Thanks for the Feedback: Getting Your Clients to Tell You What You Need to Hear

Whatever you may miss about your former corporate job, your annual performance review is probably not on the list. But now that you’re out on your own, where do you turn for the honest feedback you need to hear to build your skills and grow professionally?

Whitney Benns has some ideas for you. A consultant with the team that produced the bestselling books “Difficult Conversations” and “Getting to Yes,” she will explain how to negotiate feedback from clients and others whose judgment can help you.

Most discussions on feedback focus on giving it. But this presentation will focus on the difficult-to-master skill of receiving feedback so that you can drive your own learning.

Whitney’s presentation is based on the book 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), by Triad founders and principals Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen (Viking/Penguin, March 2014). Whitney will present a framework and tools for sorting through differing perceptions, regaining balance when the feedback is particularly rough, and managing common “triggers” so that you can learn and improve.

If you attend this session, your takeaways will include:

• How to understand better the three types of feedback
• How to take charge of your own learning through feedback
• How to develop awareness of your own “rejection triggers”
• How to decipher feedback that is vague, unclear, or jargony, or without clear indication of what action is really needed from you
• How to elicit coaching that in a way that is powerful and manageable for you (the receiver).

About Our Speaker:

At Triad Consulting Group, Whitney works with clients to diagnose challenges, design solutions, and deliver programs to build management capacity in negotiation, influence, and conflict management skills. She has focused on negotiation, difficult conversations, feedback, and dispute systems design.

Whitney has written for The Atlantic and The Guardian and been a contributor to OnLabor.org, a Harvard-affiliated blog exploring issues involving workers, unions, and politics. She was also a member of Project No One Leaves, an organizing and legal education group that works to empower community members living in foreclosed homes.

Whitney is from Salt Lake City. She has a B.S in political science, international relations, and campaign management from the University of Utah, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

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