Thanks for the Feedback: Navigating Difficult Conversations Around Feedback with Sheila Heen

"Thanks for your purchase! Can we get your feedback!?" 

We are asked for our feedback left and right. We're also giving it unknowingly more often than we think. 

When it comes to receiving it, why can it sometimes be so difficult? Of course, we all WANT feedback to do better, grow, and be the best humans we can be... but at the same time, wouldn't it be nice if someone could just pat us on the back and tell us, "All good!"? 

Maybe if they just delivered it the bad news to us sandwiched between all the positive stuff (the Oreo cookie technique)? 

Today's guest, Sheila Heen will share the unique difficulty around receiving feedback; why this conversation can be so difficult whether you're a giver of it or a receiver. 

We dive into: 

• What are the different types of feedback are: Appreciation, Coaching, Evaluation, and what each form might look like
• Why giving feedback can be difficult and getting it can be even harder!
• The three triggers around feedback that can make us shut down
• How to get better at receiving feedback by leaning into curiosity 
• What to do if you're naturally more sensitive to feedback 
• What to do if you just don't want it in a certain area or from a certain person
• Why we need to RE-THINK the Oreo cookie feedback-giving technique
• And MORE! 

Links Mentioned: 

Sheila's Book: Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (Even When It’s Off-Base, Unfair, Poorly Delivered, and Frankly, You’re Not in the Mood) (with Douglas Stone, Viking/Penguin 2014)

Sheila's Website

She Built This Website

About Sheila 

Sheila is a Founder of Triad Consulting, a Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School, and serves as a Deputy Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, where she has been developing negotiation theory and practice since 1995.  

Sheila’s corporate clients have included Pixar, Hugo Boss, the NBA, the Federal Reserve Bank, Ford, Novartis, Converse, American Express, and numerous family businesses. She often works with executive teams, helping them to work through conflict, repair working relationships and make sound decisions together. In the public sector she has also provided training for the New England Organ Bank, the Singapore Supreme Court, the Obama and Biden White Houses and theologians struggling with disagreement over the nature of truth and God.

Sheila specializes in particularly difficult negotiations – where emotions run high and relationships are strained.  She is also a co-author of two New York Times bestsellers:  Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (with Douglas Stone and Bruce Patton, 2nd ed Penguin 2010) and Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (Even When It’s Off-Base, Unfair, Poorly Delivered, and Frankly, You’re Not in the Mood) (with Douglas Stone, Viking/Penguin 2014).  She has written for the Harvard Business Review and for the New York Times as a guest expert and as a Modern Love columnist.  

Sheila and her co-authors are working on a 3rd edition of Difficult Conversations with updates and revisions, which will be released in 2022.

Sheila is a frequent media guest and has appeared on shows as diverse as Oprah, NPR, Fox News, and CNBC’s Power Lunch.   She can be heard on podcast episodes of Shane Parrish’s Knowledge Project, Adam Grant’s WorkLife, Hidden Brain, and The Tim Ferriss Show.  She has spoken at the Global Leadership Summit, the Nordic Business Forum, at The Smithsonian, Apple, Google, Microsoft and at the U.S. Air Force Academy.  She got to fly along on a training mission in an F-16 while working with the Air Force to improve feedback to pilots in training.

Sheila is a graduate of Occidental College and Harvard Law School. She is schooled in negotiation daily by her three children.