What’s the Problem?
Dear Coach,
I’m a VP at a Fortune 100 company and have always prided myself on being an empathic, inclusive leader.
However, giving direct feedback has always been a challenge for me, and over the past few years, I’ve especially struggled to give feedback to women and employees of color. As a white male who is relatively tuned in to the social issues of our time, I find it hard to be direct and clear with people who have often gotten the short end of the stick-, so I end up backpedaling and making it about me and my leadership instead of them and their performance.
The truth is, I’m afraid of my blind spots and unconscious bias, and I fear that I’ll say the wrong thing or say it the wrong way and end up with an HR issue on my hands.
While I know what I’m doing is not in service to anybody, I also know I’m not alone, as I’ve talked about this with some of my other white, male colleagues. However, I’m concerned that I’m letting down the company and not helping my employees as best as I can.
I need help!
Sincerely,
Feedback Flop

What Do We Think?
Dear Feedback Flop,
We understand. While greater awareness of equity and inclusion has improved workplaces (and society), it has also created a sense of over-caution and lack of authenticity, depriving people of much-needed feedback and constraining your and their ability to lead effectively.
So, let’s discuss.
First, your question tells us that:
- You’re trying to do the right thing; you’re sensitive to social issues and injustice, which is great.
- You call yourself very empathic, which is a good leadership quality, but it might also mean you’re overly sensitive—prone to avoiding conflict or being a people pleaser.
So, exactly how is your problem a power problem? We think:
- You don’t trust your perceptions or your ability to communicate them effectively and deal with whatever fallout there is.
- This lack of belief in your perceptions is getting in the way of your positional power and its responsibilities.
- You’re seeing your employees through a social identity lens but making that more important than professional development.
- Your presumption that women and employees of color will see things through the same social identity lens as you can end up coming across as patronizing; it’s one of the big stumbling blocks of DEI efforts.
What’s the Solution?
Here’s a hard truth: in a leadership role, you will make people unhappy. Tough feedback isn’t easy for anyone.
You must get comfortable with that, or at the very least, simply expect that it will happen repeatedly in your career, with all your employees and coworkers, regardless of their social identities. The sooner you can embrace that reality, the easier it will be to find a path forward.
Here are a couple of things to ponder to help get your mind right:
- You are in a leadership role because of your ability to grow people, so it’s legitimate—and vital—for you to offer feedback.
- Consider broadening your concept of empathy. Offering constructive or even difficult feedback is truly in the service of the other; it’s an act of empathy and love.
Of course, it’s important to be aware of biases that can creep up, but you also need to get back to a place of trusting your perceptions of people’s professional performance, separate from their social identity.
Consider taking these steps that might help you bring it back to this focus:
- Set the context for feedback conversations in terms of the employee’s professional goals and what they’re trying to accomplish.
- Write down your feedback before having the conversation. List out the expectations for the person’s role and how they’re doing meeting those expectations.
- Rehearse the conversation and share it a few times with a colleague who knows the individual who will be on the receiving end. Get grounded in your feedback and the importance of it so you don’t lose what you have to say in the moment.
- During the meeting, clarify the expectations of the role (which you’ve already written out and practiced), and first ask them how they think they’re fulfilling those expectations before sharing how you see it.
Consistent feedback has been proven critical to performance, as it provides employees with an opportunity to correct behavior on a regular basis and avoid doing something career-limiting.
So, don’t let your fear of upsetting people hinder your employee’s career growth; they need you, and you’ve got this! We’re all learning and evolving together.