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 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. There’s a reason.

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. Only one actually worked.

Leaders who shared feedback they’d already received saw a significant increase in team psychological safety one year later. 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 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.

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🔑 Asking for feedback initiates vulnerability. Sharing feedback normalizes it. 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.

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Why this changes how psychological safety actually gets built

Westover (2024) identified five strategies for building psychological safety and modeling vulnerability was number one. The Coutifaris and Grant research adds a critical detail: the type of vulnerability matters. 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. That’s the shift.

I’ve tested this myself. 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.

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The shift in practice

Share one piece of feedback you’ve received in your next team meeting. Not a humblebrag disguised as feedback, but something real 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.

Then follow up publicly on your progress a month later. “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. Sharing feedback once is a gesture. Returning to it is a practice.

When someone gives you feedback, tell them what you did with it. “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.

And stop asking “any feedback?” in group settings. It almost never works. Go to people individually with “I’m trying to get better at X. What are you seeing?” Specific asks in private get real answers. Broad asks in public get silence.

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Psychological safety doesn’t come from saying the right words but from doing the harder 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.

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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.”

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Part of the Lead Humanly series on leadhuman.ai.