CHAPTER 18
How to Give and Receive Feedback About Creative Work
by Spencer Harrison
Feedback is crucial for learning and improving, but we rarely enjoy being on the receiving end of it when it’s criticism. Many people have a negative reaction to feedback, especially feedback on their creative work. In a study of seven companies and 11,471 days of creative work, Harvard Business School professor Teresa M. Amabile and her colleagues found two striking patterns: First, getting feedback was incredibly rare, indicating that people seemed to avoid it. And second, when people did receive feedback, it generally left a negative emotional residue.
So, what might good feedback for creative work look like? By good feedback, I mean feedback that people actually ...
Get HBR Guide to Unlocking Creativity now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.