Praise for Thanks for the Feedback

“Receiving feedback is a skill, and like most skills, it requires practice and a willingness to change and improve. . . . [ Thanks For The Feedback is] the best guide I’ve found to learning this skill.”

—Jessica Lahey, The New York Times

“ Thanks for the Feedback is an extraordinarily useful book. It’s full of helpful techniques that can be put to use by anyone seeking to manage an organization, lead a team, engage a business partner, or navigate a relationship. . . . Stone and Heen have done a remarkable job of showing individuals and organizations how to leverage the enormous value of feedback, one of the most powerful instruments available for human learning.”

— Strategy + Business

“ Thanks for the Feedback takes a 180-degree turn in the usual approach to feedback. Instead of teaching readers to deliver it effectively, Stone and Heen show them how to receive it in a way that builds self-awareness and action planning for improvement. . . . Stone and Heen describe in a meaningful way what is entirely true about the feedback process: It’s a complex interchange that is inevitably influenced by the perceptions and biases of the giver and receiver. An excellent follow up to their bestselling book Difficult Conversations , Thanks for the Feedback provides a powerful framework for making feedback work—no matter what it is or how it is given.”

— T+D Magazine

“This unique book addresses how to accept feedback gracefully, whether your boss is giving you a review, your kids are commenting on their meatloaf dinner, or your mother-in-law is offering snide commentary on your parenting style . . . [Stone and Heen] hit it out of the park with well-researched insight, advice, and tips.”

— Parents Magazine

“We all need to get better at hearing feedback. That doesn’t entail always accepting it, [but] it does mean abandoning the knee-jerk response of railing against feedback you consider unfair and instead trying to figure out why the difference of viewpoint has arisen. . . . The book asks a question worth memorizing: what’s the one thing you see me doing that gets in my own way?”

— The Guardian (London)

“The book isn’t a manifesto for being a pushover: Thanks for the Feedback instructs in the art of understanding feedback and turning criticism into a kick-ass attitude. Saints needn’t apply.”

—Evening Standard

“Feedback is everywhere. We may not be able to exert complete control over what someone else thinks of us but we can certainly do something about what we choose to do with the feedback. [This] is a sensible, breezily written book.”

—Financial Times

“Surprisingly little attention has been focused on being an effective recipient of feedback. Enter Stone and Heen with a well-rounded consideration of ‘the science and art of receiving feedback well.’ As they write, both of those disciplines are required to receive feedback in productive ways—not only in the workplace, but in personal life as well. . . . The authors do an excellent job of constraining the applications to feedback usefulness while also exploring some of the other ways we can define what ‘feedback’ consists of in our lives. With a culture increasingly focused on the individual and the self, this book on developing the ability to accept and utilize the input of others constructively deserves a wide readership.”

— Kirkus Reviews

“I’ll admit it: Thanks for the Feedback made me uncomfortable. And that’s one reason I liked it so much. With keen insight and lots of practical takeaways, Stone and Heen reveal why getting feedback is so hard—and then how we can do better. If you relish receiving criticism at work and adore it in your personal life, then you may be the one person on earth who can safely skip this book.”

—Daniel H. Pink, author of To Sell Is Human and Drive

“ Thanks for the Feedback is a potentially life-changing look at one of the toughest but most important parts of life: receiving feedback. It’s a road map to less defensiveness, more self-awareness, greater learning, and richer relationships. Doug Stone and Sheila Heen have delivered another tour de force.”

—Adam Grant, Wharton professor and author of Give and Take

“Imagine an organization where everyone is actually good at receiving feedback. Collective anxiety would be reduced. People would learn and grow. Impossible you say? Thanks to this insanely original and powerful book, maybe not.”

—Judy Rosenblum, former chief learning officer of Coca-Cola and
founder of Duke Corporate Education

“Startlingly original advice for how to make feedback truly useful.”

—Chris Benko, vice president of global talent management of Merck

“If you want to lead a learning organization, improving the quality of feed­­back is job one. This book is an essential guide to making that happen.”

—Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management,
Harvard Business School, and author of Teaming

“Learning and HR professionals aren’t the only ones who will love this book. It should be required reading for anyone receiving a performance appraisal—and anyone who is striving to improve.”

—B. Alan Echtenkamp, executive director of global organization
and leadership development, Time Warner Inc.

“Accepting feedback at work is important, but in families, it’s vital. This simple, elegant book teaches us how.”

—Bruce Feiler, New York Times columnist and author
of The Secrets of Happy Families

“ Thanks for the Feedback places the reader in the driver’s seat and shifts the paradigm on who is in charge of the learning.”

—Wagner Denuzzo, director, IBM Management Development

“My management team and I are reading Thanks for the Feedback . We spend hours discussing it, as if it were directions to a lifetime gift of free donuts and coffee! We now have a way to set meaningful standards for productive feedback and most importantly, for developing sensible solutions with officers who are struggling. Melding your concepts with our desires of service and professionalism within our California state police agency are a perfect match. We are integrating the material into a training we hope to offer the entire department.”

—J. Edwards, Jr., Lieutenant Commander and police academy instructor

“ Thanks for the Feedback is not about how to give feedback. It’s a far more powerful book than that. It’s about how to receive feedback. . . . We should love feedback, positive or negative. But we’re also proud . . . that’s why this book is so good. We have an image of ourselves as someone who can cope emotionally with criticism and is open minded. Yet the reality is that we’re human beings, and very different to each other. The book recognizes that we each react differently. It provides us with ways to cope, handle, and grow with feedback.”

—Dan Cottrell, International Rugby Coaching magazine

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