Vague Feedback? Try Asking for Advice Instead

If asking for feedback gets you “looks good” or “be more confident,” try asking what the person would advise you to change next time. Research found that an advice request can produce more concrete developmental input by directing attention toward the future. Give the person a specific upcoming task to work with.

For example: “I’m presenting this proposal to the operations team on Thursday. What would you advise me to change so they can decide whether to approve it?”

The evidence includes actual workplace reviews

A paper published in Management Science in 2025 included a preregistered field experiment with 27,432 review comments and two laboratory studies with 806 participants. Advice prompts produced more concrete input than feedback prompts. A future focus helped explain the difference, and independent raters judged concrete input as more useful in a follow-up study.

Those are findings about the input people supplied. As Harvard’s follow-up explains, the experiments didn’t measure whether employees adopted the recommendations. The effect also concerned developmental guidance, so it shouldn’t be read as a reason to remove evaluation from every review.

Give the advice a destination

“Any advice?” still leaves a lot of work for the other person. Tell them what you are trying to accomplish, who it is for, and what you can change.

Imagine that you’ve finished a practice interview. “How did I do?” might produce reassurance, a rating, or a long list of impressions. “Which answer would you advise me to shorten before tomorrow’s interview?” gives your friend a manageable task. They can point to the example that took three minutes and suggest what to cut.

Use the same approach after a first draft, a client call, or a teaching session. Keep the request small enough that the person can answer from what they actually observed.

Ask for the observation behind a broad recommendation

Suppose someone says you should be more assertive. Before rehearsing a tougher voice, ask what they noticed: “Was there a moment when I left the decision unclear?” They might mean that your final slide had three options and no recommendation. That calls for a different change from speaking louder.

Keep the observation, interpretation, and proposed action together in your notes:

Observation: I ended with three options. Their interpretation: I didn’t seem to have a preference. Suggested action: state my recommendation before the alternatives. Next attempt: put the recommendation in the opening minute.

This also protects against advice that solves the wrong problem. If your purpose was to gather options rather than recommend one, explain that and reassess the suggestion.

Record your own view before collecting more input

Before you ask, make a short account of what you think worked and what needs attention. Recording your first answer before advice gives you something to compare with the outside view. You may discover a blind spot, or find that the two of you were judging different goals.

Afterward, choose one change to test. You can use an if-then plan: “When I reach the last slide, I’ll state the decision I need before inviting questions.”

If you already know the next step and keep requesting additional opinions, try giving your own practical advice first. Another critique can wait until you’ve made another attempt. At that point, you can ask a much sharper question: “Did the change solve the problem you noticed?”