Want Better Feedback? Do This...

Here's how you get the answers you are looking for

Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash

Happy Tuesday, y’all! Please Like and Restack this issue to help increase its visibility on Substack. Thank you! And if you are receiving value from my articles, please consider supporting me by subscribing to Backstage Pass. Free subscribers get access to all articles as they come out, after one month, older articles are paywalled. Paid subscribers have access to all Backstage Pass content with no paywalls. Paid Subscribers also have access to The Vault.

How You Ask the Question Can Affect the Answer You Receive

Heading into the 2016 election, almost every polling firm predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the White House. Most pollsters said their surveys suggested an easy win for Clinton. We all know what happened.

But how did they miss it? The Trafalgar Group didn’t. The Trafalgar Group started polling voters in battleground states heading into the 2016 election, and saw the same results that most everyone else did: An easy win for Clinton.

The difference is, Trafalgar didn’t believe its own numbers. Whether it was smart data analysis, or purely a hunch, Trafalgar suspected that likely Trump voters were reluctant to identify themselves as such.

So Trafalgar added one question to its surveys: Who do you think your neighbors are voting for? This question allowed Trump supporters to transfer their support for Trump to their neighbors.

Support for Trump immediately spiked in Trafalgar’s polling. Trafalgar had found the ‘shy’ Trump voter. This led to Trafalgar calling for Trump to win the election on the night before, and the polling firm got it right.

But this example isn’t about politics. It’s about how we give feedback.

Get Better Feedback By Considering Who You Are Talking To

Author Daniel Pink recently had an interesting X thread on reframing feedback. Pink’s suggestion is to stop asking for feedback and instead ask for advice. He posits that people don’t want to give criticism, but are happy to give advice.

He suggests that instead of asking “Can you give me feedback?” you ask “If you were in my shoes, what would you do differently?”

Applying the logic of the ‘who did your neighbor vote for?” from the Trafalgar example, we could also ask for feedback about people similar to ourselves.

Instead of asking for feedback on our own performance, you could ask “What are some common mistakes you see (people in my profession) making?”

Here’s another example: I have a dear friend who is incredibly supportive. If I ask her to review a post I am writing, she will tell me it is wonderful. But if I ask her opinion and add that “I’m not sure if the 4th paragraph works, what do you think?”, she will agree with me that the 4th paragraph is off and offer suggestions to make it better.

All told, you have to take into account WHO you are collecting feedback from. Some people are more likely to be positive, others are more likely to be negative. You may need to take that into account and structure your question in a way that elicits a more useful response.

So let’s review:

1 - Respondents will sometimes try to avoid criticism of their positions by talking about how other people or a larger group share that same position.

2 - If you fear that someone would be reluctant to give you honest feedback because they don’t want to be critical, you could ask for advice instead.

A third way to improve your feedback efforts is a trick you can use when you want to get the answer to a problem quickly.

Let’s say you are having a problem with a product. If you ask for help online, let’s say on Reddit, you may not get a response quickly. Because let’s be honest: Not everyone wants to be helpful to strangers online. Shocking, I know.

So one way to get around this, is to answer the question with the WRONG answer. In fact, give a spectacularly wrong answer.

What will likely happen is people will rush in to give the correct answer, after calling you an idiot. The point is, it often seems that most people would rather correct someone else, than help someone. Not everyone wants to be helpful, but many people DO want to look smarter. This is a clever way to use the negative feedback of others against them to get the real feedback you need!

Chris had an interesting post recently on how to get feedback by showing empathy for the other person. He talks about how he got his daughter to open up about a problem she is having at school by first talking about a problem he had when he was her age.

Often, I will ask for feedback on others, which I can use to help my own efforts. I might ask what are some of the things you see other Substacks doing that you enjoy? How do your favorite Substacks present a topic? What additional features do they use?

A lot of people may not tell you that they want you to add a feature, because they don’t want to come across as being critical. But if you ask them which features they enjoy in their favorite Substacks, they will give you a list of features you need to incorporate into your OWN Substack. Think of it as ‘indirect criticism’. You can take what someone says about another writer (good and bad), then learn from that feedback.

So when asking for feedback, make sure your audience is comfortable giving you good and bad feedback. And make sure YOU are comfortable receiving criticism, if you ask for feedback. Often, I will ask a few trusted friends for ‘honest’ ie critical feedback. But asking for feedback about OTHER people is also a way to get feedback you can apply to your own efforts.

Should We Chat?

In closing, I wanted to ask everyone’s opinion on something. Would you like to see a weekly private Chat just for subscribers? We could pick a day that’s beneficial to the most of you. I’m thinking either do a weekly chat where we all help each other with whatever issues we are working through, or I could simply continue engaging with as many of you individually as I can.

Do you enjoy subscriber chats and would like to see me start a weekly chat?

Please vote and let me know your thoughts in the comments. If there are enough Yes votes, I will probably add more polls in the future to help us flesh out together what the format would be like. The only way I want to commit to a chat is if you guys think it could create value for you.

So that’s it for today’s issue of Backstage Pass, my good friend

Bette A. Ludwig, PhD 🌱

will be here Thursday with this month’s edition of The Brand Diaries, and I will be posting at her place! See you then!

Mack