Feedback
Feedback you cannot act on
"Be more strategic" is not feedback. It is a feeling. There is a polite and reliable way to make somebody turn a feeling into an instruction.
Unactionable feedback is not usually malice. Somebody has a real impression, formed from a handful of moments they have not examined, and they reach for the nearest available phrase. The phrase is a summary of something specific. Your job is to get back to the specific thing.
Ask for the moment, not the meaning
The instinct is to ask what they mean. That gets you a definition of the phrase, which helps nobody.
Ask instead: can you think of a recent time where you noticed this? Even a small one - it would help me picture it.
Now you get something real. "In the vendor review you went through the options but did not say which you would pick." That is a thing you can do differently on Tuesday. "Be more strategic" never was.
Ask for the moment, not the meaning. You want the evidence, not the summary.
Three phrases and what they usually turn out to be
- "More executive presence." Almost always: you hedge when you speak, or you brief in detail when the room wanted the headline.
- "Not enough ownership." Usually: you raised a problem without a proposal, one time, in front of somebody who remembers it.
- "Hard to work with." This one is worth pushing hardest on, because it is the vaguest and the most damaging. There is nearly always a single incident underneath it, and it is frequently a misunderstanding that has never been said out loud.
Then close the loop, visibly
Once you have the specific thing, do the different version - and make sure the person who gave you the feedback sees it. Not announced. Just do it in front of them and, a few weeks later, mention it: I have been trying to land on a recommendation rather than laying out options. Is that closer to what you meant?
Feedback that is never acknowledged tends to get repeated. Feedback that visibly landed gets replaced with the next, more useful thing.