“The higher you rise, the less honest feedback you receive — and the more you need it.”
There is a quiet irony at the top of most organisations. The people who need honest feedback the most — senior leaders with significant influence over culture, decisions, and people — are precisely the ones who receive it least. Not because no one sees their blind spots. Everyone does. But because the cost of naming them, in most professional environments, feels too high.
I have watched talented, accomplished leaders operate for years inside a feedback vacuum of their own making — not through malice, but through the gradual accumulation of small signals that said: don’t push back here. Feedback for self-improvement is not the same as performance feedback. It requires trust, psychological safety, and a leader who has actively made it clear that honesty is welcome. Building that environment is not someone else’s job. It is yours.
The leadership question worth asking
When did someone last tell you something about yourself that was difficult to hear — and were you glad they did?
What feedback have you been avoiding — or making it hard for others to give you?
Mustafa Kamal