Stop Asking for Feedback. Start Sharing It.
Every leadership book tells you the same thing: be vulnerable, ask your team for feedback, and create psychological safety. So you stand up in a meeting and say, “I want honest feedback. Tell me what I can do better,” and your team stares at you and maybe someone offers something vague and safe and then everyone moves on. You did the thing the books told you to do and it didn’t work. Here’s why.
The Problem with Asking
Coutifaris & Grant (2021) ran a longitudinal field experiment published in Organization Science that upended a lot of what we thought about feedback and psychological safety. They tested two leader behaviors: feedback seeking (asking your team for input on your performance) and feedback sharing (openly discussing criticism you’ve already received). Both sound vulnerable and both signal openness but only one actually worked.
Leaders who shared feedback they’d already received saw a significant increase in team psychological safety one year later while leaders who asked for feedback did not. The researchers dug into why: when leaders asked for feedback, it created an initial moment of vulnerability that dissolved quickly because leaders got defensive and didn’t act on what they heard and team members noticed and stopped offering honest input. When leaders shared feedback (“My last 360 said I tend to dominate discussions. I’m working on it.”), something different happened: the vulnerability stuck and it normalized the idea that everyone has things to work on and team members started reciprocating and the door opened for more actionable, ongoing feedback conversations.
🔑 Asking for feedback initiates vulnerability. Sharing feedback normalizes it. The difference matters. Your team doesn’t need to see you ask for help. They need to see you openly working on something. That’s what makes it safe for them to do the same.
Why This Changes Everything About Psychological Safety
Westover (2024) identified five strategies for building psychological safety and modeling vulnerability was number one, but the Coutifaris and Grant research adds a critical detail: the type of vulnerability matters because asking “how am I doing?” feels vulnerable to you while sharing “here’s what people have told me I need to work on” feels vulnerable to your team and that’s the shift.
I’ve tested this myself, and in a workshop last year I shared specific feedback I’d received about talking too fast during presentations and the room visibly relaxed and people started sharing their own challenges not because I asked them to but because I went first with something real.
Four Things to Try This Month
Share one piece of feedback you’ve received in your next team meeting. Not a humblebrag disguised as feedback but something real that you’re actually working on like “My manager told me I need to delegate more. She’s right. I’m working on it.” Watch what happens to the room.
Follow up publicly on your progress. A month later, bring it up again with “Remember when I said I was working on delegating? Here’s what I’ve tried. Here’s what’s still hard.” This is what Coutifaris and Grant found made the difference because sharing feedback once is a gesture but returning to it is a practice.
When someone gives you feedback, tell them what you did with it. Close the loop by saying “Last month you told me the project timelines were too tight. I adjusted the Q2 schedule and built in buffer weeks. Thank you for saying something.” This signals that speaking up has consequences, good ones.
Stop asking “any feedback?” in group settings. It almost never works, but instead go to people individually with “I’m trying to get better at X. What are you seeing?” because specific asks in private get honest answers while broad asks in public get silence.
Psychological safety doesn’t come from saying the right words but from doing the uncomfortable thing repeatedly and showing your team that nothing bad happened. Sharing feedback you’ve received is one of the simplest and most powerful ways to start.
Sources:
- Coutifaris & Grant (2021) — “Taking Your Team Behind the Curtain: The Effects of Leader Feedback Sharing,” Organization Science.
- Westover (2024) — “How to Create and Maintain Psychological Safety to Ignite Innovation.”
Part of the Lead Humanly series on leadhuman.ai.
Jay Vergara is an L&D strategist and cross-cultural communication specialist based in Tokyo. He writes about leadership, learning, and building with AI at leadhuman.ai and on LinkedIn.
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