We get feedback every day of our lives, from friends and family, colleagues, customers, and bosses, teachers, doctors, and strangers.  We’re assessed, coached, and criticized about our performance, personalities, and appearance.

We know that feedback is essential for professional development and healthy relationships—but we dread it and often dismiss it.  That’s because receiving feedback sits at the junction of two conflicting human desires. We want to learn and grow, but we also want to be accepted and respected just as we are now.  Thanks for the Feedback is the first book to address this tension head on.  It explains why getting feedback is so crucial yet so challenging and offers a simple framework and powerful tools to help us take on life’s blizzard of offhand comments, annual evaluations, and unsolicited advice with curiosity and grace.

The business world spends billions of dollars and millions of hours each year teaching people how to give feedback more effectively.  Stone and Heen argue that we’ve got it backwards and show us why the smart money is on educating receivers – in the workplace as well as in personal relationships. It’s the receivers, after all, who interpret what they’re hearing and decide whether and how to change.

Coauthors of the international bestseller Difficult Conversations, Stone and Heen have discovered that while receiving feedback can be fraught, doing it well can be taught.  With humor and clarity, the book blends the latest insights from neuroscience and psychology with practical, hard-headed advice. It is destined to become a classic in the world of leadership, organizational behavior, and education.