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Comment by donw | Hacker News Reader

That is a hard pill to swallow, and good on you for taking that feedback and learning from it.

Quite possibly the best two best pieces of advice I have ever received were on how to receive, and how to give, feedback.

For the former, always take critical feedback at face value, and take the time to thank them for it. Assume that their feedback is true, and ask yourself what you could or should change to address it.

Even if the answer ends up being "nothing", it is a very useful mental exercise, and chance to learn and grow.

It sounds like you learned that lesson well. :)

The second is that all feedback you give should be actionable, specific, and kind.

It is shocking how much those two small pieces of wisdom have improved my life over the years.

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(This may be obvious, but I want to hear it from you). Why add "kind"? Why not just "actionable and specific"?

If you don't deliver a critique with kindness then the ego gets engaged, the shield goes up, and the target becomes unreceptive. You become the attacker/enemy.

Many people, especially those not used to receiving and handling feedback, can misinterpret feedback as petty criticism or even as a personal attack. Being kind may help reassure the recipient of the feedback that we're actually trying to help them rather than hurt them.

Because criticism is the process of sitting square in the middle of the "sourest spot" of our failings and faults, and staying there for a few moments. It's never fun.

So if someone who needs to shove something we're doing incorrectly in our faces so we can re-prioritize, and they don't do it kindly, that's kind of abusive, and very imbalanced. In that moment there needs to be acknowledgement and recognition of universal imperfection and vulnerability, and not "you're the worst person in the world right now."

Comparing ourselves with others is incredibly toxic. It makes the condemner think they've truly "made it" (which in itself is a gigantic lie) and get complacent, and it makes the condemned think there's no point in going forward. So it slows both parties down!

NB. Written because I compared what I was going to say with the two comments that were written, and I decided what I was going to say was more interesting and insightful and would attract more comments. Karma is an incredibly unhelpful digital sugarcube, I don't take it well (ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15634577, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16384194).

Because many people (programmers seem especially susceptible to this) use "actionable and specific" as an excuse to be jerks.

If the person delivering feedback doesn't "care" about the person receiving it, you'll never get the tone right, and will never create the emotional connection that is so necessary for the feedback to be internalized. The receiving end will hear the words, but much harder to act on it.

Kim Scott wrote extensively about this in her book "Radical Candor" [1]. Do yourself a favor and skip the video snippets and TED talks, and go straight to the book (so you don't get caught up on the click-baity "radical candor quadrant"). This is particularly true if you manage teams - or ever aspire to.

The author is a former Googler and used to report to Sheryl Sandberg during the early days, before going to Apple and working with Jobs and Tim Cook, and more recently with Dick Costolo on Twitter.

This is one of those books I wish I had read when I started my career. It would have saved me from so much pain and mistakes learned the hard way.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Candor-Kick-Ass-Without-Human...

Few things are truly obvious, so this is a good question.

There are a lot of good answers here, but I feel compelled to add one more.

Kindness... opens doors. By being kind, your feedback is much more likely to actually benefit the person on the receiving end of it, which is the point of giving feedback in the first place.

Kindness also reminds us to look at not just the things that we don't like, but also at the good, and to give credit wherever and whenever it is due.

Here, for example, I could just have replied with an answer or a link to an article. That wouldn't have been unkind, per se. But you did ask a good question! Other people that read my reply may have wondered the same thing, and so by raising this, you helped all of those other people.

Moreover, in looking back on things, I struggle to think of a time in my life when being unkind was a net benefit to me.

Doing things that don't help me... doesn't sound like a solid strategy for winning. :)

So, in general, I make it a point to Always Be Kind, and encourage others to do the same.

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