Therese Huston | How to Manage Criticism Effectively & Make Feedback Your Superpower

In today’s episode, we cover effective feedback with Therese Huston. Therese founded the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Seattle University, has given more than 225 keynotes, talks, and workshops, and is the author of Let’s Talk: Make Effective Feedback Your Superpower.

Giving great feedback is not easy and poorly worded feedback can put anyone on the defensive, so what does effective feedback look like, what can you do to practice giving great feedback, and why is it important to get better at giving feedback?

What to Listen For

• Therese Huston’s Beginning - 0:00

• What sparked Therese’s interest in researching the topic of effective feedback?

• The 3 Different Types of Feedback - 1:49

• What are the 3 different types of feedback and how do you put all 3 together to give the best feedback?
• How do you give genuine appreciation and use it to transition into coaching feedback?
• What is coaching and how is it different from pointing out what someone is doing wrong?
• What does it mean to separate the person from the problem when giving feedback and why is it important if you don’t want the person to get defensive?
• Why does the feedback sandwich receive so much criticism and what is the correct way to use the technique?

• Cultivating a Growth Mindset Receptive to Feedback - 17:48

• What can you do to cultivate a growth mindset in your managers so they can work with their employees rather than against them?
• Why do you need to state your intentions as a manager when giving feedback?
• What is the difference between a “me strength” and a “we strength” and why can a deficiency in one lead to a team’s failure?

• How to be a Better Leader and Team Member - 31:55
• What are the different types of listening and why is it crucial to use one instead of the other?
• What is critical listening and why can critical listening in the wrong situation lead to a breakdown in communication?
• What can you do as a manager to ask better questions and thus get better results?
• What can you do to bring out the potential in younger employees?
• How do you move past unconscious bias in the workplace?
• What challenges does working remotely introduce into the process of giving effective feedback and what can you do to overcome them?

Giving feedback can feel like a delicate balance between being too harsh and being too nice. On one hand, if we’re afraid to hurt their feelings, we might sugarcoat the issues and fail to impress upon them just how important it is that they improve. On the other hand, we want to be clear with people about what we want them to work on and why it’s important they improve, but it can be easy to overwhelm them with what they’re doing wrong and turn them against us.

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Resources from this Episode

Therese Huston’s website

Let’s Talk: Make Effective Feedback Your Superpower by Therese Huston

Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well

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