Leadership and People Management: Foundations to Practice · Communication and Feedback
Building a Two-Way Feedback Culture
A feedback culture that only flows downward from leader to team member is missing half of what genuinely improves a leader's own effectiveness, and building a genuine two-way flow requires deliberate, sustained effort from the leader specifically.
Team members generally face a real, structural disincentive to give their leader honest feedback, since a leader typically holds some influence over that person's compensation, opportunities, or ongoing working relationship, making candid upward feedback feel genuinely riskier than downward feedback ever feels for the leader delivering it. This asymmetry means a leader cannot simply assume that an absence of complaints reflects an absence of real, unspoken concerns.
- Team members face a structural disincentive to give honest upward feedback, since a leader typically holds influence over their compensation and opportunities.
- Actively soliciting specific upward feedback, rather than passively waiting for it, is necessary to overcome this structural disincentive.
- How a leader responds to the first few instances of upward feedback directly determines whether that feedback continues flowing or dries up.
- A leader who visibly receives feedback gracefully models the behavior they want the rest of the team to practice with each other.