Why leaders struggle with negative feedback

Years of psychological research show that leadership—the ability to coordinate collective human activity to turn a group of people into a high-performing team or unit—can be effective only if leaders are capable of providing people with constructive feedback. This means telling them what they need to hear to improve their performance, especially when it is not what they want to hear to boost their egos. In fact, in a world that champions fake positive feedback and is increasingly optimized for self-belief and confidence rather than self-knowledge and competence, the need to provide people with a reality check and align their self-views with their actual capabilities has become a fundamental skill for managers and leaders. Unfortunately, most people find it hard not just to give but also receive negative feedback; managers and leaders are no exception. Perhaps managers are right to be nervous: One of the largest meta-analyses ever conducted on feedback found that although it improves performance on average, more than one-third of feedback interventions actually lower performance. The reasons are rooted in a mix of deep psychological insecurities (compared to other species in the an…