How to get actually useful feedback from friends

Here’s something I wrote up for members of our Learning Community, and it has to do with how to get effective feedback for things you’re working on.

I wrote it in our closed Facebook group, and then wanted to share it with you all (slightly edited for clarity), because of how much it can make it easier to get help from peers and colleagues!

Expert-directed questions versus peer-directed questions

I just heard from a member who has noticed that it can be hard to get comments/feedback for website pages, articles, etc.

In pondering this I think it has to do with how feedback is asked for.

One Compelling Sentence (OCS) feedback is often plentiful and helpful, both because many people have done the module, and because the question asked is so pointed: “Do you get names and faces?”

That kind of a question is what I call a “peer-directed” question, meaning it’s meant for peers to give non-professional/non-expert feedback. People of all sorts feel empowered by questions like that, because they feel they can answer it competently.

However, in a business support forum, like this one, when you post an article or website page, and say something more vague like, “What do you think of this?” that’s an “expert-directed” question, meaning it’s implicitly asking for expert feedback about how effective the content is, according to some unnamed metric or standard, and that the author is looking for business coaching/expert feedback to help improve the content.

It’s all done unconsciously! And I want to help us all to ask better questions.

If you post content for feedback from colleagues], I would encourage you to ask peer-directed questions that anyone would feel competent answering.

“I wrote this article, and I’m wanting readers to feel engaged with the material, like they learned something, and that the exercise I presented was compelling, and that they could do it. Did that happen for you? If you drifted off or got stuck, where in the article did that happen?”

Or

“I wrote this web page, and I’m trying to transmit my essence through it, and have the writing feel alive and connected to the reader. If you read it, what is your emotional response? What happens for you? If you disconnect or drift away, can you identify exactly where you disconnect?”

These kinds of questions are sometimes harder to know how to ask, but are infinitely more useful, and can get you WAY more effective and abundant responses.

What’s the difference?

The difference between expert-directed questions and peer-directed questions is the specificity of what you’re asking for.

An expert, someone with knowledge and experience of a topic area, has the ability to guess at, to choose, the specificity needed by the person asking.

However, a peer without that knowledge and experience doesn’t have that. And so you do have to know more, not about the subject area, but about what you’re trying to do and why.

In fact, going through the process of identifying better questions will help you get more clarity on what it is you are trying to do.

To ponder for today: what better questions can you ask about parts of your business that you’re working on, so you can get the help and support you need?

With love,

Mark Silver, M.Div.
Heart of Business, Inc.

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