The Question That Changes Everything: Why Most Feedback Fails and What to Do Instead

Most feedback is useless.

Not because people lack good intentions. Not because organisations don't invest in training. But because we've been taught to give feedback in ways that trigger defensiveness, focus on personality rather than behaviour, and leave people with nowhere to go.

"You need to be more strategic." What does that even mean? "You're not a team player." Based on what evidence? "You should speak up more in meetings." And then what?

This isn't feedback. It's judgement dressed up as helpfulness. And it's why most people dread performance conversations, why 360-degree reviews gather dust, and why the gap between what leaders think they're communicating and what their teams actually hear remains stubbornly wide.

But there's a simpler approach. One that doesn't require training programmes, feedback frameworks, or carefully rehearsed sandwich techniques. It starts with questions.

The Problem With Feedback-as-Statement

Traditional feedback operates on a broadcast model: I observe, I interpret, I tell you what I think. The assumption is that my perception is accurate, my interpretation is correct, and my advice is useful.

Three assumptions. Three points of failure.

When feedback focuses on personality traits ("you're defensive," "you lack confidence," "you're too aggressive"), it puts the receiver in an impossible position. How do you action a personality? The natural response is to explain, justify, or push back - not to change. The conversation becomes adversarial. Trust erodes.

Even well-intentioned feedback often describes symptoms without diagnosing causes. "Your presentation didn't land" tells someone their work failed without helping them understand why. It's a judgement without a pathway.

Research from organisational psychology consistently shows that feedback perceived as threatening activates defensive responses. The amygdala fires. Cognitive processing narrows. Learning shuts down. You've delivered your message, but no one's home to receive it.

Questions Create Different Conditions

Questions shift the dynamic. They signal curiosity rather than judgement. They invite the other person into the conversation as a participant, not a defendant.

Consider the difference:

Statement: "You interrupted Sarah three times in that meeting."

Question: "I noticed you jumped in a few times while Sarah was talking. What was going on for you in that moment?"

The first is an accusation. The second is an invitation. One triggers defence. The other might reveal that the person was anxious about time pressure, excited about an idea, or genuinely unaware of their impact. You can't solve a problem you don't understand, and you can't understand a problem by telling people what you've decided it is.

Three Questions That Build Psychological Safety

Psychological safety - the belief that you won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes - is the foundation of high-performing teams. Amy Edmondson's research at Harvard demonstrated this across hospitals, tech companies, and manufacturing plants. Google's Project Aristotle confirmed it: psychological safety was the single best predictor of team effectiveness.

But psychological safety isn't built through declarations or posters. It's built through thousands of small interactions where people learn, through experience, that it's safe to be honest.

Questions are the mechanism.

1. "What would make this better?"

This question does three things simultaneously. It acknowledges that improvement is possible (creating permission to critique). It focuses on the work rather than the person (making feedback less threatening). And it signals that you value the other person's perspective (building trust).

Use it after presenting an idea, sharing a draft, or completing a project. The question assumes good faith on both sides and creates space for honest assessment without requiring anyone to "give feedback" in the formal, loaded sense.

2. "What am I missing?"

Leaders who ask this question regularly do something powerful: they model intellectual humility. They demonstrate that being right matters less than getting it right. They signal that disagreement is not only tolerated but valued.

This question is particularly important for senior people, who often receive filtered information. The higher you rise, the less people tell you what they actually think. Asking "what am I missing?" creates a crack in that armour - a deliberate invitation for challenge.

3. "What's making this hard?"

When performance problems emerge, the instinct is often to address the symptom: "You need to hit your deadlines." "Your quality needs to improve." "You need to communicate more proactively."

But performance problems rarely exist in isolation. They're usually symptoms of something else- unclear priorities, competing demands, missing skills, interpersonal friction, or misaligned expectations. "What's making this hard?" gets at the system, not just the individual. It assumes the person wants to succeed and invites them to problem-solve alongside you.

Why This Works Across Organisations

These questions work in startups and multinationals, in hospitals and hedge funds, in technical teams and creative agencies. They work because they address something fundamental about human psychology: people engage when they feel respected, and they disengage when they feel judged.

The questions also scale. A CEO can ask "what am I missing?" in a board meeting. A junior employee can ask "what would make this better?" after their first presentation. No special training required. No elaborate frameworks to remember. Just genuine curiosity, expressed simply.

What changes is the quality of information flowing through the organisation. When people feel safe to speak honestly, problems surface earlier. Innovation happens faster. Mistakes become learning opportunities rather than career risks.

The Discipline of Asking

This approach requires one thing: the discipline to actually listen to the answers.

If you ask "what am I missing?" and then dismiss or argue with what you hear, you've done worse than nothing. You've demonstrated that the question was performative. Trust decreases.

Asking questions you don't want answered is more damaging than not asking at all.

The practice, then, is twofold. Ask the question genuinely. And when the answer is uncomfortable - when it challenges your assumptions or reveals a problem you didn't want to see - sit with it. Thank the person for their honesty. Do something with what you've learned.

This is harder than it sounds. Most of us have spent careers being rewarded for having answers, not for asking questions. Shifting from expert to inquirer feels vulnerable. But that vulnerability is precisely what creates the conditions for others to be vulnerable too.

Start Small

You don't need to transform your organisation's feedback culture overnight.
You need to ask one question differently in your next conversation.

After your next presentation: "What would make this better?"

Before your next big decision: "What am I missing?"

When someone's struggling: "What's making this hard?"

The questions are simple. The practice is the work.

Psychological safety isn't a programme you implement. It's a pattern you repeat. One question at a time.