How to Ask for Feedback You Can Use
How to choose the right person, ask more specific questions and put their advice to work.
You finish a presentation, send a proposal or complete a difficult piece of work, then ask someone what they thought. “Looks good” is reassuring, although it leaves you with very little to use next time. A more specific conversation can reveal something you missed, help you recognise what you do well and give you a manageable way to improve.
10 Top Tips for Getting Useful Feedback
- Choose a sensible moment. Ask while the work is still fresh in someone’s memory, allowing enough time for a considered answer.
- Ask someone who saw the work. First-hand experience of the meeting, project or conversation gives them something concrete to discuss.
- Explain what you were trying to achieve. Tell them who the work was for and what you hoped it would accomplish.
- Narrow the question. Ask about the clarity of your recommendation, the pace of your explanation or another specific part of the work.
- Look towards the next attempt. “What would you advise me to do differently next time?” invites suggestions you can put into practice.
- Ask for an example. If someone says you could be clearer, find out where they lost track and what information they needed.
- Find out what worked. Ask which parts were particularly useful so you know what to keep doing.
- Listen before explaining. Let them finish, check your understanding and give yourself time to consider what they have said.
- Use your judgement. Weigh their advice against the purpose of the work, the evidence they offer and any constraints they may have missed.
- Follow up after trying something. Tell them what you changed and ask whether it helped.
The conversation after the meeting
You have spent most of the morning preparing for a meeting that lasts twenty minutes. Afterwards, while everyone gathers their belongings, you ask a colleague how it went. They say you were great, mention the weather and disappear towards their next appointment. You are pleased they enjoyed it. You still have no idea whether the opening took too long or whether anyone understood the recommendation on slide seven.
Broad questions leave plenty of room for polite answers. They also give the other person a surprisingly large job: review everything they have just seen, decide which observations to share and work out how honest you wanted them to be. A little preparation on your side can make the conversation easier for both of you.
Ask about the next attempt
Start with something you would like to improve. Perhaps you want people to understand your proposal more quickly, contribute more freely during a meeting or leave a conversation knowing what happens next.
Then ask a question that helps the other person picture a future attempt: “When I present this to the wider team, what would you suggest I explain more clearly?”
Research published online in Management Science in 2025 examined this approach through a large workplace experiment and laboratory studies. Requests for future-looking advice produced more concrete, actionable input than requests for feedback. The findings concerned the quality of the suggestions people gave; they do not mean that changing a word guarantees better performance.
The practical application is straightforward. Give someone a particular task to consider and a future occasion when you could use their advice. They can then help you prepare for something recognisable.
Choose someone who knows the work
The person with the most impressive job title may have seen very little of what you actually did. A colleague who worked alongside you, a client who used your recommendation or someone who attended the whole session may have more relevant observations.
Explain the context they need. If your presentation was intended to secure a decision, say so. If the document had to fit on one page, mention that too. Advice becomes easier to assess when everyone understands the purpose and constraints.
You can also ask different people about different aspects. A teammate may know whether your handover contained everything they needed. A customer can tell you which explanation helped them choose. Keeping those questions distinct gives each person a clear reason for being involved.
Give yourself time to hear it
Even requested feedback can catch you off guard. You ask for an honest opinion and discover that the section you were most pleased with was the one somebody found confusing. It is tempting to explain how much work went into it, particularly if that work occupied most of Sunday.
Try asking where they became confused before describing your intentions. You might discover an unfamiliar term, a missing example or an assumption you had forgotten to explain.
In their substantial review of feedback research, psychologists Avraham Kluger and Angelo DeNisi found that feedback improved performance on average, yet more than a third of the effects they examined were negative. Their analysis suggested that feedback became less effective as attention shifted towards the self and away from the task.
Keep the discussion close to what happened. “Where did my explanation become difficult to follow?” gives you something observable to examine. You can consider the answer without turning one awkward meeting into a verdict on your professional ability.
Choose one change you can test
You remain responsible for deciding what to do with the advice. Someone may prefer a more detailed document because that suits their role, while its intended readers need a quick recommendation. Ask how their suggestion would help the audience before adopting it.
Useful feedback also includes the things you should repeat. If a colleague says your example helped everyone understand a complicated point, find out what made it effective. You may be able to use the same approach elsewhere.
Choose one adjustment for the next suitable occasion. Shorten the introduction, explain an unfamiliar term or send a clearer handover. Afterwards, ask whether the change helped. A brief follow-up gives you more to learn from than a list of suggestions left in a notebook.
For your next piece of work, choose someone whose observations you trust and ask a question they can answer from experience. Leave enough time to hear their response. You may come away with a useful adjustment, a strength you had overlooked or a clearer understanding of how your work is received.