Raise your hand if you've ever found yourself at work wondering: Why not me?
Maybe it was during a promotion cycle and someone else got the role you thought you were in line for.
Maybe it was when you were certain you'd be sent to lead the project abroad, only to watch the opportunity go to someone else.
Maybe it happened before work even started. You clicked with the interviewer. The conversation flowed. You left feeling optimistic. Then came the "we regret to inform you" email.
In those situations, I've often reached out to the person who made the decision.
Not always. Sometimes it didn't feel safe to ask. Sometimes there wasn't anyone to ask. But when I did, the request usually sounded something like: I'd love to get some feedback.
In my last Signals article, I argued that we often use feedback to answer deeply personal questions: Am I doing well? Do people respect me? Do I belong here?
Some feedback helps us improve. Other feedback helps us understand how opportunity works. And those aren't the same conversation.”
But after a missed opportunity, we're often asking a different question. When we ask for feedback after not getting the promotion, the assignment, or the offer, we aren’t just asking about our performance.
We're trying to understand how opportunity works.
- Why was that person selected?
- What mattered in that moment?
- What did the decision-makers see?
- What signal did I miss?
Not all feedback serves the same purpose.
Some feedback helps us improve. Other feedback helps us understand how opportunity works. And those aren't the same conversation.
When I ask for feedback after a missed opportunity, there are things I can learn about my own performance. Maybe I lacked a skill, an experience, or a capability that would have made me a stronger candidate. But that's rarely the only thing I want to understand.
I also want to know how the decision came together.
- What factors carried the most weight?
- What constraints existed that I couldn't see?
- What was happening behind the scenes?
Often, though, the answer to "Why wasn't I chosen?" is much more complicated than the answer to "What could I do better?"
Sometimes the reason is straightforward: The organization needed a different skill set; someone else had experience that was particularly relevant; the timing favored another candidate.
But sometimes the answer lives in places that are harder to talk about. Relationships. Visibility. Business priorities. Timing. Organizational needs. The fact that one person's opportunity may depend on circumstances that have very little to do with another person's performance.
That's what makes these conversations so difficult.
When we ask for feedback after a missed opportunity, we're often trying to understand how a particular decision was made. But the person giving feedback may only feel comfortable talking about the part that belongs to us.
And that may be why these conversations can feel so incomplete.
The problem isn't that feedback doesn't help us improve. It's that we're often asking it to explain an outcome. And while feedback can tell us a great deal about our role in that outcome, it rarely explains the outcome itself.
We walk into the conversation hoping to understand the decision. The other person walks into the conversation hoping to help us improve.”
That's why one of the most useful questions we can ask ourselves after a missed opportunity is: What am I actually trying to understand? Am I trying to become better at my job or am I trying to understand how this particular decision came together?
Both are reasonable questions, but they are different and require different kinds of answers.
The first conversation is about development: What capabilities should I build? What experiences would make me stronger? How can I grow?
The second conversation is about interpretation: What signals mattered here? How was this opportunity evaluated? What was visible to the people making the decision that wasn't visible to me?
That's why feedback after a missed opportunity can leave us feeling like something is missing. We walk into the conversation hoping to understand the decision. The other person walks into the conversation hoping to help us improve.
Neither of us is wrong. We're bringing different questions into the conversation.
The more I've studied careers, the more I've come to believe that improvement is only part of the story.
Careers aren't shaped only by what we do.
They're also shaped by the signals our work sends, and by how those signals are interpreted, recognized, and ultimately connected to opportunity.
