How to Give & Get Constructive Feedback | Dr. Adam Grant & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | So how should we filter positive versus negative feedback?
00:00:05.440 | Well, there's a meta-analysis here.
00:00:08.080 | This is Kluger and Dinesi looking at 100 years of feedback research, and they found that
00:00:12.880 | what drives the utility of feedback is not whether it's positive or negative.
00:00:17.000 | It's whether it focuses on the task or on the self.
00:00:21.600 | So if I tell you that your work is terrible, you're going to get defensive.
00:00:27.380 | If I tell you that your work is great, you're going to get complacent.
00:00:31.540 | If I tell you, here's the specific thing that I liked about your work, you're going to try
00:00:35.320 | to learn to repeat that.
00:00:36.880 | And if I tell you, here's the thing I didn't like, you're going to try to see if you can
00:00:40.020 | fix it.
00:00:41.560 | So I actually think we should worry less about whether the feedback is encouraging or discouraging,
00:00:46.860 | and more about how do I make sure that I get input that's going to allow me to learn from
00:00:51.120 | my strengths and also overcome my weaknesses.
00:00:54.660 | And actually, one of the things I've learned recently is there's some, I would say, a growing
00:00:59.340 | body of evidence at this point that asking for feedback is not the best way to get people
00:01:03.580 | to help you.
00:01:05.220 | Because when you ask for feedback, you end up getting two groups of people.
00:01:07.980 | You get cheerleaders and you get critics.
00:01:10.180 | And cheerleaders are basically applauding your best self.
00:01:12.980 | Critics are attacking your worst self.
00:01:14.620 | What you want is a coach, which is somebody who helps you become a better version of yourself.
00:01:19.020 | And the way you get people to coach you is not to say, "Give me feedback," because they
00:01:22.220 | will then look at the past and tell you what you screwed up or what you did right.
00:01:26.820 | What you want is to say, "Can you give me advice for next time?"
00:01:30.340 | And then they look at the future and they'll give you either a note on something to repeat
00:01:33.780 | or something to correct.
00:01:35.380 | And this is such a subtle shift, but it can make a big difference.
00:01:37.700 | Andrew, one of the things I've, I guess I found myself applying this to a lot is after
00:01:43.300 | giving speeches.
00:01:44.300 | I used to get off stage and say, "I'd love some feedback."
00:01:48.020 | And you get back a bunch of, "Oh, you know, I really enjoyed that.
00:01:51.260 | Thanks.
00:01:52.260 | What do I do with that information?
00:01:53.740 | I'm trying to learn how to get better."
00:01:55.700 | And when I shift the question to say, "What's the one thing I could do better next time?"
00:01:59.020 | It's like, "Oh, don't open with a joke.
00:02:00.780 | The audience couldn't tell you were joking."
00:02:02.020 | Frequently, it's, "Give me a little bit more of a through line.
00:02:08.300 | You focused a lot on, you know, a bunch of interesting points, but I lost the connective
00:02:12.420 | tissue."
00:02:13.420 | And, you know, those actionable suggestions are much more likely to come when you just
00:02:16.780 | ask for a tip as opposed to an evaluation.
00:02:19.540 | Oh, that's so good.
00:02:21.140 | I mean, I'm going to just pause for a second.
00:02:24.740 | I've never taken a pause.
00:02:26.780 | I've taken occasional pause, to be honest, but they're very rare, as the audience knows.
00:02:33.460 | Oh, that's just gazillion dollar advice because I think that everyone has an ego.
00:02:42.700 | We all want to perform well.
00:02:45.100 | We'd like to perform better over time, and negative feedback hurts.
00:02:49.340 | And it can hurt a little or a lot depending on how defensive we are, but a tool like you
00:02:54.260 | just described to remove some of that defensive armor that we all have and actually let the
00:03:01.320 | information in in a way that's constructive is really great.
00:03:04.500 | What you described, I think, is a way to create constructive criticism, but the constructive
00:03:10.460 | part is really coming from within as opposed to saying, "I'd like some constructive criticism,"
00:03:15.580 | and then hoping that the criticism is actually constructive.
00:03:18.380 | So you're taking control over the process in a healthy way, in a benevolent way.
00:03:22.900 | That's the goal.
00:03:23.900 | And I think the big question that comes up for a lot of people at this point is, "Okay,
00:03:27.480 | so I get somebody to give me advice, but it might still sting.
00:03:30.940 | How do I get better at taking it constructively?"
00:03:33.940 | And I think probably my favorite technique on this I learned from Sheila Heen.
00:03:38.220 | She calls it the second score.
00:03:40.100 | And the idea is that when somebody gives you a piece of criticism, that's your first score.
00:03:44.780 | So let's say in my world they gave me a three and a half, and I want to know how I can do
00:03:50.900 | better next time.
00:03:51.900 | How do I get myself to focus on that?
00:03:53.780 | What I do is say, "I want to get a 10 for how well I took the three and a half."
00:03:58.140 | And that's the second score.
00:03:59.140 | I want to evaluate myself on how well I took the first score.
00:04:03.460 | I think about this almost every day.
00:04:05.700 | Actually, can I tell you a quick story?
00:04:08.980 | So when I was right out of my doctorate, I got asked to teach a motivation class for
00:04:14.980 | Air Force generals and colonels.
00:04:17.420 | I was 25, I think, 25, 26.
00:04:23.720 | They're all twice my age.
00:04:25.300 | They've got thousands of flying hours.
00:04:27.460 | They've got billion dollar budgets.
00:04:29.940 | They've got-- well, you know this community well.
00:04:32.540 | Their nicknames are Stryker and Sand Dune.
00:04:35.420 | And I was extremely intimidated.
00:04:37.460 | So I walked in there, and I thought I had to impress them.
00:04:39.940 | And I started talking about my credentials and all my research experience.
00:04:44.540 | And the feedback at the end of the four-hour session was brutal.
00:04:48.460 | I remember reading the feedback forms, and one person had written, "More knowledge in
00:04:53.260 | the audience than on the podium."
00:04:54.740 | I was like, "True.
00:04:55.740 | I can't argue with that."
00:04:58.820 | And then another wrote, "I gained nothing from this session, but I trust the instructor
00:05:02.780 | gained useful insight."
00:05:03.780 | And that was devastating.
00:05:06.940 | I was like, "Can I-- I would really like to transform into an actual bear and hibernate
00:05:12.380 | for the next four months, and then maybe I'll come out of a hole ready to hear this."
00:05:16.500 | I didn't have that option.
00:05:17.900 | I had committed to teach a second session a week later.
00:05:21.700 | So all I could do was figure out, how am I going to hear this feedback and really take
00:05:25.780 | it seriously?
00:05:26.780 | And I guess I applied a version of the second score, and I said, "All right, you know, there's
00:05:30.620 | some generals that are going to come back and see me again, and I've got to prove to
00:05:35.020 | them that I was open to feedback."
00:05:38.140 | And one of the things I heard loud and clear was that they valued humility, and I had led
00:05:43.720 | with too much confidence, which was just insecurity masked.
00:05:48.180 | And so I thought, "Okay, how do I-- how do I change the equation?"
00:05:52.140 | And walked in, looked at the room, and I said, "I know what you're all thinking right now.
00:05:56.900 | What could I possibly learn from a professor who's 12 years old?"
00:06:01.180 | Dead silence.
00:06:02.180 | I'm like, "Oh, no.
00:06:05.060 | This is going to go horribly wrong."
00:06:06.940 | And then one of the guys in the audience jumps in, and he's like, "Oh, that's ridiculous.
00:06:10.660 | You've got to be at least 13."
00:06:13.220 | Everybody started laughing.
00:06:14.220 | It broke the ice.
00:06:15.780 | And I think what I was trying to do was to take myself off the pedestal and say, "Look,
00:06:19.780 | I heard your feedback.
00:06:21.360 | You told me that you didn't think I had anything to teach you, and I've got to acknowledge
00:06:25.460 | that right up front and be open to the fact that that's true.
00:06:28.420 | And so I want to come in here and learn from you, and I want to see if I can curate a conversation
00:06:32.140 | where we all end up learning."
00:06:34.400 | And the feedback was night and day different.
00:06:36.180 | Afterward, one person wrote, "Although junior in experience, the professor dealt with the
00:06:40.140 | evidence in an interesting way."
00:06:41.380 | I was like, "All right, I'll take it."
00:06:43.900 | And there was something really powerful about saying, "Look, you know, I can't change the
00:06:47.940 | fact that they hated my session.
00:06:49.660 | What I can do is convince them that I was motivated to learn from their criticism."
00:06:54.220 | I love this concept of the second score, and thank you for sharing that story.
00:06:59.460 | I think, you know, very often we hear about people like you who, if people didn't catch
00:07:04.940 | the math in there, you were a PhD by age 25.
00:07:09.780 | And as far as I know, the youngest tenured professor at Penn at 28.
00:07:13.460 | So these are outrageously impressive metrics of accomplishment.
00:07:18.840 | And for you to share a story about, you know, less than optimal performance and how you
00:07:24.420 | adjusted to it and the incorporation of the second score that you're referring to, I think
00:07:30.620 | it's really appreciated.
00:07:32.500 | Because I think that as much as we hear, you know, "Oh, you know, Jordan, you know, took
00:07:37.420 | many more, you know, free throws, and everyone just thinks about all the ones he made."
00:07:41.340 | You know, people think about all the ones he made.
00:07:43.620 | That's the way the game works.
00:07:44.780 | That's the way the mind works, I should say.
00:07:46.660 | So it's, I appreciate that you've fleshed it out with a personal example.
00:07:50.180 | I too would want to turn into a bear and disappear.
00:07:52.780 | But I would, but I think that it's really impressive what you did.
00:07:56.180 | And it makes me think that the second score of getting a 10 at bringing the three and
00:08:00.460 | a half up, right, as it were, is really about turning a score into a verb process.
00:08:10.020 | You know, over and over again, as I do this podcast, and as I've taught in the classroom,
00:08:14.060 | what I keep coming back to is this idea that we should be focusing more on verbs and less
00:08:17.380 | on nouns.
00:08:18.620 | We love to name things and categorize them, but when we start living life through a lot
00:08:23.800 | of verb processes, so instead of getting, being fit, we think about that, you know,
00:08:28.860 | or running as a thing, we really think about, like, just running, right, it becomes less
00:08:32.860 | daunting and we accomplish far more.
00:08:35.420 | But the idea that, you know, and this has, there are mathematical models of this, I'm
00:08:39.300 | sure, but where you're basically talking about, you know, like an integral, right, as opposed
00:08:42.240 | to just some value.
00:08:43.240 | You're talking about the slope of the line, right, so you're a three and a half, how are
00:08:47.380 | you going to get to a 10?
00:08:48.380 | Gosh, that's a huge gap, and you're dealing with being back on your heels psychologically
00:08:52.180 | from getting all this, you know, battering feedback from these, you know, these highly
00:08:56.500 | accomplished individuals, all these accoutrements and, you know, literally wearing them presumably
00:09:00.580 | on their body for you to see.
00:09:03.340 | And it's really about creating, it's about taking control of the slope of that line from
00:09:08.220 | the three onward.
00:09:09.220 | And it's really a forward-looking perspective.
00:09:11.520 | So I don't think we're being unduly psychological here or analytic.
00:09:15.600 | I mean, I think it's really about taking a moment state and a noun and turning it into
00:09:21.100 | a verb.
00:09:22.100 | Yeah, I think that's right.
00:09:23.100 | I'm reminded of the great philosopher Homer Simpson, who said that verbing weirds language.
00:09:29.220 | So it's harder to talk about this stuff in verbs.
00:09:30.820 | I love it.
00:09:31.820 | I swear I didn't steal it from the Simpsons, but if it came from Homer Simpson, like, I'm
00:09:34.140 | all for it.
00:09:35.140 | You have to, I mean, that's incredibly credible.
00:09:37.220 | Small brain, but, you know, given the size of his brain and people have seen the image,
00:09:42.000 | you know, fairly robust knowledge.
00:09:44.080 | No, I think you're on to something.
00:09:45.680 | I think verbs are active and we're drawn to them.
00:09:49.220 | I think, yeah, a lot of times people review their past work and they just like, they end
00:09:53.680 | up shaming an earlier version of themselves and they wallow in rumination.
00:09:58.040 | And what we want to try to do in that situation, which is easier said than done, is to say,
00:10:02.480 | all right, like the purpose of, you know, of getting feedback or advice is not to shame
00:10:07.000 | my past self, it's to educate my future self.
00:10:10.040 | Which I think is very connected to a lot of the work on growth mindset that you've been
00:10:13.140 | talking about.
00:10:14.140 | And there's been a firestorm of controversy around, can we teach growth mindset in schools
00:10:18.860 | lately?
00:10:19.860 | And I think what that has underscored for me is, look, you can't expect someone to listen
00:10:25.880 | to one podcast episode or go through one workshop and magically believe that they're capable
00:10:30.960 | of learning anything at any moment.
00:10:33.200 | This is something we have to actively work on on a daily basis.
00:10:35.800 | And part of doing that, exactly as you said, is thinking about this loop and saying, all
00:10:40.240 | right, the person that I'm, you know, I'm competing with is my past self and I want
00:10:44.360 | to get a little bit better today than I was yesterday.
00:10:46.120 | [Music]