Feedback Isn’t Broken. Your Team Just Doesn’t Know What “Good” Looks Like.

By the end of Q1, a familiar frustration shows up in leadership conversations.

“We give feedback, but nothing really changes.”
“They keep missing the mark.”
“I feel like I’m repeating myself.”

Most leaders assume this is a feedback problem. It rarely is.

What I see, across companies and industries, is something simpler and harder to admit: people are working hard without a shared definition of what GOOD actually looks like.

When expectations are vague, feedback has nothing to land on.

The real issue hiding underneath feedback

Feedback is often treated like a corrective tool. Something you use when performance dips or mistakes repeat.

But feedback only works when there’s already clarity.

Clarity about:

• What matters most in this role

• How decisions are made

• What “strong” performance actually looks like right now, not two years ago

• Where judgment is expected versus strict execution

Without that, feedback becomes noise. Or worse, it becomes personal.

People don’t resist feedback because they’re fragile. They resist it because they’re guessing.

What leaders assume vs. what teams experience

Many leaders believe they’ve been clear because they’ve:

• Explained something once

• Shared a document

• Mentioned it in a meeting

• Modeled it themselves

But clarity isn’t about what you said. It’s about what people can reliably act on without checking back with you.

When clarity is missing, teams compensate by:

• Over-preparing

• Over-communicating

• Playing it safe

• Waiting for direction that never quite comes

From the outside, it looks like a motivation issue or a capability gap. Inside the team, it feels like constant low-grade anxiety.

Why feedback starts to feel exhausting

This is the part leaders rarely say out loud.

Feedback becomes tiring when you’re using it to solve problems that clarity should have handled upfront.

You end up correcting instead of calibrating.
Reacting instead of reinforcing.
Repeating yourself and wondering why nothing sticks.

At that point, feedback starts to feel heavy. People brace for it. Leaders delay it. Trust quietly erodes.

Not because anyone has bad intentions. Because the system is doing too much work through conversation instead of structure.

What actually helps

The teams that use feedback well don’t give more of it. They give clearer context.

They spend time early answering questions like:

• What does success look like in this season?

• Where do you want consistency?

• What decisions should never come back to me?

• What does “good enough” actually look like here?

Once those answers exist, feedback gets lighter. Shorter. More useful.

It stops being about personality and starts being about alignment.

A simple test for leaders

If you’re feeling frustrated with feedback right now, ask yourself this:

Could someone on my team explain what “strong performance” looks like in their role without using my words?

If the answer is no, feedback isn’t the lever to pull next.

Clarity is.

And when clarity comes first, feedback stops feeling like criticism and starts feeling like guidance.