Feedback is crucial--but almost everyone, from new hires to C-suite executives, struggles with receiving it. The authors, who have spent 20 years working with managers on difficult conversations, outline six steps that can help you turn feedback into an important, and unthreatening, tool. (1) Know your tendencies. Look for patterns in how you respond. (Do you defend yourself? Do you lash out?) Once you understand your standard operating procedure, you can make better choices about where to go from there. (2) Separate the "what" from the "who." Your feelings about the messenger might be short-circuiting your ability to learn from the message. (3) Sort toward coaching. Work to hear feedback as well-meant advice, not as an indictment. (4) Unpack the feedback. Resist snap judgments; explore where suggestions are coming from and where they're going. (5) Request and direct feedback. Don't wait for a formal review; ask for bite-size pieces of coaching. (6) Experiment. Try following a piece of advice and seeing what happens. Criticism is never easy to take--but learning to pull value from it is essential to your development and success.

In this interview, negotiations expert and author Doug Stone describes the ways in which difficult conversations threaten our identity. We all view ourselves a certain way, he says: 'I'm a hard worker' or 'I'm a caring boss' -- and the conversations that feel the most difficult for us are the ones that have the potential to threaten that self image. He shows that we make some systematic thinking errors when we are deciding whether to avoid or raise an issue with someone: we tend to focus on the costs of raising the issue and the benefits of avoiding it, but we don't think about the benefits of raising it and the costs of avoiding it. He goes on to describe how to reap these benefits via 'learning conversations', provides tools for dealing with difficult conversations, and advises on the best way to deliver difficult messages.