Quotes from Douglas Stone

Listening, understanding, and showing empathy with feelings are the things that help dissipate them, making it easier for the person having those feelings to calm down and open up to other perspectives.

Be explicit about what you think the conversation is about, and be explicit about what would be most helpful to you. Then discuss and, if you each need something different, negotiate. Remember: Explicit disagreement is better than implicit misunderstanding. Explicit disagreement leads to clarity, and is the first step in each of you getting your differing needs met.

People align their actions with implicit incentives, not official rhetoric.

The evaluation conversation needs to take place first. When a professor hands back a graded paper, the student will first turn to the last page to check their grade. Only then can they take in the instructor's margin notes. We can't focus on how to improve until we know where we stand.

And recognize that different people take in information at different speeds and in different ways. For example, some people are visually oriented. For them, you may want to use visual metaphors and refer to pictures or, in a business setting, charts. Some people prefer to get their arms around the whole problem first, and can't listen to anything else you say until they do. Others like all the details up front. Pay attention to these differences.

Why is wrong spotting so easy? Because there's almost always something wrong—something the feedback giver is overlooking, shortchanging, or misunderstanding. About you, about the situation, about the constraints you're under. And givers compound the problem by delivering feedback that is vague, making it easy for us to overlook, shortchange, and misunderstand what they are saying. But in the end, wrong spotting not only defeats wrong feedback, it defeats learning.

Ask Them to Paraphrase Back Paraphrasing the other person helps you check your understanding and helps them know you've heard. You can ask them to do the same thing for you: "Let me check to see if I'm being clear. Would you mind just playing back what you've heard me say so far?

Expressing Your Views and Feelings Your goal should be to express your views and feelings to your own satisfaction. You hope that the other person will understand what you are saying, and perhaps be moved by it, but you can't count on that. What you can do is say, as well as you can, what is important for you to say about your views, intentions, contributions, feelings, and identity issues. You can share your story.

Problem-Solving Together Given what you and the other person have each learned, what would improve the situation going forward? Can you brainstorm creative ways to satisfy both of your needs? Where your needs conflict, can you use equitable standards to ensure a fair and workable way to resolve the conflict?

Labels do serve some useful functions in feedback. Like the soup label, they give us a general idea of the topic, and they can act as shorthand when we return to that topic later. But the label is not the meal.

These are the purposes that emerge from a learning stance, from working through the Three Conversations and shifting your internal orientation from certainty to curiosity, from debate to exploration, from simplicity to complexity, from "either/or" to "and.

A common tendency is to ask for agreement, perhaps because it's reassuring: "Does that make sense?" "Wouldn't you agree?" But asking the other person how they see it differently is more helpful. If you ask for agreement, people may be reluctant to share their doubts and reservations. They aren't sure whether you really want to hear them.

After observing O Sensei, the founder of Aikido, sparring with an accomplished fighter, a young student said to the master, "You never lose your balance. What is your secret?" "You are wrong," O Sensei replied. "I am constantly losing my balance. My skill lies in my ability to regain it.

So to clarify the feedback under the label we need to "be specific" about two things: (1) where the feedback is coming from, and (2) where the feedback is going.

You can begin from the Third Story by saying, "My sense is that you and I see this situation differently. I'd like to share how I'm seeing it, and learn more about how you're seeing it.

Skills for Leading the Conversation

Most conversations can be initiated from the Third Story to include both perspectives and invite joint exploration.

Artificial intelligence expert Roger Schank has an observation about this: He notes that while computers are organized around managing and accessing data, human intelligence is organized around stories.2

I was surprised that you made that comment. It seemed uncharacteristic of you. . . .

Even when we have access to the same data, we tend to notice different things. We are all moving along the same sidewalk, but the historian may notice the brickwork, the jogger the impact on her knees, and the fellow in the wheelchair the areas that are less accessible. We're engulfed by information—far too much to take in—and so we select small samples to pay attention to and ignore the rest.

Focusing on blame is a bad idea because it inhibits our ability to learn what's really causing the problem and to do anything meaningful to correct it. And because blame is often irrelevant and unfair. The urge to blame is based, quite literally, on a misunderstanding of what has given rise to the issues between you and the other person, and on the fear of being blamed.

At heart, blame is about judging and contribution is about understanding.

What you want the other person to say isn't "It was my fault," but rather "I understand that I hurt you and I'm sorry." The first statement is about judgment, the second about understanding.

If they haven't earned your trust, you have no obligation to offer it. If they "dare" you, remember the "And Stance": "Don't you trust me?" "Actually, I don't know you well enough to be sure, and if you are telling the truth I assume you have no problem offering verification or a guaranty." Rather than simply reacting in kind, focus on your objective and how to move toward it.