Thanks for the Feedback

Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen shift the study of feedback from the person giving it to the person receiving it. The coauthors of Difficult Conversations note that feedback arrives from everywhere, bosses, colleagues and customers as well as family and friends, and that it is hard to take because it pits the wish to learn and improve against the wish to be accepted as we are. Organizations spend heavily training people to give feedback; the authors argue the better investment is in receivers. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience and ten years of work with companies, nonprofits, governments and families, they offer a framework for handling evaluations, offhand remarks and unsolicited advice. It became a New York Times best seller.

Merck talent executive Chris Benko praised its advice on making feedback useful as strikingly original, and Time Warner leadership development director Alan Echtenkamp said anyone facing a performance review should read it.