In many jobs, when you’re part of a team or an organisation, ‘feedback’ plays a part in your personal development. I.e. people who work with you are asked for their views on how you do your and what its like to work with you. Or maybe they’re not asked and they give their views anyway.

This post isn’t about the ins and outs out proper feedback giving and receiving (when, how, why etc) because there’s an awful lot of advice that is already out there. I also think there’s huge cultural and contextual factors in feedback at work, i.e. the USA is different to the UK, a tech company will be different to the Civil Service, getting feedback as an intern will be different as a team leader etc. Its impractical to try to account for all of those things when suggesting how to get feedback.

One thing you (normally) can control is the kind of questions you ask. A lot of people just ask for feedback in a general sense. Others take it a step further and ask ‘whats good about working with me’ and ‘what could I do better’ or something like that.

Generally the best feedback I have received has been when I:

• Asked a small specific group of people whose opinion I valued and offered to give feedback to them too
• Shared three specific questions I wanted feedback on
• Arranged a 30 min call with each of them with enough notice where we both share each others feedback
• Sent my feedback in writing after we spoke, and asked for mine in writing too

As with all research, asking the right people, the right kind of questions gets you much more valuable results than asking generic questions to a wider range of people.

The questions I’ve got most value from are open (so they can’t be answered with yes/no) but specific to the work that I’ve been doing, or the role I’m in. Here are some examples, maybe they’ll be helpful for you too.

Example feedback questions:

Questions suited to if you’re new in role:

• Is there anything you’ve seen others do in a similar role that you think I’m missing?
• Is there anything I might need to adapt longer term at [company]?
• What new things do you think I’ve brought to the role, and which are the most (or the least) valuable?

Questions if you’ve worked together for a longer time:

• Have you noticed anything that’s changed in how I’m working – what impact has it had on you?
• Have I done anything in the last 3/6 months that has surprised you?
• How is your work changing, and is there any way we could work together differently because of that?

Questions if you’re struggling to get constructive criticism:

• I want to get better at [thing] what are my biggest opportunities for development in that area?
• Is there anything you expected me to be doing but I’m not doing (or could do more of)?

Questions if you’re struggling to get positive feedback:

• Can you give an example of when you’ve found something I’ve done helpful?
• Based on your experience working with me, what are things that I should continue doing?

In my experience the more contextual you can make the questions to the work you’ve done together, the better people can tailor their feedback to the things you’re trying to improve or develop.