The words every man dreads hearing from his wife: “Does this dress make me look fat?” I’ll skip past the endless stream of jokes that have arisen regarding this quintessential battle-of-the-sexes cliche, and cut to the chase: what are you looking for when you ask someone for feedback? And, just as importantly, what do you give people who ask you for it in return?
My husband is a very sweet person who is always very sensitive to the possibility of hurting someone’s feelings. I, on the other hand, am a classic ENTJ who prizes directness above (most) all else, and assume that if someone asks me for advice, then they want the truth. There are problems with both of those options, however, and it is something that we each struggle with on an on-going basis.
My underlying philosophy is that, if someone is coming to me for advice or feedback, then it is my responsibility to be as helpful as possible. Since I’m not the coddling type, often my advice will sound a bit more like ‘tough love.’ The people whose insight I tend to value most — from personal mentors to authors and experts — are the ones who I can trust to tell me the truth, even when they know I’m not going to like having to hear it. Fortunately, most people who come to me for advice do so precisely because they know that about me, and because they want honesty — even when it may be a bit on the brutal side.
If I ask my husband, ‘Does this dress makes me look fat?’ I expect the truth. From my way of thinking, part of my husband’s responsibility to me (and vice versa) is to ‘get my back’ and make sure that I don’t make an ass of myself in public because I was too self-deluded to prevent it in time. (Once again, we will skip how hard this has been for my husband to get used to after years of dating other women who did not share my inclination towards directness.)
However, recently my husband and I have been faced with an increase in requests for advice, in some cases from old friends, in other cases from perfect strangers. And this has given rise to an increased awareness of the fact that not everyone who asks for advice is necessarily looking for the unvarnished truth. And each of our knee-jerk reactions to this exact same set of circumstances are completely different and completely in-line with each of our dominant core values: empathy (my husband) and directness (me).
I like to tell myself that my personal style is largely obvious enough that anyone coming to me for advice knows what they are asking before they pose the actual question. That’s a dangerous — and potentially alienating — assumption, however, and one to which I am trying to be more sensitive.
When dealing with each other, my husband and I have developed the habit of being up-front about what we are looking for when we solicit feedback from each other. (“I just need to vent.” “Can you help me brainstorm?” etc.) With other people, however, this becomes a trickier proposition. What happens when an old friend you have known for 20 years sends you a copy of her resume asking for feedback and tells you she’s looking for a senior-level position in X field… and you look at it and see a complete piece of crap that in NO WAY demonstrates any of the qualities or experience she’d need to show in order to convince someone to hire her for a role like that?
My knee-jerk reaction to that is to be very honest and very direct and assume that if she couldn’t handle that answer, then she wouldn’t have asked in the first place. My husband’s knee-jerk reaction is to try to find a way of imparting the news that doesn’t run the risk of hurting her feelings — which often has the unfortunate side effect of watering down the details until it leaves her with no specific, actionable steps to take to fix it. Neither answer is probably always the wisest or most politically astute approach.
Assuming that the person asking for feedback has not already explicitly told me that they want me to be honest and to not worry about hurting their feelings (which happens most of the time, but that may just be me), I now try to ask the question, “What type of feedback are you looking for?” I have found that leaving the question open-ended like that leaves a lot of room for potential answers, and how they interpret the question is often at least as important as the actual answer itself. Recent responses to that question have been:
- “I just want to know if I stand a chance?”
- “Be brutal. You’re not going to hurt my feelings.”
- “I want to understand why I’m not getting any calls back.”
- “Would you call me in to interview for X role with this resume?”
- “What can I do to make it better?”
- “I’m not happy with it, but I’m stumped about how to fix it.”
Of course, factoring in non-verbal clues is very helpful if this conversation is occurring outside of email. Via email, this can be a little less precise of a gauge, but it still tells you something: the more direct someone is, the more aware they seem to be that there is really a problem, and the more specifically they seem to understand where the trouble is (even if they don’t know how to fix it), the easier it is to give them a direct and honest answer with the expectation that they will take it in the spirit in which it was intended, and not just slink off into a corner and sulk after crossing you off their Christmas list.
When I get a vague answer that is too ambiguous to interpret with any high degree of confidence, I am faced with two choices: return to my default approach or hedge. Depending on how well I know someone and whether or not this is the first time they have sought out my advice will often dictate which approach I take. Just last week I responded with, “I can break it down in detail, if you like, but I don’t want to over-whelm or upset you. So please let me know if you are looking for a high-level over-view or granular details.”
When someone doesn’t have the stomach for details right off the bat (which often changes over time, once the initial sting wears off), it’s often easier to be politically sensitive with broad statements like, “I’m not sure you’ve highlighted the type of experience a hiring manager is likely to be looking for.” Or, “When I look at this, I see that most of your background is in field B, and would question why you are applying for a job in field X.”
Of course, the more detailed you are, the most likely it is for someone to have their nose bent out of shape at your response. So in the case of providing feedback to friends (or in cases where feedback may not be time-sensitive), an iterative approach is often helpful. In the example above, a person rarely starts out thinking that their resume is an out-right piece of junk; most often, they start to get suspicious when they begin to find that they aren’t getting any bites when applying for jobs. So easing them into an awareness might be the most delicate approach: normally the more restrained and general your original statements, the more likely they are to start getting the hint that their resume sucks and preparing themselves for the details. Often times, if they have some time to get used to the idea, they can ready themselves for taking direct advice without taking direct advice as a personal affront.
On the other hand, some things are too time sensitive for that, and some of us lack the time and/or patience to take the slow and highly empathetic approach every time, so the alternative I typically find myself taking is, “I see a number of things I would change if I were you. If you want me to be brutally honest, I can list them out in detail for you.” And while that is not quite as bad as saying, “Dude, this sucks. Prepare to spend the next year unemployed if you keep using this POS!” it definitely gets the message across quickly and clearly. What they request next is up to them. (And, for the record, most request the laundry list.)
The fact is that people ask for feedback for two main reasons: to either validate themselves when their confidence is shaky or to genuinely improve what they are doing by folding in a differing point of view. Unless or until you have established yourself as clearly being one type of “Advice Giver” or the other, you may always question how best to respond, particularly when this question involves friends or family members.
But, as in all things, when in doubt, ASK. (Failing that, you can always just post an article on your blog warning anyone who is considering asking that they should think twice about proceeding if they are interested in warm fuzzies more than direct and practical feedback.)
In reality, though, the people who are genuinely interested in improving will not only appreciate your feedback if it is honest, but they are likely to come back for more over time. It never feels good to have our short-comings highlighted for us, but I have found that the smartest people I know would rather be told privately by someone they trust and respect, rather than find out later after they have wasted time, energy and numerous opportunities, only to find out they were looking foolish in front of a large audience of perfect strangers and didn’t even know it.
For as awkward as it can sometimes be, rip off the band aid and file this one in the “Friends don’t let friends…” category. You’ll be a better friend for it.
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