I was recommending this book to people before I had finished it, so spoiler: I think it’s great and I really recommend it (especially if feedback is important part of your job, e.g. you’re a manager). But some highlights that I pulled from it:
- We have three reactions to feedback: truth, relationship and identity.
- Truth: just feels wrong – it’s not inline with the facts we have.
- Relationship: this is a reaction to your relationship with the feedback giver.
- Identity: makes you question how you see yourself.
- Three types of feedback: appreciation, coaching and evaluation.
- Appreciation: I see you and I value you.
- Coaching: direction / suggestions / guidance.
- Evaluation: where are you?
- We need to distinguish between types – often we hear evaluation in coaching, and it makes us anxious. We might need the evaluation before we can get the coaching.
- “Wrong spotting” in feedback: where we look for what is wrong about the feedback and reasons to discount it. Look for what could be write about it instead.
- Feedback is where information becomes judgement, skewed via the experiences of the person giving it.
- To understand the information, ask questions.
- Blind spot: we focus on our intentions and the situation, others focus on our impact.
- Feedback is a mirror: honest mirrors and supportive mirrors.
- Our friends are often supportive mirrors, don’t necessarily say what they really think.
- Need honest mirrors. Ask “how am I getting in my own way?”
- Look at a system: it’s rare that just one person needs to change, there are interactions.
- Take a step back, look at the system, break the cycles.
- Take a growth mindset and score yourself for how you respond to the feedback – not just what the feedback is.
- The first score is the feedback (the evaluation).
- The “second score” is what you do with it.
- Doing well with the second score pays off over time.
- You get to have boundaries around feedback: what you want, when you want it, who you choose to accept it from.
- It’s fine to set those boundaries. If you choose not to take it, and it effects others, work with them to mitigate it.
- Coach your coach – understand how you take feedback best, and help them give it to you in a way you can process.