Feedback Culture Is a Lie (And Everyone Knows It)
Let’s not waste time. You don’t have a feedback culture.
You have a “don’t get fired” culture.
You have a “smile during the Zoom call and then vent in Slack” culture.
You have a “we put Radical Candor in our onboarding doc but we actually punish people for speaking up” culture.
Feedback culture? Cute.
Your team doesn’t need another values slide. They need a system that doesn’t make their nervous systems short-circuit every time someone says, ‘Can I give you some feedback?’
Let me guess:
You say “We welcome open, honest dialogue.” But people still spend 30 minutes rehearsing a 2-sentence opinion.
And your highest-paid person in the room never gets challenged.
And the person who did speak up in last quarter’s retro now looks like they’ve been sent to the shadow realm.
Here’s why it happens
Let’s talk biology, because trust falls aren’t going to fix this.
Humans are wired to avoid social pain. Your brain treats psychological threat the same way it treats physical threat.
You think your team is being “quiet” because they’re disengaged? No. They’re just protecting themselves.
Fight, flight, freeze.
Except in the workplace it looks like:
Smiling while silently panicking
Not replying to that “please share your thoughts” thread
Watering down every comment until it’s basically soup
So what do we do? Burn it all down? (Tempting, but no.)
No. You rebuild feedback as a system.
1. Stop asking for “feedback.” It’s a cursed word.
Instead, ask:
“What’s one thing I did this week that made your job harder?”
“What’s something I keep doing that you think is actually hurting the team?”
Train your people to give DATA, not drama. Let feedback be small, frequent, and boring until it becomes normal.
2. Ritualize it or forget it
You want feedback to be a habit?
Cool. Then make it a part of your calendar. Literally.
End every team sync with “1 up, 1 tweak”
Run “Feedback Fridays” where people anonymously write what’s helping/hurting execution
Add “Give one piece of feedback” as a recurring line in your OKRs. (No, I’m not kidding.)
3. Change what happens after the feedback
This is the killer. If someone gives honest input and then:
Nothing changes
Or they get left out of the next project
Or you say “Thanks, noted” and ghost them
…then it’s over. Game’s done. No one will ever speak up again.
Reward the risk. Even if the feedback is messy. Especially if it is.
If you’ve made it this far: you probably already know you’ve got a problem
Good. Admitting it is the first step. Now here’s your 3-step homework (of course it is):
Identify one place in your team where truth is hiding
Design a repeatable ritual to bring it out
Make damn sure no one gets punished for telling it
Feedback culture isn’t “being nice.” It’s being operationally brave. And if your team isn’t telling you the truth, they’re telling someone else.
Their friends. Or Glassdoor.
