Member-only story

The three secret questions that elicit (truly) helpful feedback

Amy Haworth
4 min readAug 4, 2022

--

Photo by Startup Stock Photos on Pexels

You hear it all the time: ‘Ask for feedback’.

A couple things to keep in mind when you do:

  • Feedback is someone else’s experience of you. This doesn’t make it true. It’s a data point.
  • When you find a pattern in that data…then it’s time to pay attention.
  • The question you ask determines the quality of the answer.

This article focuses on bullet #3: The question you ask determines the quality of the answer.

During my corporate career, mid-year and year-end performance reviews were standard. As part of the typical performance cycle, employees were encouraged to ask for feedback from managers, peers, and direct reports.

Like most people, when I asked for feedback, the question was broad and covered a lengthy time horizon. And, the result was that the feedback was non-specific, non-actionable, and based on what individuals recalled. Usually what they recalled was based on emotion: something I had been part of that caused a negative response or a positive one.

That’s because the human brain remembers emotion: surprise, delight, fear, anger, etc. (The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath is a wonderful overview of the science).

--

--

Amy Haworth
Amy Haworth

Written by Amy Haworth

I help individuals, teams, and organizations have the impact they desire. Cultivator of Human Potential | Change Mgmnt Practitioner | NobodyMakesItAlone.com

No responses yet