Thanks for the Feedback cover art

Thanks for the Feedback

The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options

Thanks for the Feedback

By: Douglas Stone, Sheila Heen
Narrated by: Douglas Stone, Sheila Heen
Try for £0.00

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £13.45

Buy Now for £13.45

Summary

The authors of the classic Difficult Conversations teach you how to take criticism productively in Thanks for the Feedback.

We get feedback every day of our lives, from friends and family, colleagues, customers and bosses, teachers, doctors and strangers. We're assessed, coached, and criticised about our performance, personalities and appearance.

We know that feedback is essential for professional development and healthy relationships - but we dread it and even dismiss it. That's because while we want to learn and grow, we also want to be accepted just as we are.

Thanks for the Feedback is the first book to address this tension head on. In it, the world-renowned team behind the Harvard Negotiation Project offer a simple framework and powerful tools, showing us how to take on life's blizzard of comments and advice with curiosity and grace.

©2014 Douglas Stone & Sheila Heen (P)2014 Penguin Random House LLC Management Management & Leadership Personal Development Personal Success Business Leadership
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c

Critic reviews

"I'll admit it: Thanks for the Feedback made me uncomfortable. And that's one reason I liked it so much. With keen insight and lots of practical takeaways, it reveals why getting feedback is so hard - and then how we can do better." (Daniel H. Pink, New York Times best-selling author of A Whole New Mind)
All stars
Most relevant
This is really an exceptional book.

My usual complaint is that books of this genre are typically single ideas that fit on one page, inexplicably 400 times longer. This also is on a single idea - receiving feedback better - but somehow they've cracked it where so many others have failed. Maybe it's that the topic itself is so much bigger than getting up at 5am or turning off your email notifications or some other bollocks clamoring for 10 hours of your time, that the references and stories add rather than subtract.

There really is a lot of think about here and plenty to put into practice. It's ten hours long but it must have taken me fifteen because I kept pausing it to write notes. I jotted down 5,000 words in the end. The dog was not impressed, until she discovered she was free to eat horse poo without me noticing.

Sets of three abound: "here are three tools to...", "three types of...", "three common misconceptions about...", etc. Everything consistently orbits the central topic of feedback though so all this frameworking feels valuable and original even when it's derived from the work of others. The last two chapters, actioning feedback and enacting feedback systems in organisations, do drift into the generic but the first twelve chapters are rich with insights and practical pointers.

The tone of voice is down to earth and the style of writing quietly funny in places. They share the reading and do a good job.

All in all, I absolutely loved this. A real contribution to the genre and in my top five for the year.

Exceptional

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This audiobook is 1 of 2 books that I've finished in the same month of downloading. The authors' style encourages commitment to regular listening as you start to see life differently. The beginning can be a bit tough on the ego, hang in there and you may find valuable perspective by the time you reach the final chapter :) I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I have.

A book that encourages and empowers :)

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I almost didn’t read this book. I’ve had so much coaching over the years that I felt I’d done feedback back to death but the recommendation I’d been given meant I at least had to commit to an hour if only to be able to prove myself right. Now I should start with a warning, this book reveals itself as you work through and practising its methods prematurely can back fire as I found out during an argument with my wife. Armed with some early chapters in the book I said that are argument was actually two separate issues and that we should separate them and deal with them separately - which would you like to take first? Don’t try that approach. It doesn’t end well! As I progressed with the book I came to question whether its title underplayed its role and I came to view it as giving wonderful advice not just about feedback but about how to have better conversations. Its range of stories help to put the content of the book in context and I even listened to the part on mindset with my 16 year old son who seemed to accept its advice far more readily than my own. I have subsequently bought the hard copy and am sure I’ll revisit it regularly.

The Best Book I’ve Read This Year

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The best book I’ve read this year. So many great ideas and tips about feedback receiving. The world would be so much better if everyone read/listened to this book.

This book should be mandatory read in schools

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This has been a hugely positive help to my relationships in learning how to receive feedback calmly and reduce defensiveness and extract the useful insights from it.

Fantastically helpful insights for any relationship

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews