When Feedback Isn’t Working (And the Simple Shift That Changes Everything)

We’ve all been there. You prepare thoughtful feedback, schedule the conversation, deliver it clearly – and somehow leave feeling like you’ve potentially made things worse, not better. The team member seems defensive, the relationship feels strained and you’re not confident that anything will change.

What we know from research: Research examining managerial feedback reveals that feedback discussions can actually increase disagreement about performance rather than creating alignment.

When people receive mixed or negative feedback, they typically doubt both its accuracy and the giver’s qualifications to provide it! This triggers self-protective responses that can entrench the very behaviours you’re trying to change.

However, there’s a crucial finding: team members are motivated to improve when feedback conversations focus on future actions rather than past performance.

My POV: We can unintentionally activate a threat response and put people in a defensive posture where learning becomes nearly impossible. This happens when we focus exclusively on what went wrong or when we flag development areas without any concrete examples to make the feedback useful.

I’ve seen brilliant leaders transform their effectiveness by making small, simple shifts: first, be clear from the outset that your motivation in the conversation is to help this person move forward (this reduces the threat response), and be specific and give examples of development areas. Frame all the feedback as data to help co-create the right way forward.

That creates the right environment for a constructive conversation and reduces defensiveness.

As a Leader, what can you do?

• Start with where you’re going, not where you’ve been. Instead of ‘Let’s discuss what happened in that client meeting’, try ‘Let’s talk about how we want to approach the next client meeting’. This immediately shifts the conversation from risking feelings of judgment to joint problem-solving.

• Frame observations as data for future decisions. When you reference past events, position them as information that helps inform future choices: ‘Given these challenges in your Q3 results, what could you do differently in Q4?’. This minimises self-protective reactions while still addressing performance.

• Make it collaborative, not corrective. Replace ‘Here’s what you need to do differently’ with ‘What ideas do you have for approaching this going forward?’. When people generate their own solutions for future improvement, they’re far more likely to follow through. Do offer suggestions and alternatives that you think will have the most impact.

What difference will it make? When the goal of the feedback conversation is creating a better path forward, defensive walls come down and genuine development begins.

Your team members will leave conversations energised about what’s possible rather than disheartened about what went wrong. You’ll build trust instead of eroding it, and most importantly, you’ll see actual behaviour change rather than just compliance or offline complaining.

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