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In this solo episode of Do Good to Lead Well, Craig Dowden explores why senior leaders are the least likely to receive the honest feedback they need most. Drawing on a landmark Fast Company article by Amy Edmondson and Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Craig shares four practical strategies including asking for disconfirming data, separating ingestion from reaction, and the Alan Mulally approach to turning radical transparency into a competitive advantage.
FAQ
Q: Why do senior leaders get less feedback?
A: Power dynamics and organizational hierarchy make it risky for employees to give honest feedback to those who influence their careers. Senior leaders often receive only silence or praise as a result.
Q: What is disconfirming data in leadership feedback?
A: Disconfirming data is specific, targeted feedback that challenges a leader's assumptions about their own performance, requested through precise questions rather than broad impressions.
Q: How did Alan Mulally use feedback to turn around Ford?
A: Mulally introduced a color-coded project review system and publicly celebrated the first executive who reported a problem (a "red"), signaling that transparency was valued. This psychological safety sparked one of the most celebrated corporate turnarounds in modern business history.
The Higher You Climb, the Less You Hear
There is a quiet irony at the top of most organizations. The more authority you have, the less honest feedback you receive.
Because the people around you have done the math. They know you influence their compensation, their career path, their daily reality. So when you ask "how am I doing?", most people do the sensible thing and tell you what they think you want to hear.
Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Amy Edmondson tackled this directly in a Fast Company piece published December 2025, titled "The More Senior You Are, the Less Feedback You Get. And That's a Problem."
This is a structural culture with real consequences for performance, self-awareness, and organizational health.
According to Zenger Folkman, feedback is "information that we provide someone about their performance, their behavior or actions in the hope or desire that will lead to positive change." That definition matters because it frames feedback as a gift, not a threat. The challenge is creating the conditions where that gift actually gets delivered honestly.
Surveys back this up, the vast majority of people say they want feedback. The hesitation is about whether receiving it will be a painful or career-limiting experience.
Why the Feedback Vacuum Forms at the Top
Two forces create this problem and they reinforce each other.
The first is power dynamics. When you have the authority to shape someone's career, their raises, and their promotions, people will naturally self-censor. This is not a character flaw. It is a rational response to a real risk. Expecting blunt honesty from direct reports simply because you asked for it is an unfair assumption.
The second is organizational structure. Many organizations have an unspoken rule, leadership wins, everyone else defers. Hierarchy creates pressure to filter information upward. By the time feedback reaches a senior executive, it has often been softened, reframed, or dropped entirely.
The result is a feedback vacuum. And the leaders who operate inside it often do not know it exists.
Chamorro-Premuzic and Edmondson identify a specific pattern. The most common feedback senior leaders receive is either silence or praise. Both leave a person flying blind. Without accurate information about the impact of your words and behaviors, you cannot improve, regardless of how motivated you are.
Four Strategies That Actually Break Through the Feedback Wall
Here is what the research and Craig's coaching experience suggest actually works.
1. Ask for disconfirming data, not general impressions
Broad questions like "how am I doing as a leader?" feel generous but rarely produce useful answers. They give people too much room to deflect.
Specific questions are harder to sidestep. Try these:
- "What is one decision I made recently that slowed the team down?"
- "When I get excited in meetings, I tend to talk over people. Have you noticed that recently?"
- "During our last project, when did my involvement feel like it got in the way?"
These questions do two things at once. They ask for something concrete, and they signal that you already have some awareness of your own gaps. That signal lowers the perceived risk for the other person to be honest.
Craig uses this regularly with the executives he coaches. When a leader identifies a specific challenge area, such as interrupting people when they get passionate, turning that into a direct question gives the other person permission to confirm what they may have already noticed.
2. Separate ingestion from reaction
When feedback stings, the worst thing you can do is respond immediately. A visible reaction, whether defensiveness, visible upset, or dismissal, sends a clear message to everyone watching, this person does not actually want the truth.
The script Chamorro-Premuzic and Edmondson recommend is simple. "Thank you. I won't respond right now so I can think about what you've said. I'll come back to you." Then follow through.
Craig adds a layer from the work of Chris Voss, former FBI lead international kidnapping negotiator and bestselling author of Never Split the Difference. Voss's research on emotional labeling shows that naming an emotion reduces its intensity and builds trust. So if feedback lands hard, acknowledge it out loud: "As you can probably tell from my reaction, that was difficult to hear. I'm grateful you shared it. I will follow up."
That single move, naming the reaction rather than suppressing or acting on it, increases the likelihood people will come back with honest feedback in the future.
3. Look for patterns, not one quote
When you receive a 360 feedback report or any kind of structured feedback, there is a very human temptation to zoom in on the one comment that bothers you most and either dismiss it or fixate on who said it.
Neither helps.
Craig sees this constantly in his coaching practice. Leaders try to identify the source of a difficult comment, build a case against it, or debate a single data point. The more productive move is to step back and ask, what themes show up repeatedly, across multiple people, and in multiple contexts?
Think of it like movie reviews. One person calls a film the best of the year. Another calls it unwatchable. To understand the actual quality, you look at the pattern across many reviews, not the outlier. Your leadership is the same.
4. Act on one small piece of feedback and say so publicly
This is the most underused strategy and possibly the most powerful one.
When you receive feedback, most people thank the giver and quietly move on. What actually changes the feedback culture around you is making one specific, visible behavioral change and announcing it:
"Based on the feedback I received, I'm going to stop doing X and start doing Y."
Here is why this works on multiple levels:
- It confirms to the feedback giver that their input was heard and taken seriously.
- It creates public accountability, making the change more likely to stick.
- It signals to everyone watching that feedback in this environment is safe and valued.
- It models the exact behavior you want to see across your team and organization.
The Alan Mulally Lesson: Red Lights Are Gems
"Those red light data points, those critical comments that we receive. They are the pathway to our future greatness." -- Craig Dowden
Craig closes the episode with one of the most instructive examples in modern business leadership, Alan Mulally's turnaround of Ford Motor Company.
When Mulally became Ford's CEO in 2006, the company was losing billions and had a culture of secrecy. He introduced a color-coded business plan review, green for on track, yellow for emerging issues, red for serious problems.
In the first several meetings, every single update was green. In a company hemorrhaging money.
Mulally called it out. And then something unexpected happened. One executive had the courage to put a red on their project.
Everyone at the table assumed that executive was finished. Mulally applauded them. He called it exactly the kind of transparency needed to turn things around and moved that executive closer to him in future meetings.
The message landed. Slowly, more reds appeared. And with those reds, the leadership team could finally see what was actually happening and act on it. Ford became profitable in 2009, engineering one of the most celebrated corporate turnarounds in history, without a government bailout.
What made it possible was not strategy alone. It was psychological safety, built deliberately by a leader who rewarded honesty instead of punishing it.
The most important step any leader can take is to publicly and genuinely celebrate the people who give them hard truths. Not just tolerate them. Celebrate them. Make it part of how you operate. Because when the culture shifts to valuing red lights, the whole organization can finally see what is real and do something about it.
Building a Feedback Culture That Actually Works for You
The feedback vacuum at the top is real. But it is solvable.
You do not need a formal survey or a new initiative. You can start this week by asking one specific question to one person on your team and committing to a visible response to whatever you hear.
The leaders who get this right are not the ones with the thickest skin. They are the ones who have made it genuinely safe to tell them the truth.
Ready to take fostering safe feedback to the next level?
- To get practical tools and actionable tips that will jumpstart your journey, download The Getting Great Feedback Kick Starter Booklet here.
- Join the newsletter to be notified when a new episode is ready for you to listen and get every Kick Starter Booklet for all future episodes.
- And if you’re looking to elevate your entire C-Suite leadership team, learn how Craig Dowden can help your leaders perform at their highest-level visit https://www.craigdowden.com/executive-mastermind
- For a deeper dive, listen to the full-length episode of the Do Good to Lead Well podcast featuring Craig Dowden:
Did you like this article on fostering safe feedback? Does it help you become a better leader? Then check out these articles to help hone those skills even further:
- Actually Get Results: How to Be Yourself at Work and Actually Get Results: Lessons from Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer at VaynerX
- Stop Being Overlooked: How to Build Unforgettable Presence: Proven Strategies for Introverts, Leaders, and Anyone Who Wants to Stop Being Overlooked with Lorraine K. Lee
- Stop Playing It Safe: How to Stop Playing It Safe and Lead at Your Full Potential: Insights from Dianna Fioravanti
- Lead with Authentic Integrity: How to Lead with Authentic Integrity: Lessons from a Financial Markets CEO with Laura Paglia
- Ethical Leadership: The Integrity Gap: How Good People Make Bad Decisions (And How to Prevent It) with Tom Hardin
- Creating Inclusive Workplaces: Beyond DEI: The Practical Fairness Framework for Creating Inclusive Workplaces That Actually Work with Lily Zheng
- Psychological Safety and Belonging: Building Emotionally Intelligent Teams: The Science-Backed Framework for Psychological Safety and Belonging with Vanessa Druskat
- Make Better Decisions: How to Make Better Decisions When Everything Feels Uncertain
- Anxiety: Mastering Social Anxiety: Evidence-Based Strategies for Leaders and Professionals
- Build Resilient Organizations: Culture Design: How to Build Resilient Organizations with Intentional Values
- Unlearning Silence: What to do When Your Best People Are Not Speaking Up with Elaine Lin Hering
- Why Feeling for Others Is Making Your Leadership Less Effective: The Empathy Paradox
Craig Dowden
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