Women in Leadership

Kate Walker spent years dodging feedback because a tennis court taught her it only meant what she did wrong. Then she watched the most senior people in the building ask for it first.

Kate Walker: Why the Smartest People Ask for Feedback

By Rosie Zilinskas | November 11, 2022 | 8 min read

You are doing the work. You are hitting the numbers. And you have no idea what your boss actually thinks of you, because your one-on-ones keep getting bumped and your last real conversation about your performance was the review form you both filled out in a hurry.

So you wait. You assume no news is good news. And you keep guessing.

Kate Walker does not want you to guess. Kate is an HR expert and executive coach who spent about two decades in senior human resources and leadership roles before founding Kate Walker Consulting, where she now coaches leaders, teams, and people who are trying to crack the code on a promotion. When she joined me on the No Woman Left Behind podcast, the conversation was billed as five tips for becoming an admired and effective boss. What we actually got was something more useful for the woman who is not the boss yet: a clear picture of what good communication from a manager looks like, and what to do when you are not getting it.

Here is the part I keep coming back to. Kate, a competitive athlete turned HR leader, avoided feedback for years. What changed her mind was not a mindset exercise. It was watching who in the building was asking for it.

Why high performers avoid feedback

Kate grew up as a ranked, competitive tennis player. Every lesson, every clinic, every match was feedback, and almost all of it was about what she had done wrong. Do not do this. You should have done that. She became a very good tennis player. She also walked into her career believing that feedback and negative feedback were the same thing.

That belief followed her into corporate. In her words, she did not want feedback because it was going to be negative and she was done with it. And she assumed something a lot of high performers assume: the smarter you are and the bigger your title, the less feedback you need. You already have the job. You already have the degree. Why would you want someone to tell you what to fix?

If you recognize yourself in that, you are not alone, and you are not wrong to feel it. Feedback can sting. Kate is honest about that. Her reframe is not "feedback feels good." Her reframe is that feedback is information, and you cannot steer without it.

"If you want to be in the driver's seat of your career, I advise you, the employee, to go out and start soliciting feedback." Kate Walker

The a-ha moment: the people with the biggest titles ask for feedback

Working as a human resources leader, Kate started noticing a pattern. The people with the big titles, the advanced degrees, the high-visibility projects were the ones actively asking how they could do better and how their teams could do better. The people she assumed were past needing feedback were the ones seeking it most.

"These people are so smart, but they're asking for feedback. Maybe the smart people ask for feedback." Kate Walker

That observation is the whole episode in one line. Asking for feedback is not a sign that you are behind. It is what the people ahead of you are already doing. When you avoid it, you are not protecting your reputation. You are giving up the information that would let you close the distance between the impact you create and the impact leadership recognizes and rewards. That distance is what I call the Articulation Gap, and you cannot close it while guessing what leadership thinks.

It is not that senior people have earned the right to skip feedback. It is that asking for feedback is part of how they got senior.

What a good boss communicates, and what you are missing if yours does not

Kate frames an admired boss under two umbrellas. One is total rewards: pay, benefits, time off. The other, the one she spent the episode on, is communication. Her five tips are written for managers. Read them as an employee and they become a diagnostic. If your boss is doing these five things, you have the information you need. If your boss is not, you now know exactly which conversations to go start.

1. Why are we here? The boss explains the mission and the why behind the work. Kate's first tip. If you cannot say why your role exists and how it ladders up to the company, that is a gap, and it is one worth asking about. I once inherited a team member doing a task nobody could explain. When I asked why, the answer was "I was told to." The job was obsolete. Ask the question.
2. How can I help? What's important for you? Regular one-on-ones that go beyond the checklist into development, growth, and what is next for you. Kate calls this a two-way conversation, and she says it should never feel threatening.
3. What are we doing? Clear roles and responsibilities, current job descriptions, and no giant surprises at review time because the conversation has been ongoing. Kate is a big advocate of good job descriptions for exactly this reason: if you want the senior manager role, the gap between the two descriptions is your roadmap.
4. How will we do it? The plan and the strategy, shared with the team, not just held in the manager's head. Kate suggests strategy sessions two to four times a year, then a clear "here is the plan going forward" once the brainstorming ends.
5. Visibility and accessibility. Kate tells the story of a division head who walked the floors around the same time every day, knocking on her glass window to check in for a minute. Remote teams can do the same with a short message: "Just checking in. How's it going?" It costs nothing, and people remember it.

Kate's line on all five is the one I want you to hear if you are a manager reading this.

"It costs zero dollars and zero cents. It does cost effort and time." Kate Walker

A manager's primary job is to lead the team to success. If she does not make time to meet with her people, she is already failing, no matter how full her calendar is.

How to get the information your boss is not giving you

Now flip it. Maybe your boss is disorganized. Maybe the one-on-one got moved for a client meeting, then for travel, and six weeks have gone by. Kate has heard that complaint from employees over and over, and she is clear about what happens next: resentment builds, work drifts off track, and the recruiter's call starts to look appealing.

You do not have to wait for that. Kate's first actionable tip for women who want to advance is blunt: you need information to advance your career. If your boss is not opening those five conversations, you open them.

Notice what these questions do. They are not asking your boss for reassurance. They are asking for the specific information that lets you course-correct now instead of at review time. That is the difference between reacting to your career and directing it. And if your company's leadership is too buried in the weeds to have these conversations, Kate's advice is to go get that information anyway: from a qualified person in HR, or from a coach who has been behind the curtain where decisions get made.

One more note for anyone whose feedback has been harsh rather than absent. Information still beats silence. My conversation with Gaby Rossi on what to do after a bad performance review picks up exactly there.

How do other people actually see you? Kate's personal brand audit

Kate's second tip is about a different kind of information: not what your boss thinks of your work, but how everyone around you perceives you. She built a simple exercise for it, a personal brand audit, available as a free download at KateWalker.com/freebie.

You get a list of about 70 positive attributes and pick the 10 that best describe how you show up. Then, if you are feeling bold, you hand the peer version to colleagues, your boss, or a friend and ask them to pick the 10 they see. Then you compare.

"What if you get back five peer reviews and no one has checked the analytical box? You're like, 'What? I thought I was analytical. I guess no one is seeing me that way.'" Kate Walker

This is a blind-spot exercise, and it matters more than it looks. People see you differently than you see yourself. If you believe you are known for analysis and nobody around you picked that word, the problem is rarely your analysis. It is that the work is not being translated into something the people around you can name. That translation, from task to result to impact, is the Clarity work I walk through in why your hard work isn't being recognized, and Kate's audit is a fast way to find out where you are being misread before your next review does it for you.

Name it, then claim it: how Kate sets intentions that actually happen

We closed on goals, because feedback and brand audits only matter if you do something with what you learn. Kate's rule for intentions is simple.

"A powerful intention, you've got to name it and then you've got to go claim it." Kate Walker

Her example was a client facing a major certification: seven exams, three to four hours each, and he had been treating it as one enormous, overwhelming thing. Kate's suggestion was to sign up for one test, study 30 minutes a day, and focus on that single test for about two months. He told her that felt realistic for the first time. Name the certification. Claim it one test at a time.

I said it on the episode and I will say it here: a plane cannot take off without a filed flight plan, and your career will not take off without one either. The steps do not have to be big. They have to be named, and they have to be on the calendar.

What I want you to take from this

Kate left corporate during the pandemic because she noticed which conversations lit her up. She had been in thousands of coaching conversations as an HR leader, and those were the ones. That kind of self-awareness is the same muscle she is asking you to build: pay attention to the information, then act on it.

Asking for feedback does not mean something is wrong with your work. It means you are done leaving your career to chance. As Kate put it, reaching out is a sign of strength. The smart people are already doing it.

About Kate Walker

Kate Walker is a human resources expert and a renowned thought leader on leadership, business insight, team dynamics, and mindset. Through her client engagement, social content, media contributions, and podcast guesting, she empowers business professionals to design businesses, teams, and people processes that positively impact their professional success. She has over two decades of senior-level business experience working with thousands of individuals at various stages of their lives and careers. She offers executive career coaching to support ambitious career professionals. Learn more at KateWalker.com.

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