Quotes from Douglas Stone

But feedback is not simply a thing the giver hands you and you receive. The two of you are building a puzzle—together.

Because when we set out to try to change someone, we are more likely to argue with and attack their story and less likely to listen. This approach increases the likelihood that they will feel defensive rather than open to learning something new. They are more likely to change if they think we understand them and if they feel heard and respected. They are more likely to change if they feel free not to.

difficult conversations do not just involve feelings, they are at their very core about feelings.

Seeing my own contribution to my circumstances makes me stronger, not weaker. If I contribute to my own problems, there are things I have the power to change.

But they are two different topics, and should be two different conversations. Trying to talk about both topics simultaneously is like mixing your apple pie and your lasagna into one pan and throwing it in the oven. No matter how long you bake it, it's going to come out a mess.

Talking successfully about feelings requires you to be scrupulous about taking the judgments, attributions, and statements of blame out of what you are saying, and putting the statement of feeling in. It is crucial to look at the actual words you are using to see whether those words really convey what you want them to. For

In truth, we are all fast and slow, strong and weak, motivated and lazy in a thousand tiny ways throughout our days that the generalizations simply don't capture.

I've been graded, rated, and ranked. Coached, screened, and scored. I've been picked first, picked last, and not picked at all. And that was just kindergarten.

Learning about ourselves can be painful—sometimes brutally so—and the feedback is often delivered with a forehead-slapping lack of awareness for what makes people tick. It can feel less like a "gift of learning" and more like a colonoscopy.

we have a deep desire to feel heard, and to know that others care enough to listen.

Listening well is one of the most powerful skills you can bring to a difficult conversation.

All three elements of blame are present: you caused this, I'm judging you negatively, and implicit in what I am saying is that one way or another you will be punished, especially if it happens again.

The goal shouldn't be to remove interpretation or judgment. It should be to make judgments thoughtfully, and once made, to have them be transparent and discussable.

I appreciate that. I'm feeling bad too. Let's retrace our steps and think about how this happened. I suspect we may each have contributed to the problem. From your point of view, did I do anything differently this time?

When Blame Is the Goal, Understanding Is the Casualty

Like a town that slowly takes shape on the curve of a river, these experiences accumulated into a village of values, assumptions, and expectations about what it means to be "good" or "competent.

When your real goal is finding the dog, fixing the ceiling, and preventing such incidents in the future, focusing on blame is a waste of time. It neither helps you understand the problem looking back, nor helps you fix it going forward.

It's hard to hear someone else when we are feeling unheard, even if the reason we feel unheard is that we have chosen not to share.

YOUR LEAKY FACE Who can see your face? Everyone. Who can't see your face? You.

strong emotions can seem as if they are part of the environment rather than part of us. It's not that I was angry, we think, it's that the situation was tense. But situations are not

Emotional math is really a subset of a larger dynamic. When something goes wrong and I am part of it, I will tend to attribute my actions to the situation; you will tend to attribute my actions to my character.

Nothing affects the learning culture of an organization more than the skill with which its executive team receives feedback. And

Ninety-three percent of American motorists believe they are better-than-average drivers. In a 2007 BusinessWeek poll, 90 percent of the managers surveyed believed their performance in the workplace to be in the top 10 percent.4

The Truth Assumption As we argue vociferously for our view, we often fail to question one crucial assumption upon which our whole stance in the conversation is built: I am right, you are wrong. This simple assumption causes endless grief.