---
title: "The Blind Spot: A Secret to Success"
description: Asking for advice instead of feedback brings 56% more ways to improve. Who to ask, the one question to put to three people and what to do with the answers.
author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
date: 2026-11-12T19:00:00.041Z
updated: 2026-11-12T19:00:00.055Z
canonical: https://richwoman.co/article/ask-for-advice-not-feedback
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/pexels-6457512.webp
categories: Female leadership, The Corner Office
content_type: Guide
publication: Rich Woman Magazine
schema_type: Article
---

The presentation is over, the room is emptying and you catch a colleague at the door. 'Any feedback?' you say, as lightly as you can. She smiles and tells you it was great, really clear, and you walk back to your desk with a compliment and nothing to work on.

Part of you is relieved. Another part suspects that there is something everyone in that room noticed and nobody said, and that it will appear months from now in a review you cannot argue with. The words you need exist in the heads of the people around you. The question you used was the wrong key to the door.

There are 50 days left of 2026, and you can change that with one word. Stop asking for feedback and start asking for advice, put the same question to three people and listen to what comes back.

## Why 'Any Feedback?' Gets You So Little

Feedback sounds like a report card. When you ask for it, the other person looks backwards at what you have already done and starts to grade it, and most people are too kind to give a colleague a low mark to her face. The result is a pleasant sentence with nothing inside it.

Advice points the other way. When you ask what you should do next, the other person thinks about your future instead of your past, and the future is something they can help you change. In one experiment, people who were asked for advice on a job application letter suggested 34% more areas to improve and 56% more ways to improve than people asked for feedback on the same letter. A later field experiment covering more than 27,000 comments in workplace reviews found the same pattern, and independent raters judged the advice more useful.

The work being judged was identical in every case. Only the word changed, and the word changed what people were willing to say.

## The Blind Spots Only Colleagues Can See

You know some things about yourself better than anyone else can, such as how anxious you feel before a board meeting or how tired you are by Thursday. Other things are harder to see from the inside. Studies comparing people's self-ratings with ratings from friends and colleagues have found that you are about as accurate as the people who know you well, but not more accurate. On the most flattering and most uncomfortable traits, such as how intelligent, creative or difficult you seem, the people around you often see more clearly than you do.

Women face an extra gap. In an analysis of more than 200 performance reviews from four companies, 57% of women received vague praise such as 'You had a good year', against 43% of men. Men were also more likely to have their feedback tied to business results, 60% against 40% for women. Vague praise feels kind in the moment, but it leaves you without the specific direction a promotion depends on.

You cannot wait for the review system to fix that. You can fix your own supply of useful information this month.

## Three People and One Question

Choose three people who see your work from different angles: your manager or someone senior, a peer who works alongside you, and someone who reports to you or a client who relies on you. Three views are enough to show you a pattern, and one person alone may simply be having a difficult week.

Put the same question to all three, in person or in a short message: 'What is one thing I could do differently over the next three months that would make the biggest difference to my work?' The words 'one thing' make the question easy to answer. 'Next three months' points the answer forwards. 'Biggest difference' shows the other person that you are serious and want more than a compliment.

Give each person a few days to think if they need them. When the answer comes, listen to the end without explaining or defending yourself. If the advice is general, follow it with 'What would that look like in practice?' Then thank them and mean it, as people who give you something useful once will give you more if they see you value it.

Some answers will sting. A colleague may tell you that you rush other people in meetings, or that your emails are hard to follow, or that you take on too much yourself. Write the words down exactly as you heard them. You can decide later what to do with them, but you cannot use advice you have softened in your memory.

## What to Do With Three Answers

Read the three answers side by side. When two or three people point to the same thing in different words, you have found a blind spot, and it is almost certainly worth more to your career than anything you would have chosen to work on alone. When an answer surprises you, it is often the most valuable of the three.

Choose one change and work on it for the next three months. Go back to the people who advised you after a few weeks and tell them what you tried. That second conversation does more than the first. It shows them that their advice mattered, and it turns three colleagues into three people who are watching your progress and willing to speak for you. If one of them is senior, you have also given a possible sponsor a reason to notice your growth.

Our guide to the [Friday wins file](https://richwoman.co/article/51-days-to-new-beginnings-friday-wins-file) gives you a place to record the change as it works, and your [career audit](https://richwoman.co/article/52-days-to-new-beginnings-score-your-career-on-8-measures) shows you which part of your working life the advice touches.

You may feel exposed asking the question. Many women spend years being told they are doing well and still sense that the real conversation is happening somewhere else. Asking for advice brings that conversation into the room where you can hear it. The discomfort lasts a few minutes, and the information lasts for the rest of your career.

This week, send the question to one person before Friday, and to the other two by the end of the month.

Think back to the colleague at the door and the compliment you carried back to your desk. Next time, you will walk away with one sentence you can act on, and a colleague who now sees you as someone who wants to grow. That is worth far more than being told it was great.