What's the best way to ask for personal feedback from friends and coworkers on your strengths and weaknesses?
Imagine it's ideal to do it in the moment so people have the right context but in-person feedback is often awkward to deliver and not sufficiently honest. Is it preferable to reach out via email to individuals whose opinion you value?
7 Answers
Getting direct feedback is difficult. People want to make other people feel good (for the most part), and oftentimes asking someone directly will wind up becoming a giant compliment party. While it's great to hear about things people think you're good at, it's way more useful to hear about some of the areas that you could improve.
I had a unique and unconventional experience that helped me get the feedback I needed to become a better person. In fact, when I read this question it made me reflect on just how big of an impact this experience had on my life.
In my junior year at Northwestern University, I became friends with a 1st year Kellogg (business) student who's longterm professional goal was to be a career coach. He explained to me that life coaching would be a component of his business, and asked if I would like to be a guinea pig while he tried out his methods. Since he was a first year and I was a junior, it meant that we could run the experiment over the course of 2 years to see how things progressed.
The most powerful exercise we did was designed to give me strong, unbiased feedback about who I was as person. We had a few questions we wanted to answer:
My friend's plan was to have me write to each of these people, requesting that they write down the answers to each of these questions and then email their response to my friend who was running the experiment. Once he collected the messages, he would break down the content, out of letter form, and give it to me anonymously. It seemed like a good enough idea, so I put together a list of 20 people (friends, family, colleagues, ex-girlfriends etc) and asked them to write the letter.
Much to my surprise nearly everyone responded, and according to my friend, many responded at length. To this day I have not seen the letters (although this question made me reach back out to my buddy to see if I can get my hands on them).
The responses were shocking yet not shocking. It was kind of like seeing yourself in a movie or reading about yourself in a book. Some pieces of feedback had me fist pumping, while some made me hang my head while thinking "damn, I never meant to come off that way." While it would be fun to go into detail on what I learned about myself, I think its more pertinent to describe what I learned about feedback.
I think it's interesting to note that the feedback that really stuck with me was about me as a person as opposed to my skills or abilities. Although the letters were 50/50 content wise, I can barely remember what was written about what things I was good at, but I remember virtually every sentence about how I made my friends and family feel.
I had a unique and unconventional experience that helped me get the feedback I needed to become a better person. In fact, when I read this question it made me reflect on just how big of an impact this experience had on my life.
In my junior year at Northwestern University, I became friends with a 1st year Kellogg (business) student who's longterm professional goal was to be a career coach. He explained to me that life coaching would be a component of his business, and asked if I would like to be a guinea pig while he tried out his methods. Since he was a first year and I was a junior, it meant that we could run the experiment over the course of 2 years to see how things progressed.
The most powerful exercise we did was designed to give me strong, unbiased feedback about who I was as person. We had a few questions we wanted to answer:
- What was I good at
- What was I not so good at
- What three adjectives described my best traits
- What three adjectives described my worst traits
- What role did I play in people's lives
My friend's plan was to have me write to each of these people, requesting that they write down the answers to each of these questions and then email their response to my friend who was running the experiment. Once he collected the messages, he would break down the content, out of letter form, and give it to me anonymously. It seemed like a good enough idea, so I put together a list of 20 people (friends, family, colleagues, ex-girlfriends etc) and asked them to write the letter.
Much to my surprise nearly everyone responded, and according to my friend, many responded at length. To this day I have not seen the letters (although this question made me reach back out to my buddy to see if I can get my hands on them).
The responses were shocking yet not shocking. It was kind of like seeing yourself in a movie or reading about yourself in a book. Some pieces of feedback had me fist pumping, while some made me hang my head while thinking "damn, I never meant to come off that way." While it would be fun to go into detail on what I learned about myself, I think its more pertinent to describe what I learned about feedback.
- Feedback is way more useful when it is anonymous: if you do not know who is giving you the feedback, it's way more difficult to rationalize it away as a freak occurrence or a product of context. For example, if your boss tells you that you're late more than is appropriate you can rationalize it away by saying that he is strict. If you don't know that it was your boss, and it could be any of your friends or family, it makes you think a lot harder about whether or not you are actually ever on time for anything. You'd be shocked the excuses people make when receiving feedback, so anything you can do to mitigate this is excellent.
- It was surprising how consistent my feedback was person to person: I kept hearing the same things over and over again about my personality, tendencies and weaknesses. In fact, I was most shocked to learn that people disagreed on my strengths but agreed on my weaknesses. What did I learn from this? I learned that I was more multi-faceted than I thought but that I also had some serious problems to work on if I wanted to be a better person. Combining people from many different parts of my life was crucial for this to have the impact it did. When friends say the same things about me as my coworkers did, it really made me think about how my problem areas permeate throughout my experiences with others.
- It also made me realize how important we are to the people around us- If you've ever had a fight with a friend or a significant other, you may know what it's like to can't fall asleep at night thinking about that person and what you wish you might have said or not said. By seeing written out how other people thing about you, it became so tangible the extent to which other people really love and care about you. The impact of this is tough to word, but it can really open your eyes as to how you treat other people.
- You can never treat other people nice enough: one of the biggest revelations for me was that just because you think that you are nice to everyone doesn't mean that you actually are. I genuinely thought that I was thoughtful, a good listener, selfless and a whole bunch of other awesome attributes. I think I thought this because a) I wanted to, and b) people only tell you the good stuff to your face. From this exercise I learned that 'not being mean' doesn't mean that you are nice. It opened my eyes to how much harder I could work to make other people feel good, and it also opened my eyes to how important this actually was to me.
- It taught me that you need to make choices about who you are: no one can be excellent at everything, get along with everyone and be good to the people they love and care about. Being good at things and being good to people takes time, and you need to choose the things to focus on that most closely match your personal values. Another exercise we did was to write down those values and refine them over time. Comparing this list with the feedback from the letters was eye opening.
I think it's interesting to note that the feedback that really stuck with me was about me as a person as opposed to my skills or abilities. Although the letters were 50/50 content wise, I can barely remember what was written about what things I was good at, but I remember virtually every sentence about how I made my friends and family feel.
My friends and I built a company around this concept. http://hinted.com is a free, semi-anonymous tool that allows users to leverage their social networks to exchange feedback. We've figured out a way to painlessly collect the perceptions your friends have of you, and present the data in a clear and actionable manner.
I think you are the best in the world at something. Join me on Hinted to learn what it is.
I think you are the best in the world at something. Join me on Hinted to learn what it is.
It's so much easier to collect feedback online, without being involved in interactions in person, and people generally feel more free to speak out their opinion without eye-to-eye contact. So in this case I see a lot of value in online surveys, that you can create and send to people whose opinion matters to you.
Check out online services, this is one of them http://www.idfy.com
Check out online services, this is one of them http://www.idfy.com
Anonymous
Some of the reasons why I hesitate to provide personal feedback to another person are
So if you want me to provide feedback to you, you can do the following:
- I am not sure of the other person's attitude towards personal feedback
- I am not sure how it will affect my relationship with the other person
So if you want me to provide feedback to you, you can do the following:
- Make it open and clear that you appreciate personal feedback and better still, that you are actively seeking feedback
- Appreciate whenever someone provides personal feedback, even if it is very indirect. Explain why that specific feedback is valuable for you.
- Demonstrate that your relationship improves when someone provides personal feedback.
- Send a clear message that it is ok to provide constructive negative feedback by joking about your weaknesses / quirks
- Be an open book. I find it easier to provide feedback to a person who discuss what (s)he thinks about various topics since I get a good sense of how (s)he will view my personal feedback
