Seeking Feedback: Timing

Episode Transcript

The Seeking Feedback Timing card states, “Seeking feedback from someone who is stressed may yield less useful information. They may offer quick surface-level feedback in the moment.” And the card invites you to practice the stress test, which you can do by planning when to seek feedback and prefacing your ask with, “I’d really value your thoughts on something. Is now a good time for that?”

Let’s unpack this one. So like every other component of feedback literacy, seeking feedback is a deeply human enterprise. It might involve reading the room, it involves emotional intelligence, and it involves accepting something humbling. You cannot always see what state another person is in.

In my experience, this is especially true in the business world. Your manager may have just gotten off a stressful call with their boss. They’re holding it together, working hard to compartmentalize what they may be feeling so they can be present for you. On the surface, everything looks fine. Underneath, their cognitive and emotional bandwidth might be nearly spent, such that if you ask them for feedback in that moment, and even with the best intentions, what you’ll likely receive is quick surface level, shaped more by their stress than by your performance.

It’s important not to see this as a failure of character on their part. It’s simply how human attention works. Thoughtful feedback requires reflection, memory, care, resources that stress often consumes first. So when in any doubt about the timing, remember, you can always ask, “Is this a good time?” Five words, and they do two important things at once.

First, they protect the quality of the feedback. You’re giving the person a genuine exit, a chance to say, “Actually, tomorrow morning would be better,” which means when the conversation does happen, they can bring their full attention to it. They may have thought about it that evening, slept on it, refined their thinking in the morning before their call with you, et cetera.

Second, and this is the part most people miss, asking if it’s a good time is a signal. It tells the person that you’d like this conversation to have a depth and richness that can’t happen in a quick fifteen-second exchange. You’re framing the feedback as something worth both of your time and certainly super important to you. People feel that kind of framing, and they tend to respond in kind.

That’s card 07 of the Seeking Feedback suit. Before your next ask, take a moment to consider what might be happening in the other person’s world, and then offer them the choice. It will signal your wisdom and seriousness and your respect for them and their time, and the result will likely be far more helpful feedback.