Navigating Feedback and Conflict

This chapter explores the strategies individuals use to manage stress and conflict, notably in teaching and interpersonal relationships. It emphasizes the importance of emotional awareness and intelligence, as well as the timing and context of giving and receiving feedback. Through personal anecdotes and reflections, the chapter illustrates the complexities of communication and the various emotional triggers that can affect how feedback is interpreted and received.

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Sheila Heen has spent the last three decades working to understand how people can better navigate conflict, with a particular specialty in difficult conversations.

She is a founder of Triad Consulting Group, a professor at Harvard Law School, and a co-author of 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, and Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, with Douglas Stone and Bruce Patton (with a newly updated third edition that was released in August).

Sheila and her colleagues at Triad work with leaders and organizations to build their capacity to have the conversations that matter most. Her clients have included Pixar, American Express, the NBA, the Singapore Supreme Court, the Obama White House, and theologians struggling with the nature of truth and God.

She is schooled in negotiation daily by her three children. You can find my first conversation with Sheila at tim.blog/SheilaHeen.

Please enjoy!

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[07:01] Conversations are the relationship.

[08:12] How should we talk about feedback?

[11:16] De-escalating the ask.

[13:30] Addressing victim-blaming feedback for the new edition of Difficult Conversations.

[28:48] How I’ve dealt with reader (and proofreader) feedback.

[41:18] Making use of the three types of feedback.

[49:05] Received difficult feedback? Phone a friend.

[54:36] Discovering a good/bad match early in the dating game.

[00:59:30] How I’ve traditionally handled conflict and stress.

[1:07:50] The conundrum of feedback’s source.

[1:09:03] Three triggered reactions to feedback.

[1:12:09] The you plus me combination.