That was your manager performing the act of giving feedback whilYour manager just told you that you need to be more proactive.
The conversation ends and you head back to your desk with absolutely no idea what you’re supposed to do differently tomorrow.e saying nothing specific enough to help you improve.
Real feedback sounds like an NFL coach on Monday morning: “Your release was .3 seconds too slow. The defender closed the gap because you hesitated at the line. We’re running that route again, and this time I need you exploding off your back foot.”
Corporate feedback sounds like working on your communication skills in some vague, undefined way.
One of these tells you exactly what to fix and how to practice it tomorrow.
The Vague Feedback Problem
“You need to be more proactive.” What does that mean? Should you schedule more meetings? Send more emails? Take on projects without asking? Your manager probably has a specific behavior in mind, but they’re making you guess what it is.
Vague feedback protects the person giving it because they avoid the uncomfortable conversation. Telling you exactly what’s wrong means they might have to discuss why you’re doing it that way or what’s preventing you from doing it differently. Vague feedback lets them check the “gave feedback” box without risking any real honesty.
What Specific Feedback Does
NFL teams review game film within hours because waiting a week means you’ve practiced the wrong thing all week. Business managers wait for annual reviews, which means you’ve been doing something wrong for eight months and nobody thought to mention it until it was time to justify your raise.
Championship coaches are specific, motivating, and honest every single week. They tell you exactly what you did, exactly what it cost the team, and exactly how to fix it. Winning matters more than comfort in professional sports, and the feedback reflects that priority.
Business managers tell you that you need to “step up your game” and think they’ve done their job. Meanwhile you’re sitting there trying to decode what game you’re supposed to be stepping up and whether you’re even playing the same sport as everyone else.
The Wall We've Built Around Feedback
The Wall is the barrier ego creates that prevents real communication from happening. Your manager’s ego doesn’t want to risk the discomfort of telling you that your emails are too long and people stop reading them. Your ego doesn’t want to admit that you have no idea what “more strategic thinking” means when they say it in your review.
The Agreement would change this completely because it establishes how you’re going to communicate before the stakes get high. You make a deal: I will be 100 percent honest with you, being truly and freely myself, speaking into what I want and how I feel. You promise to be 100 percent open me, listening without reservation, putting your needs and wants on pause for me.
Imagine your manager starting a feedback conversation with that level of clarity and commitment. “Your presentations lose the room after about five minutes because you frontload too much context before getting to the recommendation. Here’s what I need you to do differently next time.” That’s honesty that gives you something concrete to work on.
Why We Tolerate This
Athletes wouldn’t put up with vague coaching for a single practice because they’re trying to win games. If a coach told an NFL player “you need to execute better,” that player would immediately ask what specifically needs to improve. You can’t win games by guessing what your coach wants you to do differently.
Business tolerates vague feedback because we’ve all agreed to perform professionally instead of helping each other get better. Giving specific feedback feels harsh to the person delivering it. Receiving it feels personal to the person hearing it. We’ve decided that feeling comfortable is more important than improving fast.
This is the decline of real communication throughout organizations and society. Openness + honesty = real communication, where openness means listening without reservation and honesty means being truly and freely yourself, being 100% loving with your honesty. Most feedback conversations lack both because both sides are protecting their egos while going through the motions.
Bottom Line
The next time someone gives you vague feedback, ask them to be specific about the behavior they saw, the impact it had, and what they want you to do differently. That conversation might feel uncomfortable, but discomfort is where growth happens.
If you’re the one giving feedback, pretend you’re an NFL coach reviewing Monday film with your team. Name the play that went wrong. Name what happened because of it. Name how to fix it going forward. Your team will respect you for being direct and giving them something they can use.
Real communication requires both openness and honesty working together. Openness means you’re willing to hear hard things about your performance. Honesty means you’re willing to say them clearly. Vague feedback gives you neither because it’s just both people protecting their egos while pretending they had a productive conversation.
Your team deserves better than “you need to improve your performance.” They deserve to know exactly what that means and how to do it.