Seeking
Feedback

The Seeking Feedback tab card states: "Feedback can be your most important tool for growth. The journey begins with building the skills to seek it." And the suit's guide is the badger. They dig to find what's hidden beneath the surface. Seeking feedback takes that same drive to uncover insights. So let's talk about why this deck begins here.

Most of us were never taught to seek feedback. Think back to school. Feedback flowed in one direction from teacher to student, and our job was to receive whatever arrived. That structure follows many of us into our careers, where we wait for the annual review, the quarterly check-in, whatever formal occasion someone else has scheduled.

And waiting, it turns out, is a slow way to grow. The information you most need about the gap between how you intend to show up and how you actually land is out there right now, held by the people around you. Most of them will never volunteer it, though. The badger doesn't wait for insights to surface on their own.

It digs. The ten cards in the suit build that digging skill piece by piece, and I describe the arc in three movements. The early cards work on kind of developing the inner ground, developing the awareness to know where you want to grow, and the courage to ask despite the fear. Fear of harsh answers, fear of our ego, fear that the change being asked of us will be too hard. Those fears are real, and in my experience, naming them is half the work.

The middle cards turn more to craft because seeking is a genuine skill with genuine technique. Asking specific questions rather than vague ones, since vague questions tend to attract compliments rather than insights. Reading timing, because feedback sought from a stressed person usually returns surface-level results. Observing excellence directly, one of my favorite cards in the deck, because feedback doesn't only arrive through conversation. And making all of it routine so your growth stops depending on rare high-stakes moments.

The later cards then widen the lens a bit, seeking positive feedback to illuminate strengths you may not know you have, and eventually recognizing when your trusted circle of feedback providers, your feedback bubble as I call it, has started keeping you safe but small.

Here's something worth holding onto as you work through these cards. Seeking is never only about you. Every time you ask for feedback with genuine openness, you make it a little easier for everyone watching to do the same. Your digging gives others permission to dig, and that can create a kind of beautiful ripple effect that positively improves the feedback culture around you.

That's the Seeking Feedback suit. Ten cards, one skill, and the beginning of the entire loop this deck is built around. Pick a card and start digging.

The Seeking Feedback awareness card states, "We can't improve what we're not aware of. Seeking feedback can illuminate the gaps between our intent and our impact." And the card invites you to practice what's called the impact check, which you can do by finding someone you admire, someone who has actually observed you in a skill you want to improve, and asking them, "Where can I grow the most?"

Now, let's go a bit deeper into what this card is really pointing at. So cultivating awareness has roots and actual practices that go back thousands of years. Contemplative traditions across cultures have long held that sitting in silence, actually being still and doing what appears on the surface to be nothing, is one of the most powerful things a human being can do.

On the surface, what appears to be nothing, as you may discover, is actually everything. The point here is not to escape thought, but to observe it, to notice that you can be aware of your thoughts and even aware of yourself being aware of them. William James, considered the father of American psychology, also captured why this matters.

Thousands of years after the Buddha's similar insights, James wrote that, quote, "The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgment, character, and will." End quote. That's not a small claim. He's saying the practice of focused attention, focused awareness, builds the very capacity for good decision-making and character.

And in our age, when it's easier than ever to distract ourselves, developing a practice like this can also help us rebuild our ability to focus for long stretches of time. But here's what's easy to miss. Developing this kind of, uh, internal self-awareness, while it's something we can practice for a lifetime, is not in itself enough.

Other people can see us in ways we simply cannot see ourselves. We may intend to come across as direct and land as dismissive. Uh, we may intend to be thorough, but be experienced as overwhelming or micromanaging. The gap between our intent and our actual impact is often invisible to us, and sometimes the only way to close that gap is to ask.

That's why the question on this card matters so much: Where can I grow the most? It's not vague flattery fishing. It's, it's a targeted ask directed at someone who has watched you perform, who you genuinely respect, and who ideally excels in the very area you're working on. That's card 01 of the Seeking Feedback suit.

After practicing the impact check, especially with someone who embodies a skill you truly admire, you may notice something unexpected. Their feedback may not sting the way you feared. It might land as information, as data. And that shift from fearing feedback to being able to see it as information is exactly what the Seeking Feedback suit is designed to build.

The Seeking Feedback Courage card states, "Our nervous system may try to protect us from difficult feedback. Noticing that and staying present with it can take self-awareness and courage." And the card invites you to practice what's called the mantra, which you can do by, before sending a specific feedback request, taking a breath, reflecting on your intention, and thinking, "I am courageously choosing growth."

Let's dive into this one. So perhaps nothing slows down our growth, keeping us stagnant in our development, quite like the fear of approaching others for feedback, and that fear arises from different places in each of us. For some, the fear is that the feedback might be harsh. For others, the fear is that it might touch against some part of our ego, which is fragile and which we often work hard to protect without even realizing we're doing it. For others the fear is that the feedback may ask us to change something that feels too hard to do.

Here's part of why this fear runs so deep. Think back to school. For most of us, feedback flowed in one direction. The teacher provided it on whatever the student submitted. That structure is vital for student growth, but it also means many of us went years, sometimes decades, without ever practicing the skill of seeking feedback ourselves, and it is a skill. It takes practice. There are strategies. That is why I call this feedback literacy. We can get better at it.

So this lack of practice means many of us never learn to thoroughly review our own work, compare it against great examples, uh, determine who to reach out to about it, formulate thoughtful, specific questions to ask that person. That entire flow is a series of skills, and most of us were never given a chance to consistently develop them.

I saw this vividly not long ago. I gave a feedback literacy workshop to a bright group of 13 to 18-year-old students here in Pennsylvania, and for many of them, the most profound takeaway was realizing they didn't have to remain in the role of passive feedback receiver. They could be strategic and proactive, going to get the feedback they need from a variety of sources they choose, with a careful plan formed ahead of time.

I had them practice this with each other, and it was fascinating to watch. They reflected on where they wanted to grow, took some time to write about it and even say it out loud, and they got deeply specific about it. Then they stepped into their own empowerment as they built a plan for exactly who they would ask and exactly what they would say. You could see something dramatically shift in them. It was like they went from believing their growth was about hard work and waiting for feedback to now they could work hard, get that passive feedback when it comes, but also this... They now had this new lever of growth. That shift that they saw is available to all of us at any age, and it begins with the courage this card names.

That's card 02 of the Seeking Feedback Suit. Before your next feedback request, maybe before you hit send on that email or walk into that conversation, take a breath, reflect on your intention just for a moment, and remind yourself, "I am courageously choosing growth."

You might find naming the courage is what makes the asking possible.

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 open- opening up about a skill they're working on. That's the ripple effect, and it started with you.

The Seeking Feedback observe card states, "Feedback isn't always direct and verbal. Observing, rather than only admiring, someone who is excellent at something can be an effective way to grow." And the card invites you to practice what's called the micro mapping, which you can do by finding someone with a skill you admire, mapping out the many behaviors that form their style, and then asking yourself, which will you practice first and why?

Let's dive into this one. Many studies show that actively observing excellence, really studying it, can function as a form of feedback that helps people improve. Researchers call this action observation, the intentional practice of watching high-level performers as a way to activate the brain's mirror neuron system. Think of it as the neurological equivalent of a dress rehearsal.

Research suggests that for athletes, for example, repeated observation can trigger some neural changes nearly identical to physical practice. In one study, inexperienced golfers improved their putting simply by watching experts. In another, youth gymnasts achieved higher ratings after a period of focused observation.

But here's the key word: focused. The point is not to get enthralled. This is not watching for entertainment, and it is certainly not passive. In our video age, it's easier than ever to sort of check out while the screen plays in front of us. Active watching is different. It means noticing the minute details, maybe writing about them. If it's a video, it means rewinding to catch a single movement, playing it again and again until you understand what's actually happening.

Decades ago, when I lacked access to a Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym, I spent hundreds of hours studying videos from elite practitioners. I wasn't just watching them. I was attempting to inhabit them, uh, seeing every subtle move they made. I looked for the invisible details, the exact timing of a breath, the micro adjustment of a hip, the way weight was distributed before a transition. By the time I finally stepped onto the mat to practice, I didn't feel like a novice when practicing what I had studied. I felt like I had already completed 25% of the work. Now it was just about putting the repetitions in so my body could catch up to what my brain already had a sense of how to do.

I called this the observational on-ramp. The on-ramp ensures that when you finally move into practice mode, you aren't wasting energy trying to figure out what the behavior is or how the mechanics work. Your brain already knows a good part of the map. Your body just needs the massive reps so it can walk the trail.

That's card 04 of the Seeking Feedback suit. Pick someone excellent at a thing you want to improve. Study them the way you'd study a map before a journey. You may find that when it's your turn to practice or perform, part of you has already been there.

The Seeking Feedback invitation card states, "Many withhold feedback to avoid conflict. Some worry about how it might land. Inviting them to share their perspective can open new paths to growth for everyone." And the card invites you to use what's called the permission slip, which you can do by saying, "I'm working on skill because it matters for XYZ. If you're open to it, could you share one way I could strengthen this?"

Let's spend a moment with what makes this card fascinating. So, seeking feedback is usually framed as something you do for yourself. You ask, you learn, you grow. But there's a second dimension here that deserves far more attention. Every time you seek feedback, you're also positioning the giver to grow.

Giving feedback well is a skill. It's an entire suit in the deck. And it's a skill that many people rarely get to practice because so few people around them never ask. And the giver themselves are often unsure of how or when, or otherwise dealing with so much anxiety around giving that they just don't do it. But when you invite someone to share their perspective, you're handing them a low stakes opportunity to develop that skill. You're often helping a hesitant giver step into their own growth.

This is where the role of feedback seeker has far more power to positively shape environments than the research typically gives it credit for. The research often frames feedback seeking as a kind of junior level activity, something you do early in your career and eventually age out of. That framing sells everyone short. People in all positions at all levels can and should seek feedback if growth is genuinely their goal. And when senior people do it, the effect on everyone watching is even more profound.

Now, notice something inside the permission slip. The phrase "because it matters." Those three words are doing vital work. When you tell someone why the skill is important to you, because it matters for your team, your craft, your relationships, the people you serve, you help the giver understand exactly what's at stake. And when they know that, they become more inclined to provide feedback that matches your thoughtfulness and depth. You've shown them the level of care you're bringing. Most people, in my experience, will be far more likely to rise to meet that level once you've laid it out for them.

That's card 05 of the Seeking Feedback suit. The next time you sense someone might be holding back a perspective that could help you, try extending the invitation. You may find that the feedback you receive is only half the gift. The other half is watching someone discover they had something valuable to share.

The Seeking Feedback specificity card states, "A broad question like 'How am I doing?' may work, but it can also invite mostly compliments. To get more useful feedback, try narrowing your ask." And the card invites you to practice the narrow ask, which you can do by asking, "What is one specific thing I can do next time to improve how I show up in that environment?"

Let's go beyond what the card says. So, here's a pattern worth noticing in yourself. Some of us are so uncomfortable asking for feedback that when we finally do it, we compress the ask into as few words as possible. We may genuinely want great and detailed feedback. We may truly value what it can do for our personal and professional lives. But the fear and tension of asking means we rush. We get the question out fast so we can escape the discomfort fast.

But there can be a massive cost to rushing in that way. A rushed ask is usually a vague ask, and a vague ask usually begets a vague response. Most often in the form of a quick compliment. You're doing great. No complaints here. Keep it up. Those kind of comments can sometimes be helpful if you genuinely aren't sure. And often the other person isn't being lazy or dishonest by saying them. They're responding to exactly what you gave them. A question with kind of no edges, no direction, and no signal about what you actually want to know.

How am I doing is so incredibly broad that it can take a ton of brain power for the feedback giver to assess the wholeness of whatever the behavior is, drill down to find the helpful details, etc. Compare that with the narrow ask. What is one specific thing I can do next time to improve how I show up in that environment? Everything in that question works in your favor. One specific thing gives the person a manageable task. Next time points them toward the future rather than a critique of the past, and it can put them into a frame of mind where they are literally envisioning you performing again. And this ability to visualize can really help them come up with helpful feedback. And then lastly, naming the environment focuses their memory on a concrete moment they actually witnessed.

But the guidance on this card runs deeper than wording. It's asking you to notice if and when emotional states are causing you to rush or blur your ask. That noticing is the skill underneath the skill. Because once you feel the urge to hurry, the tight chest, the desire to get this over with, whatever it is, once you are simply in a state of noticing that, now all of a sudden you have a choice. You can obey the discomfort or you can slow down and ask with the pacing and detail your growth deserves.

That's card 06 of the Seeking Feedback suit. Before your next ask, take one breath and check, am I rushing this? You may find that slowing down for 5 seconds changes the entire quality of what comes back to you.

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, uh, 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, uh, 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." Um, 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, etc.

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 15-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.

The Seeking Feedback routine card states, "Make feedback seeking a habit. Your growth is too important to rely on sporadic feedback or to wait for it to arrive during rare, high stakes check-ins." And the card invites you to practice the closing ritual, which you can do by asking in your regular interactions, "What's one thing I could start or stop doing to strengthen my approach to XYZ?"

Let's dig into this one. So, here's something that often happens, uh, more than most people think. Someone picks up a Seeking Feedback card, follows its guidance, has a genuinely useful conversation, and then doesn't return to the deck or to feedback seeking at all for months. The moment passes, life gets busy. Growth stalls.

Sometimes growth happens in leaps and bounds, and those can be exciting times. But often growth, the kind that leads to true mastery in whatever we're striving to improve, happens in the minutia, the incremental stuff, the small adjustment noticed this week, refined next week, locked in the week after. And the incremental only happens through habit. The kind of continuous improvement that requires continuously seeking feedback, whether in the direct conversational ways we've covered or the more observational ways.

So, how do you begin? Simply, literally, mark it in your calendar. A recurring reminder every other Friday, the last day of each month, whatever rhythm fits your work, that prompts you to seek feedback on something you're developing. It may feel mechanical at first. It probably will actually. Good habits often do, but something interesting happens over time. The calendar stops being the driver. As you feel yourself getting stagnant or sense you're ready for the next level, you'll notice it and you'll begin to seek without the reminder. And this way we are ensuring that a formalized and kind of calendarized habit can become our instinct.

And here's why this matters so much. Building your own feedback seeking routine means you own the process. The alternative is the trap most professionals fall into. Only encountering feedback at the formal intervals their company has established. Annual reviews, quarterly check-ins, sometimes the weekly one-to-one. Those occasions are fine, but they're usually built on someone else's schedule serving someone else's purpose as often. Your growth deserves better than an appointment that arrives at an interval that may not be what you need to keep growing.

That's card 08 of the Seeking Feedback suit. This week, put one recurring feedback prompt in your calendar. You may find that the simple act of scheduling it changes your relationship to growth itself, uh, from something that happens to you to something you direct. Again, it'll feel mechanical and maybe weird at first, but getting it in your calendar can help you see that your pursuit of improving is as important as anything else.

The Seeking Feedback strengths card states, "Addressing gaps is vital, but it's hard to grow solely by studying weaknesses. Positive feedback can illuminate strengths you didn't know you had." And the card invites you to practice the double down, which you can do by asking questions like, "What is one thing I did well in this situation?" and, "What do you consider my strongest qualities?"

Let's go a bit deeper here. As I shared in an article I wrote for Harvard Business Review, I honestly didn't know my strengths even after years of writing classes until a professor finally called them out. And how was I supposed to know? Every paper I received back was covered in red pen. Notes on what to improve, what to fix, what to cut. The gaps got all the attention. The strengths, while they may have been visible to my professors, were completely invisible to me. Uh, for many months, I just felt stuck, like I wasn't improving, wasn't cut out to be a writer, maybe should even change my major. Uh, and clearly didn't have a future in putting words together.

That experience points to something this card wants you to take seriously. Positive feedback is perhaps even more important than negative feedback. There are two reasons. First, it allows you to double down on strengths, and doubling down on what you're naturally good at often produces more growth than grinding away at weaknesses. Second, it builds morale and motivation. And that motivation gets transformed into the energy for continuous improvement, creating a genuinely positive feedback loop. You learn what's working. You feel encouraged. You invest more. You improve more. And that cycle can just keep happening.

But there's a catch. Positive feedback only does this work when it's specific. Great job can be helpful. Knowing exactly why it was great is a million times better. Compare "Awesome work," maybe even "Awesome work on our project last week," to something like this. "Awesome work on our project last week. You showed an incredible ability to pull cross-functional teams together, keep everyone, uh, not only organized but even inspired, and the result was that we delivered ahead of time for our client. Under your leadership, I'm already excited to see what we can do next."

That second version might change someone's entire career. They may not have felt they did a great job at all. They may have known they kept people organized but had no idea they kept them inspired. And it might be the first time anyone has ever used the word leadership about them. Specific positive feedback invites people into an opportunity to see a fuller picture of themselves. And ultimately, that's one of the main points of feedback literacy. And since negativity bias impacts most of us, that fuller picture, again, not a rosy or fake picture, a fuller and more true picture, can be especially powerful for growth.

That's card 09 of the Seeking Feedback suit. Ask someone this week what they consider your strongest qualities. You may hear something you've never heard before or get validation that something you thought was strong actually is. Either way, you're now in a better position to grow.

The Seeking Feedback perspective card states, "There may come a time when feedback from your usual circle begins to feel limiting. When this happens, it may be time to seek perspective from new sources." And the card invites you to examine what's called the feedback bubble, which you can do by seeking feedback from someone you respect, but who is outside your social circle. Their insights may help you grow in a new way.

Let's dive into this final card of the Seeking Feedback suit. A feedback bubble is a localized circle of regular feedback providers. If you have people in your life who regularly give you honest input, a manager, coach, mentor, a few trusted colleagues, you have one. And that's a good thing. These bubbles are natural, often formed within small project teams or hierarchical groups, and they can offer real psychological safety.

But here's what this card wants you to see. While a bubble may have once positively shaped your life, it can eventually become a barrier. The same trusted voices hearing about the same work through the same lens year after year. Staying within that circle can protect the ego. It can also reinforce existing biases and prevent the kind of catapult growth that only new perspectives provide.

Contrary to popular belief, comfort zones have a ton of benefits. They arise naturally for a host of reasons, including because they are designed to keep you safe at a time when maybe that's what you need. But at a certain point, they may also be keeping you smaller than you could be, smaller than you want to be. So safe but small. That's the trade many of us — and I've been there, and in some ways in my life still am there — that's the trade many of us are unknowingly making.

Stepping outside your feedback bubble requires intentionality. And there are many ways to do it. Here are four ways just to get you thinking about what might be your way. First, stretch out. Take on external tasks, public speaking, professional volunteering, that force entirely new feedback scenarios. Second, reach in. Leverage mentorship or shadowing opportunities to gain perspectives from people who see your organization, your team, your behaviors, your practice, and or you differently. Third, extend it. Welcome new diverse voices into your established circle to, to break up stagnant thinking. And then fourth, reflect on. Use the observational feedback we covered earlier in the suit, choosing an area for improvement and studying someone who models that future state. That last one creates a silent kind of feedback loop, letting you learn about and practice new qualities without the immediate pressure of going outside of or otherwise disrupting your bubble.

That's card 10, the final card of the Seeking Feedback suit. If the feedback in your life has started to feel comfortable, predictable, even a little flat, that may be the signal. Find one person you respect outside your circle and ask for their perspective. Or just put yourself in an entirely new arena where you can work on a new skill, get feedback from a new community. You may find that the view from outside the bubble is exactly what your next stage of growth requires.