Growing from feedback: a two-way learning framework for leaders

Executive overview

Most feedback models assume one person holds a truth the other person lacks. This is a flawed premise. Feedback is a system — it only works when it flows both ways.

Jennifer Garvey Berger offers a four-step framework: separate data from interpretation, get curious about your own reaction, examine the relationship context, and build solutions together. Each step shifts feedback from a performance event into a genuine learning loop.

The best feedback conversations aren't about fixing someone else — they're about learning things you couldn't see alone.

Separating data from interpretation

• Most distress comes from the story we made up about an event, not the event itself
• The key question: "What actually happened — and what story am I adding to it?"
• The story feels like truth until you consciously separate it
• Remembering to ask the question is the hardest part; without it, the story wins
• No statute of limitations — the separation can happen years after the event
• Emotion is allowed; what matters is eventually returning to the distinction

Getting curious about your own reaction

• Reactivity is data — anger, hurt, and fear reveal something about you, not just the other person
• The automatic assumption is "you did that to me"; the more useful question is "why did this catch fire in me?"
• Leaders rub against other people constantly — this makes leadership a high-frequency growth opportunity
• Examining the reaction before talking to the other person produces learning without any conversation at all

Examining the relationship context

• Strong reactions arise in relationships, not in isolation — both parties create the conditions
• Ask: Is this a pattern in this relationship? Am I feeling ignored here — or do we both ignore each other?
• Understanding the relational context changes what a "solution" even looks like

Talking it out: description over judgment

• Defensiveness is a response to judgment — remove the judgment and you remove most of the defensiveness
• Replace judgment with description: "I noticed this thing that happened between us" rather than "you did X"
• A useful opening: "Something's been on my mind about our interaction last week. I'd love to hear your perspective and share mine. Are you up for that conversation?"
• This opener does two things: it surfaces the topic and gets explicit consent to have the conversation
• Both parties become accountable for listening — that's the shared promise
• "I'm really interested in what this looks like from your perspective" — but only say it if you mean it
• Curiosity evaporates when you're triggered; getting leaders back to genuine curiosity is most of the coaching work

Listening to a messy response

• The other person probably hasn't prepared — expect defensiveness, anger, fear, and tangled stories
• Treat their response as yarn to untangle: separate their event, their reaction, and their interpretation
• It's fine to slow down: "That's a lot — let me make sure I understand what I'm hearing"
• If you're trying to get in and out fast, you'll miss everything
• The conversation is better than any workshop you could pay for — it's live data about you, the other person, and the system you're both inside

Building solutions together

• Unilateral solutions are guesses — you don't know why the other person is doing what they're doing
• A missed-deadline conversation conducted alone might miss: unclear requests, ambiguous timelines, seven competing demands, or a process failure in the organisation
• A joint solution accounts for what both people are contributing to the situation
• The output isn't just a fix — it's a deeper relationship with more trust and a lower barrier for the next hard conversation

What Garvey Berger changed her mind on

• She used to think mastery would make feedback feel easy; she no longer believes that
• It stays hard — you just get more natural at it
• The upside is bigger than she originally thought: leaders operating on stale stories about people or teams are making worse decisions than they realise
• Being in the flow of feedback — giving, receiving, reflecting, and responding — is the core move of personal development and effective leadership