Feedback And Leadership: How To Give Developmental Feedback That Drives Growth

Feedback is a crucial aspect of leadership, but it’s only possible when your communication skills are up to par. Unfortunately, many leaders struggle to give feedback in a way that supports development, and instead, it’s rushed, reactive, or rooted in the wrong kind of intention. This can slow down growth for your people and organization alike.

In this article, we’ll explore how developmental feedback strengthens your leadership by building growth into others. We’ll also unpack why leadership feedback is more complex than you might think, how communication underpins every part of the process, and what it really takes to give better feedback as a leader.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Mistakes Leaders Make Giving Developmental Feedback

Picture the scene: you’re between meetings, someone drops the ball, and you give some off-the-cuff feedback in the heat of the moment. It feels necessary at the time, even helpful, but deep down, you know it wasn’t particularly effective.

In Episode 22 of the Stop Managing, Start Leading Podcast, we explore the reality behind these kinds of situations and how the quality of your feedback directly impacts the speed of your team’s development. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we arrive at a simple yet powerful conclusion…

Poor feedback slows progress. Great feedback accelerates it.

The difference between these often lies in how you frame feedback in conversations, which brings us to an essential question: What is effective feedback in leadership, and how do you get it right?

What is The Right Kind of Feedback in Leadership?

Feedback in leadership isn’t about telling people off or pointing fingers. It’s about building the right conditions for growth, which is where the Five Levels of Feedback Model comes into play.

Designed to help you move "up and to the right", a principle we use to show growth and progress, the model shows how feedback can evolve from reactive and ineffective to encouraging and developmental.

For the uninitiated, let’s break down the Five Levels of Feedback Model.

The Five Levels of Feedback Model

As a leader, you should be developing feedback leadership skills that unlock initiative, problem-solving, and confidence across your team. One CEO we worked with in the past captured this perfectly:

“When I stopped telling and started asking better questions, the shift in ownership was instant. People stopped waiting for instructions and started thinking like leaders.”

How do you get there, we hear you ask? The Five Levels of Feedback Model is a great place to start. Here’s what it looks like:

1. Instructing

Welcome to the lowest form of feedback. It’s the act of telling, not teaching, and is usually something like “Just do this” without further explanation. This might feel efficient and essential in the moment, but it fosters a kind of learned helplessness and removes ownership and agency from your team.

2. Saying Nothing

Saying nothing will generally result in a lack of direction or development, and instead, stagnation. It also invites confusion, because when feedback does come, it often starts with the wrong question.

So, saying nothing is slightly better than bad feedback, AKA instructing, but only by the skin of its teeth.  

3. Asking Why

Ineffective leaders will see a mistake and immediately ask “Why”, which usually brings a defensive reaction from the person who made the mistake. They’ll then likely rationalize and justify their ineffective actions, rather than grow and learn from them.

4. Presumptive Feedback

We’re getting there! This is where you guide your team to explore alternative approaches without assigning blame.

Remember the LEGO story? It’s basically that, where you seek better ideas rather than homing in on the bad ones, and where you trust your people and give them ownership instead of dishing out blame. This means suggesting or implying they did something in a particular way in order to plant a new idea or behavior in their mind. For example, asking, “When you had a coaching session with Theresa about it, what was the outcome?” This assumes they had a coaching session, which you know would have been beneficial, even though you suspect they maybe didn’t suggest one. By doing this, you subtly communicate that having the coaching session with Theresa was likely the best approach - without directly instructing them or telling them to do so, of course.

5. Developmental Feedback

Now we’re talking. This is gold standard stuff where feedback becomes transformative.

Developmental feedback focuses on what happened, what was learned, and what could be done next time. Notice that we just said 'what?' four times. That’s because the BEST feedback is built on asking 'what?' ‘What?’ emphasizes forward motion, not post-mortems.  ‘What?’ empowers them to learn and grow from their experiences, leading to more effective and lasting personal development.

This is the best way to approach giving feedback as a leader, but it’s only possible when you have strong communication skills.

How Communication Shapes Feedback and Leadership Growth

So many challenges that arise from giving feedback as a leader come down to tone, timing, and framing. Too often, a well-intended comment is delivered poorly and creates more friction than progress, for example, which is why communication skills are so important.

Effective leadership communication examples and strategies to get your feedback right can include:

• Giving feedback close to the moment, but not in the heat of the moment.
• Using “what” questions instead of “why” questions to avoid defensive walls.
• Matching the feedback tone to the individual’s and being supportive but stretching.

As we explore in our book My Daily Leadership: A Powerful Roadmap for Leadership Success, communication for leaders isn’t just about transmitting information. It’s about building understanding, belief, and motivation.

The Real Costs of Poor Feedback as a Leader

So, strong communication and feedback are crucial skills for leaders to have. But what if you’re only giving poor feedback as a leader? Well, it can lead to all kinds of issues, including:

• Wasted potential: Without clear feedback examples and growth-focused conversations, capable team members can plateau and underperform.
• Low trust: Leaders who instruct or blame without encouraging people lose credibility quickly.
• Slow progress: Teams stuck in the “Tell me what to do” mindset can’t respond dynamically to new challenges or grow.

When you multiply these effects across a senior team or an organization, the hidden costs become enormous. Missed opportunities, strategic drift, and cultural stagnation can all rear their heads, all of which can impact day-to-day performance, long-term innovation, and competitiveness.

The Simple Daily Habit to Build Feedback Leadership Skills

Leadership development isn’t a workshop you can attend once and tick off. It’s a daily commitment that needs reinforcement, accountability, and honest reflection, all of which can come from leadership journaling.

One of the key mistakes leaders make is failing to reflect properly on where their feedback helped and when it missed the mark, which is why we believe structured leadership journaling isn’t optional; it’s essential.

Through daily reflection, you can sharpen your feedback skills, build emotional intelligence, and catch yourself when you slip into instructing instead of developing.

Because real leadership growth begins where excuses end, and structured reflection turns awareness into action.

By helping you build stronger, better habits that transform your feedback conversations over time, leadership journaling enables you to:

• Reflect honestly on how you give feedback.
• Notice patterns of frustration, avoidance, or missed opportunities.
• Reframe future conversations for growth and accountability instead of blame.

Over time, it becomes second nature to coach rather than criticize as a leader, but only when you put in the work to get there.

Final Thoughts: Feedback and Leadership Go Hand in Hand

Every leader wants to communicate effectively, and mastering feedback in leadership skills helps you grow quicker, develop stronger teams, and create confident decision-makers around you.

And remember, perfection isn’t the goal, progress is. It’s about consistently choosing to move “up and to the right”, one conversation at a time, with developmental feedback that encourages positive change.

Because poor feedback holds leaders back, but developmental feedback moves everyone forward.

Find Out More

Eager to explore the effects of developmental feedback and leadership communication? Tune into Episode 22 of the Stop Managing, Start Leading podcast, where we explore the Five Levels of Feedback in detail and share practical ways to improve communication for leaders.

You’ll also find powerful frameworks in our book, My Daily Leadership: A Powerful Roadmap for Leadership Success, which is packed with practical tools to help you apply mindset shifts, structured reflection, and intentional leadership journaling to real-world communication challenges.