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

It is said that all advice is autobiographical, and this, in part, is what is meant. We interpret what we see based on our own life experiences, assumptions, preferences, priorities, and implicit rules about how things work and how one should be. I understand your life through the lens of my life; my advice for you is based on me.

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.

if we’re serious about growth and improvement, we have no choice but to get good at learning from just about anyone.

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,

the receivers are in control of what they do and don’t let in, how they make sense of what they’re hearing, and whether they choose to change.

In addition to our desire to learn and improve, we long for something else that is fundamental: to be loved, accepted, and respected just as we are.

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

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

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