Asking for Feedback Well

Asking how did I do tends to produce a polite, vague answer, since it offers the other person very little to actually respond to beyond a general reassurance that costs them nothing to give.

A better version narrows the request considerably: asking what specifically could have been clearer, or which part landed least well, gives the other person something concrete to respond to, and makes an honest answer far easier to give.

This small shift in wording matters enormously in practice, since feedback that is genuinely useful almost always depends on the specificity of the question that was used to request it in the first place.

It also helps to ask the question at a moment when the other person has time to actually reflect, rather than in passing, since a rushed request for feedback tends to produce a rushed, generic answer regardless of how carefully the question itself was actually phrased.