Sheila Heen: Thanks for the Feedback

Author with Douglas Stone of Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well*
Author with Douglas Stone and Bruce Patton of the New York Times Business Bestseller Difficult Conversations*

Feedback sits at the core of two human needs:

• Our need to get better
• Our need to be accepted, respected, and loved for how we are now

“Who’s giving the feedback is often a louder message than what they’re saying.” -Sheila Heen

The six steps:

1. Know your tendencies

• Baseline (or set point): a level of satisfaction that you gravitate towards in the absence of life events
• Swing: how far positive or negative feedback knocks you off your baseline
• Recovery: how long it takes you to come back to your baseline
• Recovery speed can be different for positive and negative feedback
• Understanding your profile can help you dismantle your distortions
• Also, this helps you to be more empathetic to others who have different styles than you do

2. Disentangle the “what” from the “who”

• If the feedback is wise, it shouldn’t matter who delivers it (but it does).
• Solicit feedback from the people who you find difficult to work with

3. Sort towards coaching

• Three kinds of feedback
  • Appreciation: sometimes when people ask for more feedback, they really want more of this
  • Coaching: helping you get better at something
  • Evaluation: where you rank or stand
• Sheila uses this with her children to speak about their grades and what it says about what they can change
• Separating these three things is helpful, since evaluation is very loud and people don’t often hear anything else

4. Unpack the feedback

• Most of what we hear comes in vague labels.
• It requires you as a receiver to be a more active participant.

5. Ask for just one thing

• “What’s one thing you see me doing (or failing to do) that holds me back?”

6. Engage in small experiments

• “I don’t believe that receiving feedback well means that you have to take the feedback.” -Sheila Heen
• It’s hard to know if feedback is helpful until we try it out.

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