Leadership
Give the Positive Feedback
Why is directly giving positive feedback so weird, and what can we do about it?
June 29, 2026
Why is directly giving positive feedback so weird, and what can we do about it?
Shifting from busy to effective requires deliberate choices.
Managers play a critical role in whether or not development sticks.
There is a cognitive and organisational cost to overloading leaders with micro-decisions.
The clarity that enables good performance also makes gaps visible, and not everyone wants that.
Leadership is its own set of skills, not just natural common sense. You need a shared framework and toolkit in place to make it work.
Excessive escalation is feedback that something isn’t working.
Identity is heavily influenced by one’s social environment and interaction. What does this mean for work?
I’m asking you to genuinely think about this. It’s very easy to read a thinkpiece about workplace dynamics and then move on, gently reassured that you’re one of the good ones, rather than put work in to make change that lasts.
At several times during our longer leadership development programs, we ask participants to present on the tasks they’ve undertaken as part of the programming.