Unlock honest feedback by asking for “advice”

Feedback implies critiquing a past performance.

Advice suggests guidance for a present or future task.

I agree that this small distinction is important. Even if it's something like "here's what just happened, what's your feedback on how I handled it?" vs "here's what just happened, what's your advice on how to deal with these situations in the future."

Horrible title aside, it's actually a fairly reasonable point, but feels like a missed opportunity to write something more compelling about trading business-speak for empathy.

Asking for advice is perfectly fine, provided that those giving it have no expectation that it will be followed. I mention this only because sometimes, when advice is given, there's an implicit assumption that it will be followed - "You asked for advice, I told you to do X, but then you didn't do X! Why'd you even bother asking for it then?!" - when the person asking for it can (and will) do whatever they want.

Of course, this doesn't help with hurt feelings when a person doesn't implement advice, but that'd happen regardless of whether you're giving feedback or advice.

This article reminds me of sales techniques in general. For example, there's a talk somewhere on YouTube by a sales guru I can't remember the name of, about the art of closing. In the video he suggests using the word "agreement" over "contract". People never want to sign a contract but everybody loves to agree on something. The point is some words have unintended negative connotations and word choice is very important when trying to steer a conversation or a decision-making process.

Don't ask for feedback or advice. Ask for money. If someone is willing to buy that's a very positive sign and you have a new customer. If they're not then you can have a conversation about why, which either leads to some useful feedback or you get to quickly ascertain that the person doesn't need what you're building, in which case their advice (or feedback, or questions) would have been pointless anyway.

I don't think this has much at all to do with the words used.

Give it a few goes and eventually "advice" will become the bad word. People will realise that they're just getting the same response that dissuaded them originally from responding to requests for "feedback".

It's not the word you use, it's way you respond to what you receive.

My CEO currently asks for (and receives no) "questions".

In SV, the old chestnut goes: "If you want money, ask for advice, and if you want advice, ask for money." ;) So basically, never ask for money...

Another approach is "how does this suck, and how do you think it could be better?" starts off with a premise of unpolished-edges seeking honest input. Also, only ask strangers, preferably likely customers, for feedback/advice because it can seem a catch-22 to most friends and family.

tl;dr - talk like a human and not an MBA and people might actually communicate with you.

Ask for advice instead of feedback — saved you a click

Is the word 'clickbait'?

... that doctors hate?

Side note: aren't these title styles becoming such a common click-bait trope that everyone automatically discounts any information in the article by now?