Let''s Talk

When was the last time you gave someone feedback that truly changed them? If the thought alone makes you anxious, you’re not alone. In Let's Talk: Make Effective Feedback Your Superpower, cognitive psychologist Dr. Therese Huston redefines how we think about feedback. She argues that the key to successful feedback isn’t mastering the art of telling people what to do—it’s learning how to create conversations people can actually hear. Feedback that works, she contends, isn’t a one-way critique; it’s a two-way exchange that builds trust, fuels growth, and motivates sustained excellence.

Huston’s central claim is both reassuring and revolutionary: anyone—introverts, avoiders, even conflict-phobes—can learn to give powerful feedback if they shift from performance judge to collaborative coach. The goal isn’t to become perfect at feedback, but to make it a natural and ongoing process that energizes both people involved. While classic management advice emphasizes candor and critique, Huston shows that genuine connection and psychological safety are just as critical. This balance, she insists, turns feedback from a dreaded ritual into a leadership superpower.

Why Feedback Feels So Hard

Despite living in an era flooded with online reviews and metrics, personal feedback is still agonizing for most managers. Huston reveals that 37 percent of managers feel uncomfortable giving critical feedback—and more than 20 percent avoid it altogether. We’re trained from childhood to stay silent unless we have something nice to say, yet our professional roles demand the opposite. Even worse, many organizations have replaced annual reviews with “continuous feedback,” increasing the pressure without offering tools to do it well. The result is a paradox: we’re expected to give more feedback than ever, but we suffer more stress and confusion when we do.

By grounding her approach in psychology and neuroscience, Huston normalizes this discomfort. Giving feedback triggers the same physiological stress response as receiving it—anxiety, hesitation, and mental load. Yet, she assures readers, feedback can become freeing when we reframe it from “telling hard truths” to “supporting someone’s growth.” Her message echoes Kim Scott’s Radical Candor but softens its directness with empathy and evidence from cognitive science.

The Three Conversations We Must Master

Huston introduces a powerful framework that immediately demystifies feedback: every conversation fits into one of three types—appreciation, coaching, or evaluation. Each fulfills a different human need. Appreciation recognizes effort and value (“I see you”); coaching helps someone grow (“Here’s how we can improve together”); and evaluation sets expectations (“Here’s where you stand”). The problem? Most managers blur these categories. We give a messy mix of praise and judgment that leaves employees confused, demoralized, or defensive.

By separating these forms, you increase clarity and connection. A conversation that starts with, “I’d like to have a coaching talk” feels safer than a vague “Can we talk?” Managers learn to match their message to the need—using appreciation for motivation, coaching for development, and evaluation for progress tracking. This triple framework runs through the book and becomes the foundation for every later practice.

From Scripts to Real Conversations

The heart of Huston’s book lies in moving feedback beyond “scripts” into authentic conversations. She dismantles the false comfort of canned lines (“Have you considered...?”) and focuses instead on presence. People don’t remember your phrasing, she argues—they remember how you made them feel. That emotional imprint determines whether they see you as a partner or an adversary. Drawing on Maya Angelou’s insight—“People will forget what you said and did, but never how you made them feel”—Huston explains how even painful feedback can feel supportive when it’s rooted in visible good intention.

Chapters like “Side with the Person, Not the Problem” and “Say Your Good Intentions Out Loud” demonstrate this shift in practice: feedback is effective when others sense you’re genuinely rooting for them. When Terri’s mentor told her bluntly, “You can’t write, but I want you to be happy,” it cut deep but inspired transformation. That phrase—I want you to be happy—became the key that unlocked change. This exemplifies Huston’s “superpower tip”: your helpful intentions only help if the other person hears them.

Why Feedback Must Be a Dialogue

At its core, the book contends that effective feedback mirrors a healthy conversation: both people talk, and both people listen. Huston’s research shows that what employees crave most isn’t relentless positivity—it’s being heard. In surveys she conducted, workers said they would have felt far better about discouraging feedback if only their managers had listened, discussed next steps collaboratively, or acknowledged their efforts. When feedback is a monologue, morale plummets; when it’s a dialogue, engagement rises.

This insight shapes everything from body language to timing. To make feedback land, you create psychological safety through listening, empathy, and follow‑up. Huston draws from experts like Amy Edmondson (The Fearless Organization) and Guy Itzchakov’s research on listening: when people feel heard, they become more open, more balanced, and more willing to change.

Feedback as Fairness—Not Favoritism

A ruling theme in Huston’s work is fairness. Feedback, she warns, is riddled with unconscious bias—gendered, racial, and hierarchical. Women and people of color often receive vaguer feedback or comments on personality rather than performance. To correct these patterns, Huston equips readers with evidence‑based tools for identifying bias (“protective hesitation,” “vague praise,” “tone policing”) and making fairness a daily practice. This isn’t just ethics—it’s performance strategy. When feedback is fair, the entire team performs better.

Why This Matters

In a world where employee engagement is sinking and trust in leadership is fragile, Huston’s work feels urgent. Feedback isn’t just communication; it’s the oxygen of learning organizations. By combining psychology, neuroscience, and storytelling, Let’s Talk transforms a dreaded managerial duty into a creative act of leadership. You’ll learn how to speak with care, listen with intent, and make feedback work for everyone—especially you. Whether you’re managing one person or an entire organization, this book will teach you to turn awkward moments into transformative ones, making feedback your greatest everyday superpower.

Huston’s model begins with a deceptively simple but profound insight: all feedback falls into three categories—appreciation, coaching, and evaluation. Understanding the differences between them changes how people respond to you, how quickly they grow, and how much they trust you. Most feedback fails because we blur these categories, delivering judgment when someone wanted coaching, or vague praise when they needed standards.

Appreciation: The Oxygen of Motivation

Appreciation acknowledges effort and value: “I see what you’re doing and it matters.” As Huston notes, recognition fulfills a foundational human need for belonging. When people don’t feel seen, motivation evaporates. The data is stark—only 24 percent of employees report receiving enough recognition, yet recognition is the single strongest predictor of engagement. Gallup research backs this: workers who feel appreciated are three times likelier to stay in their jobs.

Huston encourages managers to double the amount of praise they give. Praise doesn’t have to be inflated or fake; it must be specific and sincere. Instead of “Great job,” try “Your clear timeline helped the team deliver ahead of schedule.” She introduces two types of strengths to praise: we‑strengths (traits that uplift the whole team) and me‑strengths (areas that bring individual energy and satisfaction). Recognize both, but deploy them differently: celebrate we‑strengths publicly to motivate others, and make sure each person has a chance to use their me‑strengths daily to sustain their joy.

Coaching: The Path to Growth

Coaching, by contrast, helps people learn and adapt. It’s less about fixing mistakes and more about enabling performance. Good coaching begins with questions, not answers. Huston borrows from Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit: rather than leaping to advice, start with “What’s the real challenge here for you?” In the story of Juan and the hotel clerk, a manager’s direct instructions failed, but Juan’s gentle questions—“What happened?” “How could you reconnect with that guest?”—prompted the clerk to create her own successful solution and earn glowing customer reviews. Coaching invites ownership; telling commands compliance.

For Huston, coaching works best when you ask more and tell less. Managers often overestimate their perspective and underestimate their power—a dynamic she calls the “power squeeze.” Leadership itself impairs perspective‑taking, so active curiosity becomes essential.

Evaluation: The Need for Clarity

Evaluation communicates where someone stands relative to expectations, peers, or goals. It’s necessary for decisions about raises, promotions, or role changes but can damage morale if intertwined with coaching. People can’t learn and defend their status at the same time. The key is separating evaluation from development: first clarify the level (“You met objective A but not B”), then ask whether they want coaching to improve for the future.

Essential Principle

“If someone doesn’t know what kind of feedback they’re getting,” Huston writes, “they will defend the wrong thing.” Label the conversation up front, and you turn confusion into clarity and conflict into collaboration.

By mastering these three feedback types, managers become fluent in people’s real needs. Huston’s approach reframes feedback as nourishment: appreciation fuels motivation, coaching develops ability, and evaluation provides direction. Get these in balance, and you transform feedback from an anxiety event into a rhythm of growth and trust.

Ever notice how quickly people shut down when they feel blamed? Huston argues that how you position yourself—in mindset and language—determines whether your feedback sparks growth or resistance. Her second fundamental principle, Side with the Person, Not the Problem, challenges the managerial reflex to fix issues instead of supporting people.

The Three Toxic Mindsets

Huston identifies three mindsets that sabotage feedback: the script mindset, the problem‑siding mindset, and the “she’s‑a‑little” mindset. The first relies on memorized lines that sound polished but robotic. A scripted critique—“I appreciate your efforts, but your reports lack clarity”—feels rehearsed and insincere. In contrast, authentic conversations adapt to emotion in real time.

The second mindset, siding with the problem, happens when managers ally themselves with metrics, mistakes, or complaints instead of the human being in front of them. The result? Employees feel cornered, not coached. The third mindset—assuming someone “is just that way”—reflects a fixed mindset. When you label someone as “lazy” or “standoffish,” you’ve already stopped believing they can grow. Huston draws on Carol Dweck’s work to show why a growth mindset—faith that effort leads to progress—is the bedrock of developmental feedback.

Shifting the Frame

When you “side with the person,” you literally move your attention from what’s wrong to who’s trying. Instead of adopting the stance of evaluator, become collaborator: “Let’s look at what’s getting in the way together.” Huston illustrates this through the story of Omar, a critical but brilliant team leader. Instead of labeling him “too negative,” his manager reframed the conversation: “You think three moves ahead—a huge asset. But it sometimes makes others hesitant to share ideas. How can we preserve your rigor but make space for others?” By connecting feedback to Omar’s goals, she turned critique into partnership.

This method draws on emotional intelligence research (Daniel Goleman’s work, for instance) showing that empathy precedes persuasion. People don’t change because you prove them wrong; they change because you prove you’re with them.

Five Signs You’re Focused on the Problem

• You don’t know the other person’s goals or motivations.
• You haven’t asked what kind of feedback they want.
• You deliver feedback in front of others.
• You do all the talking.
• You never ask how they see the situation.

Addressing these signals reshapes the dynamic: feedback becomes a joint investigation rather than a verdict. As Huston notes, “When a person feels you’re standing next to them, even the hardest truth lands softer.”

By replacing blame with curiosity and labels with empathy, you move from policing performance to enabling potential. This mindset shift—simple but radical—is the moral and motivational center of Huston’s entire book.

Having good intentions isn’t enough—they must be heard. In one of Huston’s most illuminating chapters, she demonstrates why silence around motives turns managers into villains. Even when your feedback is fair, people will assume the worst unless you say otherwise. Research confirms it: employees routinely believe their supervisors act out of self‑interest, punishment, or power plays, not genuine concern.

The Power of Stated Intent

Terri’s story anchors this lesson. As a young researcher, she was crushed when her mentor Marlene told her, “You can’t write.” Yet Marlene also said, “I want you to be happy.” That one sentence recast the pain as care. Years later, Terri became a professional writer—and still adores her mentor. The line “I want you to be happy” turned criticism into connection. Huston calls this Superpower Tip #3: your good intentions only help if the other person hears them.

To prove why this matters, Huston highlights Harvard researcher Leslie John’s experiments: participants disliked messengers who delivered bad news—even random outcomes. But when the messenger explained, “I was hoping for a better result for you,” trust improved dramatically. Simply voicing goodwill halves negative reactions. Silence, by contrast, breeds suspicion and resentment.

How to Express Good Intentions Authentically

Many managers fear that stating goodwill sounds manipulative. Huston offers ways to tie intentions to people’s personal values: “I know you want to be seen as an inspiring leader,” or “I don’t want this issue to limit your career.” By connecting intentions to someone’s goals or identity, your empathy feels earned, not formulaic. She also warns to repeat intentions over time; one-off declarations fade or breed cynicism if never reinforced.

Mixed Motives and Real Honesty

Managers rarely have pure motives. Maybe you want Carla promoted but also fear losing her on your team. Huston argues that this complexity doesn’t make you dishonest—it makes you human. The remedy is authenticity: name what you truly want (“I want this to help you succeed, even if it makes my job harder”). Honesty about self-interest builds more trust than pretending it doesn’t exist.

When in doubt, use clear statements of goodwill: “I’m on your side.” “I want you to thrive.” “I want others to say ‘You’re great,’ full stop.” Those simple lines disarm defensiveness. They remind people that your feedback is a gift—not a threat.

In Huston’s framework, listening is the hidden superpower of effective feedback. Most people think about what to say during difficult talks—but the real leverage comes from silence and curiosity. “Listen first, feedback later,” Huston repeats, because good listening transforms defensive arguments into collaborative exploration.

The Science of Listening

The book explains why listening is draining for smart people: you think at 700 words per minute, but others speak under 170. That cognitive gap invites distraction and impatience. Yet when you resist it—by focusing, paraphrasing, and validating feelings—you unlock empathy, creativity, and reason. Citing research by Avi Kluger, Huston shows that people literally become more reasonable when they feel heard. They drop defensiveness, admit mistakes, and even balance political views.

Great listeners practice relational listening—listening not to judge or fix but to understand. This contrasts with critical listening, the analytical skill that wins debates but ruins relationships.

Practical Tools: Person-Focused Questions

Huston provides specific prompts to build this habit. Instead of “Why did you miss the deadline?” ask “What got in your way?” Instead of “Are you on track?” ask “What would make it easier for you to deliver this?” She encourages noting each person’s hopes and worries—since worries reveal hidden motivators. By understanding what keeps your people up at night, you frame feedback that feels supportive rather than judgmental.

Validation: The Fastest Way to Calm

Validation—acknowledging emotions without agreeing—reduces stress and increases engagement. In a study Huston cites, people solving hard math problems stayed calmer when researchers responded, “I’d feel frustrated too.” Saying “There’s no need to be upset” tripled stress responses. Validation costs seconds but defuses explosions. If someone cries during feedback, don’t panic; listen, ask what’s most upsetting, and reaffirm belief in their ability to recover.

For Huston, listening is action. When you listen well, people want your feedback, because you’ve proven that hearing them is as important as judging them. The best managers, she concludes, “help people think out loud—not curse you behind your back.”

Why do smart people shut down when you coach them? Huston explains that feedback automatically triggers a threat response in the brain. Stress hormones like cortisol impair memory retrieval and cognitive flexibility—the very skills needed for learning. Chapter “Minimize the Threat” shows how to dial down fear so real growth can happen.

Stress Hijacks Cognition

When anxious, people literally forget recent events or can’t consider alternate perspectives. Huston describes how gender affects this too: men, under stress, lose more cognitive flexibility than women. So if a male report becomes stubborn or narrow‑minded during feedback, it may be biology, not defiance. Your role is to calm the system before offering advice.

The SCARF Model

To guide managers, Huston uses David Rock’s SCARF model: five domains that trigger threat or reward—Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness. When one domain is threatened (“You’re the only one late”), cortisol spikes. When boosted (“You’ve always been reliable; this week seemed off—what happened?”), the brain perceives safety and opens to coaching. A simple reframe—boosting autonomy (“What’s your plan to fix this?”) or relatedness (“I’m in your corner”)—can rescue a conversation from meltdown.

Creating Psychological Safety

Reducing threat also means controlling the setting. Don’t give criticism in front of others; privacy preserves status. Label behavior, not character (“That comment sounded dismissive,” not “You’re rude”). Encourage a growth mindset: frame mistakes as learning, not flaws. When someone falters, remind them of past success—what psychologists call self‑referenced behavior. Saying “I’ve seen you nail this before” restores confidence faster than comparing them to others.

Ultimately, feedback under threat is useless; the brain locks the door. Feedback under safety invites transformation. Huston challenges managers to wrap every hard truth in a SCARF—boosting at least one human need so people stay open to growth.

Unconscious bias quietly undermines fairness in every workplace. Huston confronts this head-on in “Accept You’re Biased and Be Vigilant,” arguing that even the most progressive managers unknowingly favor certain groups. About 75 percent of adults associate men with careers and women with family—and these biases bleed into feedback.

Gender Bias in Feedback

Through vivid examples, Huston exposes biases that shape everyday language. Men are described as “innovative” or “analytical”; women as “helpful” or “enthusiastic.” Women’s reviews emphasize communication style (“too aggressive” or “needs confidence”), while men’s focus on results. Researchers even found that women receive strong praise words like “excellent” alongside mediocre ratings—what Huston calls sugarcoating. Inflated compliments hide developmental feedback, leaving women without clear paths to advancement.

The Double Bind of Assertiveness

Women who speak up are often labeled “aggressive.” Huston reframes this bias elegantly: before assuming the critique is valid, managers should verify concrete examples and challenge colleagues’ assumptions. She suggests linguistic tools from Crucial Conversations: women can reduce unfair perceptions by prefacing strong statements with context (“I know it’s risky to speak directly, but this matters”). These subtle cues cut negative judgments by a third.

Racial and Identity Bias

Feedback bias doesn’t end with gender. Studies Huston cites show that white employees get comments about competence (“knowledgeable,” “strategic”), while Black or Latinx colleagues get “pleasant” or “team player.” Even punctuality is racialized: lateness harms Black employees’ ratings more than whites with identical records. These patterns arise from in‑group favoritism—the instinct to excuse people who resemble ourselves. Awareness, she stresses, is leadership, not guilt.

To counter bias, Huston urges concrete habits: anonymize review drafts to test assumptions, swap evaluation language with peers, list three business outcomes for everyone, and check whether adjectives differ by gender or race. Bias isn’t character defect—it’s mental autopilot. Vigilance, not virtue, keeps feedback fair and powerful.

Few things demotivate employees more than surprise criticism. Huston’s fifth practice—Make Your Motto “No Surprises”—teaches managers to replace annual ambushes with regular, honest check‑ins. The goal: align expectations early and often so people can course‑correct before reputations calcify.

The Damage of Delayed Feedback

When you sit on criticism, employees feel blindsided and betrayed. In one story, Eileen, an engineer, saved a plant from closing—only to learn during her review that she was considered “difficult.” No one had warned her. Had she known their perception earlier, she could have adapted. Huston calls this the “Eileen effect”: delayed evaluations destroy trust faster than honest bad news.

Frequency and Structure

Huston advises quarterly evaluation chats for anyone pursuing new roles and semiannual reviews for others. Coaching should happen weekly; evaluation less often but predictably. The meeting structure follows a rhythm: open with genuine appreciation, deliver evaluation early (not at the end), then move to brainstorming and coaching. Saving bad news for the finale feels manipulative; delivering it upfront frees time for improvement.

Checking for Understanding

Misunderstanding is rampant: poor performers often think they’re doing fine. Huston recommends ending every review with a playback: “What are your top three takeaways?” or “What should your next month focus on?” This confirms alignment and prevents the “paddle harder” confusion where the manager says “urgent” but employee hears “keep it up.”

Honest, frequent, and predictable evaluation doesn’t just reduce anxiety—it builds resilience. People can handle bad news; what crushes them is surprise. By following Huston’s structure, you help employees see evaluation not as exposure, but as evolution.

In final practice “Separate Your Observations from Your Story,” Huston reveals the most common trap in feedback: confusing what you saw with what you think it means. You may believe you’re being factual—“Michael missed two deadlines”—but the moment you add a motive (“He’s careless”), you’ve left observation and entered fiction. People can’t argue with what you saw, but they will fight your story.

The Psychology of Story-Making

Drawing on research from Crucial Conversations, Huston notes our brains are wired to build causal stories instantly. We interpret behavior through motives: who’s lazy, loyal, or defiant. But these stories trigger defensiveness. Fairness perception plummets when feedback contains inference or judgment. In one survey, over 50% of employees said their reviews were inaccurate or unfair—often because managers inserted meanings instead of measurements.

Six Steps for Productive Evaluation

• State your observations clearly and concretely (“You missed two deadlines”).
• Describe the impact (“That delayed our presentation to the VP”).
• Ask to learn more (“What happened?”).
• Identify next steps together.
• Offer reassurance (“I know you can turn this around”).
• Thank them for engaging in a hard conversation.

Learning from Mistakes—Without Shame

Huston illustrates this with “Ron and the Purple Necktie,” an unforgettable case where a professor’s outdated joke derailed his class. Her initial reaction was judgmental (“bad person with a bad soul”). In hindsight, separating observation (“he told a homophobic story”) from story (“he’s hateful”) would have made space for learning. The refocused conversation might have explored impact (“Students went silent”) rather than intent. This distinction—impact over motive—turns conflict into coaching.

The final insight is humility. Everyone invents stories—it’s human cognition. Strengthening feedback muscles means catching yourself mid‑story and asking, “What might I be missing?” By trading certainty for curiosity, you leave people intact while inviting them to grow. That, Huston argues, is the ultimate mark of a great manager.