By Poornima Vijayashanker
Last week I asked my subscribers to provide feedback, and I’ve spent the past few days reading through all the submissions.
I appreciate how candid people were and how much valuable advice I received:
“The last time there was a survey I responded with a discussion topic and it was written about. I was very impressed as well as grateful to have my question answered.”
“I’ve been losing interest in furthering my career in technology, because it seems to lack spirit and heart and compassion in so many cases, but after being inspired more by your posts, I’m torn! (thanks a lot!)”
“Your posts are unique because you focus a lot on awareness and practical outcomes of the psychological and emotional aspects of being in a startup, running a business, leading a team, etc. which tend to be ignored by others.
More importantly and uniquely, you take a positive, compassionate, balanced and optimistic approach to addressing them, which I REALLY appreciate! The light in which you consider the issues makes all the difference to your (and my and all your subscribers’) success!”
“I realize that it is a for profit business, but often I am put off interacting because I realize a request for thousands of dollars is soon to ensue.”
“I think I’ve “outgrown” it but I’m sure it’s relevant for others who are still going through such phases.“
“Poornima never lies.”
I’d like to open up, and ask blog readers for feedback as well. If you like to provide feedback, please provide it here.
Let’s stay on the theme of feedback, and explore it a little bit more!
The process behind persuading people to give you valuable advice
If you’re a self-improvement junkie like me, then you understand the value of feedback 🙂
You actively seek it out.
While it’s important to ask for it, the people you’re asking might perceive it as merely a todo list item, and you’re just checking it off.
As a result, they might not think it’s worth their time.
There are situations when people are willing to provide feedback. It’s pretty binary. It’s usually when they’ve had a really bad experience or a really positive experience, their expectations were exceeded.
Think about the last time you were compelled to leave a review on Amazon.
If you want people to take time out of their busy lives to give you valuable feedback, then you need to answer the following questions for them:
- Are you actually going to digest the feedback provided?
- Can they be candid? Keeping it anonymous makes this easier.
- What are you planning to do with their feedback?
- Are you just providing them canned questions to reaffirm your own beliefs? Or are there free responses where they can say more?
It’s really important to let people speak in their own words.
I try to only include multiple choice or yes/no questions when I know it’s a clear cut answer, e.g. How long have you been a Femgineer subscriber?
For questions that are more qualitative I start off with multiple choice e.g. How likely are you to recommend Femgineer? Then I include a follow up free response, e.g. If you answered ‘Very likely’ or ‘Likely’, why would you recommend Femgineer? If answered ‘Somewhat likely’ or ‘Highly unlikely’, why would you NOT recommend subscribing to Femgineer?
Most people prefer just doing multiple choice, because it makes it easier to tabulate results. It’s a quantitative way of looking at the world.
But numbers tell us half the story.
I don’t care if I receive hundreds or thousands of free responses, because what I want is to read through everyone’s answers. It let’s me understand their reasoning on a deeper level, rather than just the words I’ve chosen for them.
Not everyone will take you up on the free response, but I like to include for those who want to provide me with more perspective.
Bottomline line: how you present the request, how you design the questions, and how you plan to use the feedback all matter.
Understand the context
It might seem overwhelming to read through hundreds or thousands of responses. But I find myself more anxious when I don’t know the reason behind someone’s response.
If someone tells me they aren’t likely to recommend Femgineer, that leads me to ask a lot of questions such as: “Do they think the content is low quality, irrelevant, or are they just someone who doesn’t share?” I have no way of knowing the answer. With a free response, people can tell me, “None of my friends work in tech.”
Then I get it.
Free response give you more context, but so does understanding people’s engagement level and how long they’ve known about you.
When I read a review on Amazon, I check the date of the review. If it’s recent, within the last few months, then I know it’s more relevant than one from more than a year ago.
If it’s an overly positive or negative review, then I’ll dig to see if the reviewer consistently leaves positive or negative reviews.
Focus on the big picture and take the time to digest data
It can feel like you’ve opened the floodgates, and there is a lot to do.
But before you jump into formulating goals and next steps, take the time to identify major themes.
The feedback I received from subscribers made me realize 3 things:
- There is an even mix of roles such as founders, technical, and business. This gives me a clearer picture of who I am serving and what sort of experiences they might be going through.
- People still don’t know about Femgineer’s offerings beyond the newsletter such as FemgineerTV, the book, and courses, the value behind each, and that there are free as well as paid offerings.
- People notice when I incorporate feedback. When I asked for feedback at the end of last year many people said I was long-winded. Now most say it’s clear and to the point. I’ve been actively working on cutting to the chase 😉
Finally, whether the feedback is positive or negative, it’s important to take the time to digest, reflect, and ask yourself what you learned from it.
Now I’m sure you’ve asked for valuable advice recently. What did you learn? Let me know in the comments below!
