The more senior you are, the less feedback you get (and that’s a problem)

Everybody loves the idea of feedback, defined broadly as information provided to someone about their performance, behavior, or actions. This makes a great deal of sense. Indeed, many studies have consistently shown that feedback from others plays an important role in helping us understand who we are , including how we differ from others . It is vital for improving managers’ and leaders’ performance and for helping people evolve and develop , both professionally and personally. Conversely, being feedback-deprived, or having a tendency to ignore it, increases the gap between how good you think you are, and how good you actually are—at times, to painfully delusional levels . And yet, people often fail to accept and internalize feedback. This is particularly true when the feedback is misaligned with how we view ourselves or at odds with what we think about the situation. Contributing to this failure is often the poor quality of the feedback, due to factors ranging from sender expertise and intention to the politics and bias of subjective character evaluations. Unsurprisingly, meta-analytic evidence suggests that 1/3 of feedback interventions are ineffective, and another 1/3 actually worsen recipients’ performance. Feedback, in short, has a poor track record. And especially poor for more senior leaders. High-quality feedback is thus particularly scarce where it is needed the most—for those whose decisions and actions have the most far-reaching impact: in senior leadership . Why is this the case? The reasons First, when someone is powerful, others will go to great lengths to avoid upsetting or confronting that person, aware (consciously and not) that leaders have some power over their future, which explains why it is far more common for leaders to hear praise and compliments from subordinates than constructive criticism. A darkly comic illustration appears in Armando Ianucci’s movie The Death of Stalin . When Stalin collapses, his inner circle hesitates, panics, and second-guesses itself, terrified of acting without explicit permission. No one dares to take responsibility, question assumptions, or deliver unwelcome truths. The satire works precisely because it exaggerates a real dynamic: when power is concentrated and fear is high, feedback disappears, initiative dies, and silence becomes the safest strategy. Second, hierarchical cultures and traditional leadership archetypes conspire against leaders’ ability to create the necessary psychological safety for candor. Unless effort is put into creating these conditions, team members will perceive a negative cost-benefit analysis when it comes to voicing issues—especially with their leader’s decisions or behaviors—versus holding back and staying silent. While this may boost leaders’ egos, fostering self-enhancing and delusional estimates of their own talents—it will severely limit their ability to improve and get better. How can anyone, including a manager or leader, get better if they are unaware of a gap between their self-views and their actual performance? Why would anyone, including a manager or leader, seek to change and evolve if their perception is that everything is fine? Third, when someone seems devoid of self-awareness, to the point of being not just immune to feedback, but almost...

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