Key Takeaways
- Giving and receiving feedback is a core leadership skill. L&D teams can help managers build confidence by embedding feedback practice into leadership development programs rather than treating it as an occasional performance review activity.
- Organizations should normalize feedback through frequent, low-stakes conversations. Making feedback a regular part of day-to-day work helps reduce anxiety and create a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
- Experiential learning helps leaders develop stronger feedback skills. Role-playing, simulations and other realistic practice opportunities give managers a safe environment to refine their approach before applying it on the job.
- As AI becomes more integrated into the workplace, leaders must provide the human judgment technology cannot. Clear expectations, thoughtful coaching and meaningful performance feedback remain essential responsibilities that AI cannot replace.
The practice of giving and receiving feedback has always been slightly unnerving. But today, face-to-face communication being replaced by screens, asynchronous tools and artificial intelligence (AI) is making feedback even more fragile.
Only 1 in 5 Gen Z professionals say they regularly receive feedback from their managers. Managers see the gap, too. In a recent report from Knopman, 53% say their teams struggle to take feedback in the moment, and 41% blame lack of time for not coaching more. This tells us there is a massive disconnect in what professionals need, what managers expect and what’s being communicated between them.
Why Managers Avoid Providing Feedback
Feedback is one of the few tools leaders have that reliably compounds performance over time. While most professionals would agree that feedback matters, far fewer connect it directly to outcomes for the person receiving it, the leader giving it, and the business that’s counting on both to perform.
Coaching and feedback tend to get filed solely under “development” — a good, somewhat obligatory practice for your team and a box to check before review season. However, that framing vastly undersells what is at stake. When built as a discipline and ingrained in company culture, it’s one of the most powerful levers an organization has for growth, capacity and resilience.
How to Build the Feedback Skill
How do organizations normalize giving and receiving feedback, rather than making it a practice that only happens when they’re required to do so?
It can feel daunting to build new habits at the exact moment AI is reshaping how teams are working and interacting with one another. Yet, these periods of transformation are a perfect time to reimagine how things are done across every part of an organization, especially how people are developed.
Organizations can strengthen feedback skills by creating opportunities for managers and employees to practice them in realistic, low-risk environments. Rather than relying solely on courses or lectures, experiential learning approaches encourage participants to apply feedback techniques during role-plays, simulations or other high-stakes workplace scenarios. Repeated practice paired with timely coaching helps build confidence and makes it more likely that employees will use these skills on the job.
Highwire has found that feedback is one of the most avoided management skills because it is uncomfortable and many managers have never had the opportunity to practice delivering it effectively. In the moment, staying quiet can feel safer than risking a conversation that does not go as planned.
5 Tips for Building a Culture of Continuous Feedback
How do teams improve how they’re giving and receiving feedback? The good news is this doesn’t require a major culture overhaul. It requires practice, consistency and small, intentional steps.
Making feedback a daily habit rather than a quarterly, formal event will make it feel more natural. Slowly, it stops feeling like a big conversation and starts feeling like a normal one.
Here are five strategies L&D teams can incorporate into leadership development programs:
1. Name the shift: Feedback lands differently when expected. Tell your team you’re going to start giving more regular, in-the-moment feedback and why. Also, encourage them to share their feedback as well. That open communication turns feedback from something that happens to someone into a practice they feel part of.
2. Steady the room: A strong reaction to difficult feedback is normal, but that doesn’t mean the conversation went wrong. Say what needs to be said clearly, then hold steady. Don’t rush to soften the feedback, and don’t take the reaction personally. Giving someone a moment to react is often what allows them to hear you.
3. Guide the thinking: Once someone is ready to hear your feedback, the most useful thing a leader can offer is clarity on what “good” looks like. That standard matters especially now in an environment where people are working with AI agents, not just each other. The clearer leaders are about what good work looks like, the better they can equip employees to use AI effectively while ensuring human judgment remains central to the work. Moreover, distinctly human judgment stays part of the work.
4. Align on what’s next: The conversation should not end without a clear next step — ideally one the person can conclude, suggest and implement themselves. Ask what they will do differently or what support they need and agree on it together. That shared ownership is what turns one hard conversation into a cycle people trust.
5. Recognize what’s working: Feedback is not only about corrections. Notice progress, big and small, and call it out. Reinforce what’s working and offer small course corrections along the way. A team that only hears from you when something’s wrong will start to avoid you, not lean into you.
Ultimately, AI can draft an email, summarize a meeting and even adapt to a specific tone. But it can’t tell you, honestly, how you’re performing. That still falls on leaders.
