#416: Why Your Feedback Isn't Landing, and How to Fix It

Now, here's what's interesting, and we've all had this happen, right? Two people can receive the exact same feedback, but hang on, leaders, you're gonna get two completely different conversations out of that, where one leans in and is attacking it and wants to improve, the other just completely shuts down.

And so the difference isn't their personalities.

It's really the emotion that stirs up in them that that feedback triggered something for them.

So today, we're going to unpack the research on emotion-driven learning and then give you listeners a practical way to make sure that that feedback is landing as you intended it, which I'm super excited about 'cause I think Perry did this for me.

Yeah.

It's g- gonna help us both, I believe.

Great.

Well, tha- uh, and also thanks to our friend Michael Bryant, who brought this-

Oh, yes

... uh, to this-

Longtime executive facilitator and coach for us.

Yep, and he brought this, uh-

Thank you for-

... to my attention, and I really appreciate it.

So it's based on a Harvard Business Review article from July 2026.

Uh, the title of that article is "Great Leaders Know Which Emotions Their Feedback Will Trigger," and, uh, it's by, um, Ben Zhao, Fernando Oliveira, and Amy Edmondson.

I think you'd enjoy it if you find a copy of that.

Yeah.

But the, uh, in the article, the authors, they, it's got some great insights.

They tell us a little bit of a story of a newly promoted VP who gives, uh, the same feedback to two different people, and the exact same feedback, uh, about a missed deadline.

And he says one employee leans in, asks good questions, and, uh, comes back days later with stronger work.

While the other pulls back, goes quiet in meetings, avoids, uh, leading similar projects, and gets defensive when they're challenged.

And you think of it as the same feedback.

Yeah.

But he said, um, most leaders would chalk this up to personality.