Seeking Feedback: Modeling

Episode Transcript

The Seeking Feedback Modeling card states, “When you seek feedback, it makes it easier for others to do the same. Openly normalizing the vulnerability needed for growth has a powerful ripple effect.” And the card invites you to practice what’s called the signal, which you can do by asking someone whose opinion you value, “I’m trying to improve my… What specific changes could help?”

So building yourself into a great feedback seeker allows you to grow in new and important ways. That much is clear. But something else happens alongside your growth, something most people never consider. You improve the feedback culture you’re part of, and this becomes a kind of endless loop. The better you seek, the more others see how you do it, and the less afraid, the more open they become to doing the same. It’s like your personal rising tide has the capacity to lift your team, your department, maybe your entire organization.

Keep this close, because there are two notions worth breaking through here. The first is that feedback seeking only benefits you. The second is that improving a feedback culture can only happen through changes at the leadership level. Both of those ideas fall apart when you watch what actually happens in a room where one person, any person, asks for feedback with genuine openness. There is an infinite symbiosis between individual courage, that kind of pro-growth modeling, and the collective culture. Every time you seek, you give everyone watching a little more permission to do the same.

Now, notice the specificity in the signal: “I’m trying to improve my skill. What specific changes could help?” Underlying that question is real work, self-reflection, an understanding of what you want to improve and why, and a question built to get a specific response. Specific questions are more likely to get specific responses. Vague ones tend to attract politeness, and politeness, while pleasant, rarely helps anyone grow.

So this card is really asking two things of you: Do the inner work to know what you’re trying to improve, then ask in a way that others can see. Not performatively, genuinely. The vulnerability is the point. When people watch someone they respect openly say, “Here’s what I’m trying to get better at,” it recalibrates what feels possible for them.

That’s card 03 of the Seeking Feedback suit. After practicing the signal a few times, you may notice something happening around you, a colleague asking you for feedback, a teammate opening up about a skill they’re working on. That’s the ripple effect, and it started with you.