"Workplace feedback expert" —Harvard Business Review. I'm a professor at Penn State on a mission to build feedback literacy for all. Nearly 10,000 students in my poetry class. 2,000+ leaders attended my feedback webinar with Harvard. Each week, 3MR offers a reframe to help you live with more clarity and courage.
3MR: Are you an H-shaped professional?
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For decades, the career advice was to become T-shaped: to develop mastery of one domain (the vertical part of the T) and then pair that with a general set of skills (the horizontal part of the T). It was and still is useful advice. But it’s no longer enough. I spent 18 months at Cisco on a project that touched millions of people in 195 countries. The colleagues who moved the project forward weren't the deepest specialists or the broadest generalists. They were something rarer. They had genuine depth in a second domain. And they could seek, receive, process, use, and give feedback across teams in different domains. Picture an H. Two vertical pillars: your primary expertise and a meaningful second one. Two horizontal bars connecting them: one representing the foundational skills everyone needs, the other representing feedback literacy. I wrote about how to build the H for Talent Development Leader.
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3-Minute Reframe
"Workplace feedback expert" —Harvard Business Review. I'm a professor at Penn State on a mission to build feedback literacy for all. Nearly 10,000 students in my poetry class. 2,000+ leaders attended my feedback webinar with Harvard. Each week, 3MR offers a reframe to help you live with more clarity and courage.
This week's reframe is about the ripple effect of openly seeking feedback. Click to watch on YouTube Episode Transcript The Seeking Feedback Modeling card states, "When you seek feedback, it makes it easier for others to do the same. Openly normalizing the vulnerability needed for growth has a powerful ripple effect." And the card invites you to practice what's called the signal, which you can do by asking someone whose opinion you value, "I'm trying to improve my... What specific changes...
In 1924, a psychology professor named Robert Chenault Givler published The Ethics of Hercules, arguing that our ethical values and our bodies should not be studied apart — that our bodies provide important signals that shape our values and our ability to make decisions. It was a radical idea then and still is today in 2026, a time when many of us are told to believe that pure brainpower or AI tools can solve everything. One look around the world’s events and I can’t help but ask: How’s that...
This week's reframe covers when (and why) to state your intent before giving challenging feedback. Click to watch on YouTube Episode Transcript The Giving Feedback Intent card states, "State your positive intent. If the receiver assumes you don't have their best interest in mind, even great feedback may not land well." And the card invites you to use what's called the preface, something like, "I'm sharing this because I believe in what you're doing, and I think one thing could make it even...