Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

“What do you see me doing, or failing to do, that is getting in my own way?”

TAKE THREE STEPS BACK Let’s look at systems from three different vantage points—from close in, medium range, and wide angle. Each view enables us to see different patterns and dynamics in our relationship systems. One Step Back: You + Me Intersections. From here we see the interaction of you and me as a pair. What is the particular you + me combina

Seeing Feedback in the System One Step Back: In what ways does the feedback reflect differences in preferences, assumptions, styles, or implicit rules between us? Two Steps Back: Do our roles make it more or less likely that we might bump into each other? Three Steps Back: What other players influence our behavior and choices? Are physical setups,

We are (usually) the sympathetic hero of the story. In his speech to a graduating class at Kenyon, writer David Foster Wallace observed that there is “no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute center of.” We are each “lords of our own tiny skull-sized

there is always a gap between the self we think we present and the way others see us.

We can be triggered by who is giving us the feedback. What we think about the giver: Are they credible? Do we trust them? Did they deliver our feedback with good judgment and skill? How we feel treated by the giver: Do we feel accepted? Appreciated? Like our autonomy is respected? Relationship triggers create switchtrack conversations, where we hav

“What’s the one thing you see me doing that gets in myown way?”’

Receiving feedback sits at the intersection of these two needs—our drive to learn and our longing for acceptance. These needs run deep, and the tension between them is not going away. But there’s a lot each of us can do to manage the tension—to reduce anxiety in the face of feedback and to learn in spite of the fear.

Identity is the story we tell ourselves about who we are and what the future holds for us, and when critical feedback is incoming, that story is under attack.