can help you combat these exaggerations and see the feedback more accurately. One technique for doing this is to separate the feelings you have about the feedback, the story you're telling yourself, and the actual content and consequences of the feedback. And sometimes, despite all that, feedback is still just overwhelming. Sometimes the right reaction is to wall yourself off from the feedback for now and ask for help.

Finally, one way to help decrease the impact of identity triggers is to consciously cultivate a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset. Accept that you can change, that even if you are the horrible, worthless person the feedback obviously proves you are, you can get better and become the person you want to be. Part of this is also accepting that most identity markers are not binary. We think of ourselves as honest or dishonest (usually honest), but in reality we're honest in some situations and dishonest in others. We can also accept that our desires can sometimes be contradictory -- we want to be perfectly honest, but we also want to avoid pointless confrontation. Instead of judging ourselves, accept that life is full of tradeoffs.

The last section of the book covers how to incorporate this advice into a conversation where you receive feedback. Understand the boundaries you can draw and when to draw them. Times when you might need to draw boundaries are if the feedback attacks your character rather than behavior, is unrelenting in frequency or ever growing in scope, or accompanied by threats (as opposed to natural consequences). If the feedback giver never accepts that they may be part of the problem or that your views and feeling are not worth discussing, then drawing strong boundaries may also be needed.

Although you cannot control the flow of a conversation, you can make sure that a feedback conversation covers some key elements, even when the feedback giver is not skilled. First, make sure that you are both aligned: is this appreciation, coaching, or evaluation? What are the consequences of not listening to the feedback? Second, dig into the substance of the feedback. Ask questions, respond to the feedback, figure out ways to make the conversation more effective (e.g., separating out separate topics to avoid switchtracking), and work on figuring out the consequences of the feedback. Finally, make sure there is a clear commitment to next steps. If you're going to take the feedback, be explicit about what you're going to do. If you're not going to take the feedback, be explicit about that too. The important thing is to make sure the conversation closes with both participants on the same page about the result of the conversation.

Finally, the book ends with a brief discussion of feedback systems, especially in organizations. The key takeaways of this section is that there is no perfect feedback systems and that the most important thing is to have a culture where feedback is valued, including feedback to leaders from those they lead.

Overall, this book was quite valuable and one I'm likely to refer to again.

Lots of really great ideas in this book but it badly needs a revised edition. Some of the off hand examples are a little too “both sides”-y when it comes to domestic violence and racism. Those specific difficult conversations as it were demand more nuance than a couple of sentences each could possibly provide. In terms of content otherwise 5/5, leaving unrated.

This book was surprisingly very helpful and included concrete strategies to try out. It also covered a lot more under the topic of feedback than I assumed. I recommend this book not only to anyone who struggles with formal feedback, but anyone who has to or wants to give feedback to others and also anyone who wants to navigate any of their relationships better, whether they are work, family, or friend relationships.

I listened to this audiobook while working on other things, so I unfortunately can't give a very good overview of how it's structured. If I remember right, the authors started by laying out their definition of "feedback," which is broader than you might expect. Telling someone the ways in which they could improve the presentation they just practiced counts as feedback. So does telling them that they did great and are going to do just fine during the real thing (encouragement rather than advice). And that person who honked at you during your morning commute because you were zoned out and didn't notice the light had changed to green was also giving you feedback.

After that, I can't really remember much about their organization, although some things they wrote about really stuck with me. For example, I wasn't expecting them to touch on mental health, but they did, discussing the ways an anxious or depressed person's distorted thinking can make it difficult to change how they perceive feedback and advising that readers experiencing that kind of difficulty seek help. I appreciated that.

The authors' advice mostly boiled down to "calm down, shift your thinking about whatever feedback you just received that made you defensive, and try to find the kernels you can work with." In some cases, that involved getting clarification from the other person - about what they meant, the kind of feedback they were really giving you, etc. In other cases, it meant have a conversation with yourself and figuring out the ways in which this obviously wrong person might be right. And in some cases it involved having conversations with folks in which you deliberately addressed things (like feelings) that might otherwise have gone unspoken.

They admitted that some of the things they discussed probably wouldn't come naturally to most people. Some of it sounded so uncomfortable/unnatural to me that I figure I'd have to have a paper copy of this to remind me of enough of the details to even try to put it into practice. Unfortunately, if I remember right, the most uncomfortable/unnatural stuff was connected to the authors' advice for how to take a step back and shift your thinking, even when your knee-jerk reaction is to be defensive or upset. You know, the really hard part.

So yeah, at least parts of this book probably would have worked better in print than in audio, but I did still appreciate it overall. One of my favorite lines: "You aren't going from good to bad, or even from good to complicated. You've been complicated all along." I'll try to remember that the next time something shakes my sense of myself enough to have me anxiously fretting over whether this one thing indicates that I'm a "bad" person. I'm not good or bad - like other people, I'm complicated, and the question is what I can take from this moment, and whether I can learn and grow. (Wow, that sounds cheesy, but sometimes you need cheesy.)

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Good points, some of them new to me and some of them not. I particularly liked the section on boundaries. And the info on brain responses (which legitimized their claim).

A section on how to give feedback would have been helpful, as well as stats, studies, and more psychological sections. It's a bit old, but an updated version with a section addressing the Brene Brown/shame psychology would create interesting discussions.

Conflict management advice: Working out how to listen with curiosity to others’ perspectives by finding their story of how and why the conflict occurred; how to disentangle character/intent from impact (yours and theirs); how to recognize the importance of the parties’ feelings while not treating them as attributions of “who is really to blame”; and so on. Seems quite useful and quite difficult to commit to. Key principles: In a conflict, everyone makes a contribution, which is not the same as everyone being to blame, equally or otherwise. Resolving a conflict requires understanding the parties’ contribution, but does not require judging, especially by the parties themselves. But the key thing here is that avoiding blame does not mean avoiding your feelings about the conflict. There are example conversations of how to reframe away from blame to understanding, even in the face of a partner who wants to win instead.

It took me 6 months to get through this one, not because it's at all bad but because I'm generally just sort of resistant to this sort of nonfiction. So much of it seems like common sense, so I feel like I'm wasting my time reading it, though it was neat to see some of my own evolution at receiving feedback recorded pretty faithfully in the book. In the end, there is a fair bit of pretty practical advice, and it's a useful book, though I think I would have preferred an abridged version. The many scenarios the authors share are useful for illustrating the points they illustrate, but if you already kind of get the point from the simple statement of it, the scenarios feel a little like fluff. Actually I think this sort of book is probably very well suited to hypertext, with a rough outline, more detail on each section, and links to scenarios for further reading. I dog-eared a fair bit of stuff at about the midpoint and then a bunch more in the last fifth or so of the book.

This one of the best communication books I've read. Although, it might be actually more a psychology book in disguise.

This is not a typical communication/negotiation book, where you receive tactical tips on how to assess the other party's goal, frame the situation, and navigate the conversation to end it up as close to your goal as possible. "Difficult Conversations" is more of a strategic planning book, where you receive tips on how to explore your feelings and motives to stay grounded when emotions and irrationally kick in (and no one in the conversation might even have any specific goals). And once you're good at it you cen help the other party do the same.

I really like how it embraces the human side of having a heated discussion and guides self-discovery. It provides a lot of examples (some of them more believable and realistic, some less) that illustrate the theory and make it more accessible via a variety of situations and contexts of difficult conversations. I find many of the presented concepts thought-provoking and useful, I wish I had read it earlier in my life and apply them more often.

It was an extremely slow read for me. The book is pretty dense and there are so many different examples, stories, and reports accompanying each concept that I had to hit a pause and digest because it was too much at once. Multiple breaks helped the content to sink in, which is not necessarily a bad thing but something to keep in mind when approaching "Difficult Conversations".

The authors present a systematic way to handle difficult conversations. Man, it's going to take a ton a practice though. Addressing emotions appropriately was a big take home message. What's taught here is worthy of persistent practice.

Look just everyday conversations can be tough, ones that are important and can affect meaningful change are vital, but difficult. This book can help and you should read it.

DNF. It was fine, but after renewing it the maximum number of times and just not finding it compelling enough to stick with, I sent it back. Mostly the advice seemed to be "tamp down the defensiveness for long enough to be sure you know what the critical feedback is, then decide how to respond to it."

This is a great read!

I kept trying to skim this but failed. Fortunately this is not tough going. I think the stuff that helped me most was:
- thinking about three different sub-conversations (what happened/how people contributed, how people feel, how people conceive of themselves)
- listen well & don't skip to solutions / telling the other person what you think before they feel heard

I think the whole listening well thing is one of those things that seems simple but actually hides a huge amount of complexity & power. This book kind of points you in the right direction but I think there's no substitute for actually doing the work.

Overall, fine but not mind blowing. If you haven't read other sorts of self-help and therapy books in the same vein maybe it's more exciting.

Helpful ideas and examples to think about. I could only read about 20 pages at a time before looking at how much more I had left and deciding to put it down for a while. As with a lot of professional development books, there's a lot of repetition and excessive explanation which leads it to be a book that's too long. Some of the examples seemed farfetched, or unrealistic to the point that it undermined their point but most were good.

However, I did find it helpful. I thought about a lot of the ideas more in terms of difficult family situations than work situations, but I guess it depends where your struggles are.

Most important learning point: go into the conversation wanting to learn, listen to learn.½

Het kan zinvol zijn om managers te leren feedback te geven, anders gezegd hoe ze effectiever kunnen duwen. Zelden opent harder duwen de deur naar echte verbetering. De nadruk - op het werk en thuis - zou op de ontvangers van de feedback moeten liggen, zodat we allemaal betere leerlingen worden. De truc is het creëren van trekkracht. Daarmee start Feedback is een cadeautje, de vertaling van Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (2014) van Douglas Stone & Sheila Heen. Feedback is eigenlijk 3 verschillende dingen met verschillende doelen: waardering (motiveert en moedigt aan), coaching (helpt kennis, vaardigheid, capaciteit en groei aan te scherpen of brengt gevoelens in de relatie ter sprake) en beoordeling: geeft je aan hoe je ervoor staat, brengt verwachtingen op één lijn en is van invloed op besluiten.
De schrijvers onderscheiden ook 3 triggers: waarheid (de feedback is onjuist, oneerlijk, niet behulpzaam), relatie (ik verdraag deze feedback niet van jóú) en identiteit (de feedback is bedreigend en ik ben uit mijn evenwicht). Met deze bouwstenen wordt een ruim 400 (!) pagina's tellende uitwerking gedaan met zoveel voorbeeldgesprekken, dat het je makkelijk duizelt. Het begint met begrip. Waar komt de feedback vandaan en waar gaat het feedback gesprek naartoe? Dit om een vollediger beeld te krijgen. We hebben allemaal onze blinde vlekken, dode hoeken worden ze in het boek genoemd. Ook kunnen gesprekken ontsporen of op twee verschillende sporen gaan, bijvoorbeeld relatie en identiteit. Het is belangrijk stappen terug te kunnen zetten en vanuit rollen of organisatie of systeem naar de in de feedback beschreven situatie of gedraging te kijken. Vervormingen, overdrijvingen, mogen ontmanteld worden, zodat je met het cadeau echt aan de slag kunt. Het boek eindigt met tips over het echt effectief krijgen van goede bedoelingen omzetten in de praktijk.

Difficult Conversations provides a step-by-step approach to having those tough conversations with less stress and more success. you'll learn how to: Decipher the underlying structure of every difficult conversation, Start a converstaion without defensiveness, listen for the meaninf of what is not said, stay balanced in the face of attacks and accusations, & move from emotion to productive problem solving

The performance evaluation: every person whose had a job for more than six months has been there…captively sitting and listening to a laundry list of your faults or the infuriating, “You’re doing great,” with nothing added for improvement. Or the worst—the “feed-back sandwich”—where your faults are wedged in between what you do well. The entire time, you are frozen in fear. Then, you stew over the negative things said about you. Then you complain about what a waste of time it’s all been. Managers and supervisors are often trained, workshopped, and coached about how to give good feedback. But the work is lost if the person they are evaluating isn’t receptive.

Thanks for the Feedback is vital for anyone who wants to learn how to be better—a better parent, a better spouse, a better employee—because it teaches how to accept various kinds of feedback. This is not instructions on how to grow thicker skin, though. Stone and Heen use their own experience as consultants and Harvard lecturers and copious amounts of research in organizational behavior and psychology to explain exactly what feedback is and why it’s so hard for us to do anything constructive with it. In the first part of the book, the authors explain different types of feedback (appreciation, coaching, and evaluation). Then, they take us through the “triggers” that cause us to react badly to feedback (truth triggers, relationship triggers, identity triggers). Once we understand exactly what they have learned is going through our minds when we hear feedback, they explain what to do about it. They share conversation techniques, negotiation suggestions, and lots of problem solving tricks.

This book is an excellent combination of popular psychology, self-help, relationship advice, and career building. I recommend it for anyone who has a serious desire to improve their communication and listening skills. Or for anyone with a performance evaluation coming up.½

Psychology

I saw this book in the library catalogue's "On Order" section one day and immediately requested it. At the time, I had just started a part-time online program with a local college and was trying to re-assimilate into the world of "school", especially dealing with feedback on my assignments. For some reason, work I do for marks is more stressful than work I do in my actual job, for which I get paid. So I thought this book would help me learn how to accept the feedback I received in the course.

This book met all of my expectations and surpassed them. It breaks down all of the concepts neatly in easy-to-digest chunks, with plenty of recaps and examples to illustrate them. The writing style is friendly but not too informal, and the writers acknowledge when these concepts might not be applicable. It even contains a section on how NOT to accept feedback, if there are some topics that are just off-limits for whatever reason. And as I read I imagined applying the concepts to my course, my actual job and even my personal life. It is a very universal book.

This might be overwhelming if you try to read it from cover to cover; spreading it out a chapter at a time may be a better approach. I'm considering getting my own copy to do just that.

Written by two Harvard Law School professors, Thanks for the Feedback looks at what is feedback, why receiving it can be so challenging, what we can do to be more open to it, and how we can use it in personal and professional situations. The well organized and clearly presented ideas in the book are a useful tool in learning how to receive and use feedback for self-improvement.

Read my complete review at: http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2014/03/thanks-for-feedback-science-and-art-of....

*** Reviewed for GoodReads First Reads program ***

Difficult conversations are a normal part of life. Often we avoid them. And when we get around to having them, we go into the conversation determined to change the other person's mind and end up feeling frustrated. This book provides lots of specific advice about how to handle difficult conversations so that both parties feel heard. The authors first make the point that a difficult conversation is actually three conversations - a conversation about what happened, a conversation about the feelings associated with what happened, and a conversation about what the situation means for us and our identities. The authors also make the point that difficult conversations are often about differences in perceptions, interpretations, and values, rather than about differences in facts. This is why it is important to avoid blame and instead explore each party's contribution to the situation. The authors encourage participants to shift to a learning stance to understand the other person's perspective. They also provide specific tips about understanding your purpose before getting into a difficult conversation, about expressing yourself, and about listening.

It is hard to capture all of the insights from this book in a short review. Often, with these types of books, I feel like the core ideas are in the first chapter, and then the authors simply rehash these points. Difficult Conversations does start with an overview, but the subsequent chapters are expansions on these points. The specificity of the advice is also surprising when comparing this to other business books. The authors use lots of specific examples to help readers think through how to implement this advice in their own situations. I'm facilitating a discussion of this book at an upcoming leadership conference, and I'm excited to hear the attendees' reactions to this book.½

This is one of three texts, plus handouts, used at a Negotiation course at Harvard Law taken by students all over the university--and by people from all over the world. At the end of the course, the students spontaneously rose to give the teachers a standing ovation. It's a very popular and valuable course--and this book deals with some of the techniques at the heart of it.

And no, this is not just for lawyers or diplomats. It applies to any of those kinds of conversations that you may be dreading with your boss, your parents, your spouse, your children, your friends. It talks about how to have a conversation that doesn't trigger a defensive reaction so you can get at what happened. You own your feelings, without projecting how you feel on the other person and separate results from intentions. "I got angry when..." rather than "You made me angry...." Because as it says in the book: Talking about blame distracts us from exploring what went wrong and how we might correct them going forward. You need to develop a curiosity about the other side of the story and admit to your own contributions to the problem. Reframe and paraphrase back what you're hearing to defuse and better understand.

Sometimes this technique has worked as a charm. And mind you, this isn't manipulation--in the end this is all about being fair--to yourself and others. That's what makes it difficult. Occasionally I've found people it's... shall we say... frustrating to try it on. You try to paraphrase back what you've heard them say, and you get back, "You're twisting my words!" "You're treating me like a lawyer!" (Doesn't help when someone knows that's what you are.) No doubt some of the problem it might be said in such cases is that I'm not skillful enough at my end using these techniques. But, of course, the thing is people aren't going to keep to the script. (And then there's the occasional psychopath.) But yes, these techniques are helpful and often do work at getting to the bottom of things. I've gone back to this book and brushed up on the principles when I know I'm going to have one of those "difficult" conversations.