Quotes About Feedback

impact. Feedback-seeking behavior—as it's called in the research literature—has been linked to higher job satisfaction, greater creativity on the job, faster adaptation in a new organization or role, and lower turnover. And seeking out negative feedback is associated with higher performance ratings.

Nothing affects the learning culture of an organization more than the skill with which its executive team receives feedback. And of course, as you move up, candid coaching becomes increasingly scarce, so you have to work harder to get it. But doing so sets the tone and creates an organizational culture of learning, problem solving, and adaptive high performance.

Managing truth triggers is not about pretending there's something to learn, or saying you think it's right if you think it's wrong. It's about recognizing that it's always more complicated than it appears and working hard to first understand. And even if you decide that 90 percent of the feedback is off target, that last golden 10 percent might be just the insight you need to grow.

Relationship triggers produce hurt, suspicion, and sometimes anger. The way out is to disentangle the feedback from the relationship issues it triggers, and to discuss both, clearly and separately. In practice, we almost never do this. Instead, as receivers, we take up the relationship issues and let the original feedback drop.

Research conducted at Stanford points to two very different ways people tell their identity story and the effect that can have on how we experience criticism, challenge, and failure. One identity story assumes our traits are "fixed": Whether we are capable or bumbling, lovable or difficult, smart or dull, we aren't going to change. Hard work and practice won't help; we are as we are. Feedback reveals "how we are," so there's a lot at stake.

Creating pull is about mastering the skills required to drive our own learning; it's about how to recognize and manage our resistance, how to engage in feedback conversations with confidence and curiosity, and even when the feedback seems wrong, how to find insight that might help us grow.

As you approach these chapters, have this question marinating in the back of your mind: Why is it that when we give feedback we so often feel right, yet when we receive feedback it so often feels wrong?

And it is the bullwhip of negative judgment—from ourselves or others—that produces much of our anxiety around feedback. Surprisingly, reassurance—"You can do this" and "I believe in you"—also falls into the category of additional judgments, but on the positive side.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Everything we wrote was submitted to the editors above us, grizzled Korean War pilots with buzz cuts and an encyclopedic knowledge, who would routinely bounce our copy back and demand "fixes" ("More color," "Doesn't track," or simply "Huh?" written in the margin).

last year, says Guido. A bit less sugar and slightly higher total acidity. That's just what he wanted. Still, he tries to find a few nits to pick.

I have never met a writer who didn't need an editor, and an editor without a writer is a person without a job. It is a fraught and often-imperfect relationship, of course, dating back to the beginning of time. You remember; after God moved upon the darkness, he proclaimed, "I've put in place some very wondrous illumination here!" And Mrs. God gently suggested the more pithy: 'Let there be light.

The supporters were entitled to know when I was unhappy with a performance. But not an individual.

Averse alike to flatter, or offend; Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.

Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss

When you go to a voice-based interaction, you can't tell people, 'Ask me this question and structure it in this way.' And if they ask a question, and you have a bad answer, first time, maybe they'll be okay with it. Third time, they're going to say, 'This is a complete waste of time. I'm going away.'

To pay attention to flattery or criticism is a waste of time for artists.

To be honest helps you a lot to not waste time. It's also the way I help the players most. It doesn't matter if it is the captain or the last reserve player, I try to be honest.

Usually, when somebody really hates your book, they're not going to waste time on it, telling you what you need to work on.

There were so many specific things from high school jazz band that I remembered: the conductor searching out people who were out of tune, or stopping and starting me for hours in front of the band as they watched.