Early in my career, I raised a concern with the Managing Director of the business I worked for. Our team had gaps in training and knowledge, and those gaps were affecting our ability to deliver. I had nothing to gain personally from raising it. I could see the impact on the business and I wanted to help fix it.
I was cut off mid-conversation. The response was clipped and a little passive aggressive, and I was told it wasn’t appropriate to raise.
I learned a lesson that day, though not one any leader would want me to learn. I kept my head down, focused on what was within my control and stopped speaking up, because it was clear that wasn’t how things worked there. The training gap I’d flagged stayed exactly where it was. The business also lost the input of someone who was willing to point out problems early.
That moment came back to me recently while I was facilitating a session with a group of leaders. We’d spent a lot of time on how to give feedback, which is well-covered ground. What became clear in the room was that the other half of the conversation gets far less attention. How you receive feedback, and what you do with it afterwards, shapes whether your people ever bother to give it again.
What the research tells us about speaking up
In the mid-1990s, Harvard researcher Amy Edmondson studied eight hospital nursing units. She expected to find that teams with better leadership and stronger working relationships made fewer medication errors.
The data appeared to show the opposite. The best-led units were reporting far more errors than the weakest ones.
When she dug deeper, Edmondson realised the stronger teams were more willing to report their mistakes, because people felt safe to speak up. In the units where errors were rarely reported, nurses described an unforgiving environment where owning up carried consequences. Edmondson went on to call this condition psychological safety: a shared belief within a team that it’s safe to take interpersonal risks, like raising a concern, asking a question or admitting a mistake (Stanford Social Innovation Review).
The lesson reaches well beyond hospitals. A quiet team can still have problems. You hear about them later, when they cost more to fix.
Why receiving feedback is the half that gets missed
Most leadership development puts its energy into giving feedback: how to frame it, when to deliver it, how to keep it constructive. Those skills matter. Every time a team member offers feedback, though, they are watching what you do with it.
By feedback, I mean more than formal performance conversations. It includes a concern about how work is getting done, an idea for doing something differently, pushback on a decision you’ve made, or a comment about how you lead. Each one is a small risk for the person raising it.
How you respond decides whether they take that risk again. A leader who listens, asks questions and acts teaches the team that speaking up is worth it. A leader who brushes it aside teaches the opposite, often in a single conversation. That’s the lesson I took from my managing director, and it shaped how I showed up in that business for a long time.
Receiving feedback about yourself as a leader
Feedback about your own leadership is the hardest kind to hear, particularly when it doesn’t match how you see yourself or when it feels personal.
Start by noticing your reaction. Feeling frustrated, disappointed, let down, embarrassed or even angry is a normal human response. Acknowledging that to yourself gives you room to respond well. The aim is to keep the feeling from steering the conversation.
Then get curious. Ask for specific examples so you can reflect on them properly. Questions like these help:
- Can you give me an example of when that happened?
- How did that show up from where you were sitting?
- What could I have done differently?
Resist the urge to explain or defend straight away. Even if there was context the person didn’t have, leading with your justification tells them their observation doesn’t count. You can share that context later, once they feel heard.
Finish by thanking them for raising it. It took courage, and you want them to do it again.
When your team raises a concern
When a team member brings you a concern about the business, a good response has four parts.
Ask questions to understand
Find out what they’re seeing, why they’re raising it now and what impact it’s having on the work. In my case, a few questions would have shown that I had nothing to gain personally. I was worried about the business.
Acknowledge what you’ve heard
Thank them for coming to you and show that you’ve understood the substance. Something as simple as “Thanks for raising this. Tell me more about where you’re seeing it affect delivery” does the job. People need to know their point has landed before they’ll trust what comes next.
Agree on what happens next
Talk through what could change and settle on a clear action plan, even if the first step is small. The person should walk away knowing what will happen and roughly when.
Follow through and report back
This is where good intentions often fall over. I regularly see leaders who are excellent at hearing feedback in the moment, then the follow-up never happens because things get busy and other priorities take over. Sometimes action is taken, but nobody goes back to the person who raised it. From their side, nothing happened and speaking up was a waste of time. That teaches the same lesson my managing director did, only more slowly.
Close the loop, even with a short update: “You raised this last month. Here’s what we’ve done and what’s still in progress.” It takes a couple of minutes and tells the person their input made a difference.
When the answer is no
Sometimes you’ll hear feedback you disagree with, or a request you can’t act on because of budget, timing or a decision that sits above you. This is where many leaders go quiet and hope the issue fades.
Be honest instead. Silence is far worse than a clear no. Share the decision and the reasoning behind it: “I know this may not be what you were hoping to hear. Here’s where things stand and why.” If there’s an alternative worth exploring, explore it together.
Telling someone something they don’t want to hear is uncomfortable. Avoiding difficult decisions makes things harder in the long run, for you, for the person who raised it and for trust across your team.
Leadership is an ongoing practice
Would you choose a doctor who finished their medical degree and never trained again? Most of us wouldn’t, and in Australia we don’t have to. Since January 2023, the Medical Board of Australia has required practising doctors to complete at least 50 hours of continuing professional development every year, with at least half of those hours spent reviewing their own performance and measuring outcomes (Medical Board of Australia). Seeking feedback on their own practice is part of staying registered.
Leadership deserves the same approach. A course is a valuable starting point, though it isn’t the finish line. Strong leaders keep developing through reflection, observation, reading, conversations and learning from their mistakes. Receiving feedback well is one of the most practical places to start, because every conversation with your team gives you a chance to practise.
Build the skill with the right support
If you’d like to strengthen how you and your leaders handle feedback, I can help. Leadership training gives your managers practical tools they can use straight away, and leadership mentoring supports them to put those tools into practice over time, with someone in their corner as real situations come up.