The Real Reason Your Team Isn’t Giving You Tough Feedback

You can’t fix what you can’t see. How to surface the truth before it's too late.

Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash

Donna knew something was wrong when she got the 6pm email from her boss asking for a last-minute morning meeting.

Louis was thoughtful, prepared. He didn’t do last-minute.

When we spoke the next day, Donna was exasperated and confused. She was still trying to make sense of what Louis had shared:

Another of Donna’s direct reports, Sheryl, had gone around her and shared negative feedback about her leadership style. This time it was to Louis, the CEO.

Another of Donna’s employees, Lydia, also shared criticism of Donna on the way out in an HR exit interview. Donna was surprised, but she felt it was to be expected that someone who was let go for performance issues would be upset.

Sheryl was a different story.

She was still on Donna’s team. Sheryl had been in tears when Louis passed her in the hallway and offered to speak with her. That’s when she shared that she felt Donna could be dismissive at times and harsh in how she communicated decisions.

“I just don’t get it,” Donna confided in me. “I ask for feedback all the time. And now Louis is starting to see a pattern that I swear doesn’t exist. What do I do?”

That’s when I shared the hard truth:

Most leaders don’t get feedback.
Not because their team thinks they’re great…
But because their team doesn’t trust them.

This wasn’t just an unfortunate meeting with her boss. This was a red alert that Donna needed to prioritize and address quickly.

The first time your boss raises something, it’s a conversation. The second time is a warning.

Louis had been respectful, but he also didn’t sugarcoat the situation. He was concerned. Donna was a critical leader on the executive team. They couldn’t afford distractions like this.

The biggest issue wasn’t that there was employee disgruntlement. It was that Donna didn’t seem to be aware that it existed and didn’t know what to do next.

Her lack of clarity scared her. Losing Louis’s trust scared her even more.
Like many high-achieving executives, she was stretched thin and pushing herself to the brink.

Donna inherited the Product team at a profitable, growing SaaS technology company a year and a half ago. She was excited to join a company with strong prospects and solid financials. Louis and the rest of the C-suite were strategic and gave her a wide berth to set up the function.

Donna chose to take her time to assess each person on the team instead of going with her initial instincts about who would work out and who wouldn’t. She didn’t want to rush, and she wanted her decisions to be based on sufficient evidence.

Once she had the data points she needed, Donna didn’t waste time reshaping the organization. She let go of 50% of the staff, promoted one, and hired in several new people.

Unsurprisingly, she left some scars in her wake. Some of the team felt she didn’t fully consider their input when she made a decision. Some felt she was too busy to support the team fully.

But none of them told her this was how they felt.

Instead, when she squeezed in a question at the tail-end of a 1:1 meeting or a group meeting, her team stayed silent.

The negative feedback from Sheryl felt particularly unfair. Donna had explicitly checked in with Sheryl after she made a decision Sheryl wasn’t aligned with earlier in the week. Sheryl had made it clear that she was fine.

If Donna couldn’t trust her people to tell her what they actually felt, and there was a risk they would go above her to her boss, how was she ever going to feel safe to more bold moves?

What you crave from your team is often a reflection of what they need from you.

Donna didn’t realize it, but she had hit upon the core issue holding back her team. It just needed to be flipped.

It wasn’t about her trusting her team.
It was about her team trusting her.

They were never going to give her direct, candid feedback if they didn’t trust her. The trust she wanted was exactly what they were seeking as well.

The top reasons why why people don’t provide feedback:

1. They don’t feel safe.

2. They don’t feel safe.

3. They don’t feel safe.

4. They don’t feel there is a time or place to deliver it.

5. They aren’t sure how to frame what they are saying productively.

Those weren’t typos. 80% of the time, people simply don’t trust that their leader will respond well to constructive criticism. And honestly, most of the time, they are right.

Even the last two items relate to not feeling safe. If you are confident that your leader will be curious and open-minded, you’ll find a time to speak to them and you will worry less about delivering it perfectly.

Sadly, too many leaders are so insecure themselves that they are defensive, don’t listen actively, and aren’t able to create the space for someone on their team to share.

Donna wasn’t one of those leaders. She genuinely wanted to know what her team thought, and she regularly asked for their thoughts, but clearly something about her approach missed the mark.

Don’t assume your employees feel safe. Actively create safe conditions.

How you respond in any situation becomes how people expect you to respond on all situations.

If you have a tendency to be impatient or be distracted in conversation, or maybe you cut people off, don’t be surprised that people are wary to share deeper, high-risk thoughts with you.

I’m not saying you can’t demand excellence from your team.

You can and should set expectations that they come in prepared, and that time is used effectively. But if your first response to someone not landing a point is to judge instead of getting curious, you might be setting the stage for them to feel unsafe.

Accessibility is another critical blocker to safety. If you make it difficult for people to book time or make people feel rushed, it’s much harder to dive into difficult topics.

It’s easier to avoid the topic than to try to squeeze it in.

Shifting perception requires sustained, substantial behavior changes.

To help her people feel safe and make her commitment to making space to hear their feedback feel real, Donna had to show she was willing to invest her most precious assets: her time and her attention.

Here was the plan:

• Set up dedicated, quarterly meetings that were 45-60 minutes long to gather feedback

• Be clear about the purpose: to get at the gnarly topics that we unconsciously avoid or are just too scared to tackle, including constructive criticism of how Donna led the team

• Give her people 2-3 weeks notice so that they had time to prepare

For the first meeting, I recommended 3 topics to get the conversation started. She could adjust the agenda as needed based on what her team raised, but it was essential to help set the tone:

1. Decision-making (in your department at the leadership level)

2. People dynamics, specifically the 3 C’s: collaboration, communication, and conflict management

3. Where do they feel confidence? Where do they feel concern?

In the meeting, the leader needs to continue to model curiosity and give your team space.

• Ask open-ended questions

• Get comfortable with silence. That signals patience

• Only give examples when they aren’t sharing for over 5 minutes

• Focus your full attention, no devices. You can take notes with paper and pen, and let people know that’s what you’re doing. Consider assigning a notetaker as well so that nothing is missed

• Orient your eye contact and body towards the person speaking

Let the conversation go where the team takes you. If you need more time, schedule more.

Why a new rhythm is so important.

When you are trying to land a new message, especially one where people may have fear and doubt, you need to make the change feel significant.

The new meeting structure was exactly that:

• A pause from the flow of operations

• Addressing topics that can feel scary head-on

• A moment to show how you as the leader are deeply focused on what each person is saying and nothing else

• Dedicated time so that you can dig into topics deeply

• A group setting allowing for everyone to feel in the know and not be worried about side conversations

Success isn’t how many complaints you receive. It’s a more seamless dialogue between you and your team.

You might get dozens of concerns, and you might only get 2.
The quantity doesn’t matter.

What matters is if your team walks away feeling confident that you will respond to difficult topics well, and as a result, they no longer withhold information and instead share it more effectively and efficiently.

The best teams aren’t the ones that get everything right. They are just better at identifying critical issues and course correcting faster. You can only do that if you trust each other and are willing to talk about challenging topics.

For Donna, the payoff was no longer worrying what her team thought. They didn’t hold back their thoughts, and their ability to navigate dissenting opinions led to only stronger outcomes and greater trust for the entire team.

The real win was that the Product team was making bolder moves, learning faster than ever, and showing all signs of having fun while doing it.

And Louis? He hasn’t sent a surprise calendar invite in months.

Your Turn

Have you struggled to get honest feedback from your team?
Share your story in the comments — I read every one.

❤️ Tap the heart if this resonated
🔄 Forward to someone who really needs to hear this

Want more leadership mini-guides like this each week?
Subscribe to Lead Without Limits and join a community of leaders who do the work, not just talk about it.

May you lead without limits,