tl;dr: Thanks for the Feedback by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen

Like most leaders, I can credit my best ideas to my favorite managers. One of them required annual training in giving and receiving feedback. Our UX team of designers, writers, researchers, and developers needed to communicate across lots of different working styles and stakeholder relationships. The "giving" part of the training seemed standard, but nobody had told me that receiving feedback was a skill I could practice. I thought hearing and believing the worst whenever I got feedback was just my lot in life.

So when my coach recently recommended a book specifically about receiving feedback, I was all in. The full title says it all: Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well, *even when it is off base, unfair, poorly delivered, and, frankly, you're not in the mood.* The book sets up some interesting frameworks about the triggers that block feedback and provides steps to take to address each kind of trigger (some that sound easier than others.) The authors also note that we tend to get tangled with feedback around misaligned expectations, something my bestie Brené Brown has a lot to say about. Here were my favorite takeaways from this book:

"Receiving feedback well is a process of sorting and filtering." Feedback isn't a directive. It's information. And it's up to you to decide what sounds off base, what needs more context, and what actually lands. The answer is almost never "all of it" or "none of it."

Make sure the kind of feedback you're expecting is the kind of feedback someone is meaning to give (or vice versa.) The authors identify three types: appreciation, coaching, and evaluation. If you're hoping for one and getting another, the conversation is already sideways before it starts. Think about your annual review: you're angling for a promotion conversation, and instead you get "You're doing great! Keep it up!" That's not feedback - that's frustrating.

"You won't know until you talk about it, and you won't talk about it if you assume you already know." Growth mindset for the win. Our need to feel right can keep us from learning and growing, and it's important to remember that most (if not all) feedback is given with positive intent. If you open yourself to feedback without actually being open to hearing ideas or views that may be different from yours, you aren't being open to feedback. Which pairs nicely with:

Get curious about differences instead of going straight to defensive. A lot of times, our first move is "they're wrong" instead of "they see it differently." Reframing and asking questions can uncover a miscommunication, help you see what they see, or give you the information you actually need to respond well.

Consider: "I need you to be more assertive in meetings."

Getting curious: "Can you tell me what that would look like, or what you're not seeing?" might lead to: "That makes sense. I was having trouble getting a word in around Chad. Do you have any coaching on cutting through that professionally?" Or: "I actually did that a few times, but I think you'd already left. I appreciate you wanting to make sure my voice gets heard." Either outcome gets a really different result.

Fact-check the story in your head. This one isn't directly from the book, but it came up for me constantly while I was reading. Did your manager ask you to add an agenda to your slides because you're a messy bitch and she hates you? Did someone suggest a time management app because you're slow and failing at everything? How we receive feedback has as much to do with our relationship to the person, how we're feeling that day, and the story those factors combine to create as it does with the feedback itself. You are your own unreliable narrator. Take a breath. Check in with someone you trust.

The leaders I work with who struggle most with feedback aren't the ones who don't care — they're usually the ones who care the most. The instinct to take it hard, to turn it over and over, looking for what you did wrong, comes from a real commitment to doing good work. That part doesn't need to change. What can change is learning to sort signal from noise, to get curious before you get defensive, and to fact-check the story before you believe it. That's not a soft skill. It's a practiced one.

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