“Across four experiments — including a field experiment conducted in an executive education classroom — researchers found that people received more effective input when they asked for advice rather than feedback.”
Feedback is often too unclear to be helpful. People tend to be nice. And people don’t want to say what they really think.
What is feedback?
Feedback is linked to an evaluation. For example, you get feedback in the form of a letter grade. At your organization, you get feedback through a performance evaluation.
This means people focus on judging others’ past and present performance instead of their future potential. As a result, feedback is less critical and actionable.
What is advice?
When you ask someone for help and their advice, you make them feel valuable, respected, and trusted.
As a result, people who ask for advice will give you the guidance you need to be successful.
When you are asked to give advice, you focus less on evaluation and more on future opportunities to improve.
Advice is forward-looking, focusing on how you can improve, while feedback is backward-looking, addressing performance that you can’t change.
“In life, you need many more things besides talent. Things like good advice and common sense.”
Hack Wilson, an American Major League Baseball player
Now that you know the difference between feedback and advice, let’s explore what it means for you. Let’s say you are giving a presentation at work.
You ask for feedback after you give it. It seems like the normal and right thing to do.
But when you ask others what they think, they often default to being friendly.
They don’t say what they really think because it’s human nature to be kind.
To truly improve, you need guidance for your next presentation.
This will help you become a top performer at work and grow your career.
Why is advice better?
Research shows that people who were asked to provide advice offered more critical and actionable feedback.
People who gave advice provided 34% more areas for improvement and 56% more ways to improve.
In contrast, people who gave feedback were vague and overlooked flaws.
This shows the problem with feedback.
It’s linked with evaluations.
People who give feedback offer an “evaluation” rather than picturing how to improve your presentation in the future.
They talk about how you did something or didn’t do something.
If you ask for advice instead, people are in a different state of mind. They see that you are “open” to getting better.
You are willing to let your guard down. They will put energy into helping you do that.
Bringing it all together
If you want to be a top performer at work, ask for advice instead of feedback.
It seems counterintuitive, but it works.
“The rule of life. If you bother to ask someone’s advice, then bother to listen to it.”
