When Your Boss Gives You Bad Feedback, Badly

by Kim Scott, Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy

June 12, 2023

Anton Vierietin/Getty Images

Summary.

Hearing about what you’re not doing well at work can feel bad. That doesn’t make you “defensive” or “shut down to feedback.” It just means you’re human and that you care about your performance — both good things.

Kim Scott is the author of NYT and WSJ bestsellers Radical Candor and Just Work and co-founder of the company Radical Candor. Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and other tech companies. She was a member of the faculty at Apple University and before that led AdSense, YouTube, and DoubleClick teams at Google. Before that Kim managed a pediatric clinic in Kosovo and started a diamond-cutting factory in Moscow. She lives with her family in Silicon Valley.

Liz Fosslien is the coauthor and illustrator of the WSJ bestseller No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotion at Work and Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay. She is on the leadership team of Atlassian’s Team Anywhere, where she helps distributed teams advance how they collaborate. Liz regularly leads workshops for leaders; her clients include Google, Paramount, and the U.S. Air Force. Liz’s writing and work have been featured by TED, The Economist, Good Morning America, the New York Times, and NPR.

@lizandmollie

Mollie West Duffy is the coauthor of the WSJ bestseller No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotion at Work and Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay. She is the head of learning and development at Lattice, and was an organizational design lead at global innovation firm IDEO. She has worked with companies of all sizes on organizational development, leadership development, and workplace culture.

@lizandmollie

Read more on Receiving feedback or related topics Difficult conversations, Managing yourself and Managing conflicts

When Your Boss Gives You Bad Feedback, Badly

Summary.

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