Requesting feedback is simpler than you think

Humans learn through feedback. We constantly scan our environments for information — social cues, smells, sounds, patterns. We look for reactions to our behaviour so we can decide what to repeat and what to avoid.

Without feedback, it’s impossible to learn.

Schools understand the importance of feedback. It’s why they group people into classes, appoint teachers, and use a curriculum.

Feedback doesn’t only happen in educational settings. Comedians rely on feedback to improve their acts. They listen for laughs and applause, and they pay attention when audience members head for the bathroom or start chatting with their friends.

Computer, software, and website designers intentionally generate feedback to make their products usable. They design every cursor blink, every keyboard click, and every loading screen to ensure you know when a computer is responding to your commands. 

From school to sports to video games, our early years and our leisure time are filled with feedback. 

Work life is different. Work environments are usually not optimized for individual learning or personal growth. You are there to get stuff done, and there are few dress rehearsals, practice sessions, or dedicated coaches.

Wanting feedback isn’t childish

Because we often get feedback through activities like school, piano lessons, team sports, and other childhood pursuits, there is this notion that it is immature to want feedback.

The narrative of the millennial or Gen-Zer who can’t work without constant feedback is everywhere. Let’s push back on this a bit.

The truth is, most people want feedback. According to PwC, 60% of employees of all ages want feedback on a daily or weekly basis. The figure goes up to 72% for people under 30, but there are valid reasons why younger people at the beginning of their careers might want more feedback. A desire to learn and engage should be a seen in a positive light.

It’s good when people want to grow and expand their abilities. This kind of drive is exactly what the social impact sector needs — an unwillingness to accept the status quo, a yearning for greater impact, and a methodical approach to improvement.

The key is to get the kind of feedback that helps you truly grow.

You need information, not opinion

Feedback is not evaluation. The words are often used interchangeably, but they don’t mean the same thing. 

Feedback is information you can use to shape your actions going forward. Feedback is empowering because it provides you with context-specific advice that you can use to forge your own path. 

Evaluation is a judgement about the quality of your work or your performance. It reflects someone’s opinion. Evaluation can be problematic because it makes many people feel self-conscious and encourages them to replace other people’s opinions for their own. 

It can be tempting to want to know someone’s opinion (especially when it’s positive), and it is definitely less work to adopt existing ideas rather than develop your own. But if you want to grow, you need feedback.

So how do you get it?

Choose your own feedback

At work — especially in the nonprofit sector — feedback tends to be unplanned, unstructured, and subtle. 

Feedback comes in the way people look at you during a presentation or a comment from a member. It’s in the responses you see to fundraising appeals or a petition campaign.

When you hear people laugh at a joke, you save it for another meeting. When you see that a manager responds positively to your latest report, you use it as a template for the next one.

You can turn any piece of information or any observation into helpful feedback if you recognize it and incorporate it into your work. 

The “do it yourself” approach to feedback has its limits though. It’s tiring to constantly scan your environment for information and try to extract lessons from every single interaction. No matter how hard you try, you will miss vital information.

You need to ask

The only way to make sure you get the feedback that you need is to ask for it. There are three ways to do this:

First, ask your manager or colleague for specific feedback when you finish a task or a project.

Don’t ask “Did I do a good job?” That’s asking for validation, not feedback.

Focus instead on a skill that you were trying to develop, knowledge you were trying to demonstrate, or a behaviour you were practicing. Ask for specific feedback on that.

Most managers and colleagues avoid evaluation because it is a lot of work; simply providing a factual response to a request for information often takes only a minute or two and can be done without much effort.

Second, study the impact of your work. Look at the results of a campaign, member surveys, donations, or a vote in the House to see if your work had the intended effect. You can’t do this for every task, but impact measurement is all about feedback. When you pay attention to the impact of your work, you can learn a lot.

Third, look outside of your organization. If you really want to get feedback that is tailored to your needs and stage of growth, the best place to look is a Community of Practice.

Find your Community of Practice

A Community of Practice is a group of people with a shared interest and goal who come together to learn from each other. Communities of Practice can be organized by discipline (e.g., social media marketing, human resources), by sector (e.g., environmental nonprofits, racial justice organizations), or around specific tools or activities (e.g., Salesforce, Agile, community organizing).

Some communities charge a fee for access, but most are free. Some label themselves as a “Community of Practice”, others take the form of Facebook Groups, Subreddits, or super-specific meet-up groups. 

If you are craving helpful feedback and you are not part of a Community of Practice, then it’s time to find a community of peers.

These are the folks who can give you information and insight to help you grow. They’ve been where you’re at (or are there with you right now).

Because they come from outside your organization, people in Communities of Practice have different information, experiences, and perspectives. These communities allow knowledge to flow between different regions and organizations, increasing the chances that you’ll learn more and be more creative than you would have been on your own. 

Feedback can feel good

If you want to grow, be challenged, and feel a sense of progress, you need feedback. You need information from the outside world that can inspire you to think and act differently, to build on what you have already done.

Community eases the pressure to do it all yourself or to constantly turn to the same manager or co-worker for a single point of view. Most importantly, connecting with other people in similar situations makes growth fun.