Asking for feedback proves your leadership skills! Here's how.

Welcome to Quick Confidence! This weekly letter delivers a spritz of stories, tips and simple actions that will build your confidence and your power. Each quick tip bolsters confidence in your body, mind, and relationships so you can lead yourself and others to greatness.?

Ask and you shall receive. That’s how getting feedback works, right?

Actually, that’s only partially true. Studies show that when people ask for feedback — the kind of constructive feedback that builds leadership skills — women are more likely to receive vague feedback than men.

A man might hear feedback like, “You need to deepen your domain knowledge in IT to gain a broader grasp of the business.” But a woman might hear, “Your communication style needs some work.” Notice how one includes a solution and the other doesn’t!

This vague feedback can disadvantage women come promotion time. And it can hurt women’s chances of being seen as leaders.?

Why? Because people tend to describe and give feedback to women in a way that’s less tied to business outcomes.

The good news is, you can offset this tendency toward vague input. You just have to know how to seek it out. Now is the time to go after the hard feedback that will help you scale your leadership impact. Here’s a simple process I developed for getting it right.

Quick Confidence Tips to Ask For Quality Feedback:

1. Embodied: First, do some self-reflection of your own. Think about the area you’re interested in getting feedback on. Take some simple notes on where you’re showing promise and what’s gone well. Now look at things the other way. What skill, knowledge or experience would enable you to make an even bigger difference? Have these notes prepared in advance of asking for feedback. They’ll give you some easy-to-reference talking points and show the other person you’ve carefully considered your performance.
2. Interpersonal: Ask for balanced feedback. Learn from the mistake I made early on in my career: don’t only ask for general feedback — because often, people will only give you the negative kind. Instead ask specifically for the good *and* the bad. After delivering a high-stakes presentation to a major client, for example, you could say to your manager, “You just saw me present there. What’s one thing that worked well and one thing I could do better next time?” It’s just as important — if not more — to identify your strengths alongside your weaknesses.
3. Mindset: Make it bigger than you. To encourage someone who’s not forthcoming to give you straight feedback, try tying it to group performance rather than your individual performance. This way you can remind them of what’s at stake more broadly. Try saying, “I want all of us to be successful in our new product launch. Please tell me your thoughts on X, Y and Z...” Another way you could approach it is, “Our department really values your opinion and I could use your help. Can you provide me with your feedback on ABC?”

Once you’ve heard feedback, thank the other person, clarify it if you need to, and contract to revisit the feedback. That means the first words out of your mouth after someone gives you feedback should be “Thank you for sharing that with me.” This not only encourages the feedback giver to do it again in the future, it acknowledges some of the bravery that it took on their part to share it in the first place.?

If there’s something about the feedback you don’t understand or agree with, probe for more information. Say, “can you help me understand X better?” or, “I really want to get a grasp of what you’re saying. Can you share an example of a time I did ABC?”?

Finally, make a verbal contract with the person that you’d like to revisit the feedback on a future date to check in about your progress.

Not all valuable feedback will land in your lap. By having an action plan for how you can go after feedback yourself, you’ll get the unvarnished truth you deserve. You’ll build a reputation for being able to hear, and get better from, constructive criticism. After all, there’s a reason that feedback is called “the breakfast of champions”!

Are we connected on other socials? Stay in touch with me on Twitter , Facebook , TikTok , and Instagram !