“You’re doing great, keep it up” is the kindest and most useless thing someone can tell you.
Why feedback stalls
The person giving it is afraid of discouraging you. The person receiving it is afraid of looking fragile. The result is a polite conversation where nothing concrete gets said — and both people walk away relieved and exactly where they started.
How to ask
A generic question gets a generic answer. Instead of “how am I doing?”, try:
- Pick a slice. “In that PR review, what could I have explained better?”
- Give explicit permission. “You can be blunt, I prefer it.”
- Ask for one thing. “If I changed one thing next month, what would it be?”
How to give
The script I use is short: situation, behaviour, effect. What happened, what the person did, what it caused. No adjectives about the person — only about the effect.
And most important: separate feedback from evaluation. Feedback is about what to do tomorrow. Evaluation is about what already happened. Mixing the two is the fastest way to make someone stop listening to you.