What We Hide Under the Cover of Feedback

Hi Friend,

In the past we've talked about "fight club" and the need to get better at conflict. With so much upheaval in our path, it is inevitable that we'll have friction in our lives and with each other. We often see us destroy our organizational cultures by hiding that friction inside of feedback.

Feedback is deeply important and we think organizations with a compassionate feedback culture get better over time and evolve much less painfully than organizations where feedback is met with defensiveness. Yet we call feedback any number of things that are not actually feedback. We collapse conflict and we collapse the resolutions for different types of conflict.

Intentionality in our language is one of the ways that we strengthen our ability to engage in the multiple types of conflict that show up in our organizations.

Feedback:  The perspective we give when we are invested in the growth and development of the receiver.  Feedback is fundamentally about growing a human in alignment with the larger goals of an organization. For example, you supervise a person who has aspirations for a larger role and is struggling with project management, a core competency of the larger role. You want to help them connect their aspirations to strengthening their ability to lay out a plan, set milestones,  meet deadlines, and manage other stakeholders. A feedback conversation focuses on the opportunities for growth rather than the failure to meet a specific standard. 

Here are some other kinds of friction we usually hide under the cover of feedback:

Accountability: When someone doesn't meet a deadline or show up at a location or do a task they had promised to do - they have broken a commitment. When someone breaks a commitment, they have an impact on the people around them. There is trust being built every day with people we are in community with and breaking a commitment - especially when we break it without fair warning - erodes trust over time. These accountability conversations require context about what led to the broken commitment and maybe even repair.

When we frame an accountability conversation as a feedback conversation, we are often avoiding conflict and the receiver may entirely miss the point: that a commitment was broken and trust was eroded. Over time, failure to communicate a need for accountability may allow a pattern of unaccountable behavior to persist.

Self-reflection: When have you offered feedback when you might have held someone accountable instead?

Disagreement: Sometimes, we just disagree with each other and it's annoying. We choose one path where another person would have chosen something different. They chose a set of tradeoffs you would never have made. They stylistically did something that touched on your triggers. Disagreements will happen when we are in a community. Anyone in a long term relationship can tell you - disagreements are inevitable. However, we treat many disagreements as if they needed feedback. Sometimes they do call for feedback. Mostly, what disagreements call for is the regulation of our nervous systems. No one can regulate our nervous systems for us and we often give feedback as a way to see if someone can. When they don't - resentment festers. We have to be clear on our own dysregulation and recognize that we are responsible for managing it.

Self-reflection: When have you offered feedback when you might have instead accepted someone else’s choice as a tolerable disagreement?

Negotiation: Negotiation is a dialogue between people with equal power. Equal power exists ALL over an organization; however people with less positional authority sometimes fail to claim the full power they hold and can use to negotiate for better outcomes. People with more positional authority use their power to enact their preferences. For example, your direct report has a set of goals and work plans for 2026 that does not include a top priority that you would like them to add to their slate. Rather than offering feedback to coerce them to make space for it on top of an already full body of work, you can initiate a negotiation: what might they remove in order to make space for another priority? Or, a direct report who receives feedback to add more to an overflowing plate can initiate a conversation around prioritization: Can we negotiate? What can I remove to make space for this?

Self-reflection: When have you offered (or received) feedback when a negotiation might have been a more appropriate approach?

A feedback culture is built by people who give and receive feedback with grace and introspection. So many things get in the way of that introspection - previous traumas, identities attached to being perfect, hero complexes, etc. The last thing we want to do is add to those barriers by being sloppy about what we want out of an interaction. Bringing that clarity to our conversations will help us build durable organizations that support us during ruptures and, instead of walking away, help us find each other.