The Feedback You're Hearing Isn't the Feedback You Need

We know feedback is how we grow. We tell ourselves we want it. We believe we're open to it.

But knowing something intellectually and experiencing it emotionally are two completely different things. And the gap between wanting feedback and truly letting it in sits quietly in the middle of most professionals' careers.

In this episode, Leslie Ferry unpacks what's actually happening when feedback arrives, why we can struggle to truly receive it, and what changes when we recognize that feedback isn't a verdict. It's someone else's experience of us filtered through their wiring, not ours.

In this episode:

• Why wanting feedback and acting on it productively are two different things
• What's happening subconsciously when feedback lands and why our wiring shapes what we hear
• The difference between hearing feedback, and truly receiving it and why it's similar to how most people think about active listening
• Why the most confident professionals are often the most likely to quietly filter out what doesn't fit
• What the person giving feedback is actually offering and why even imperfect feedback is one of the only windows into how we're actually landing
• How the Performance Loop™ — Intelligence × Reflection × Adjustment = Growth — applies directly to feedback
• Why managers face this dynamic in both directions simultaneously

The thinking in this episode is designed to provoke a question. Zandra is built to help you answer it — personally, in the context of your own work: zandra.app

Transcript

Welcome back to The Career Edge™, where we unpack how work actually works. I'm Leslie Ferry. We all intellectually know feedback is how we grow in our careers and in our personal lives. We know we need to understand what would make us even 1 % better. But emotionally, we can have a different relationship with it. Wanting feedback and truly hearing it, acting on it productively, are two completely different things.

And the gap between those two sits quietly in the middle of professional careers. Most professionals think of feedback as information. Someone tells you something about your work or your approach. You listen, you consider it, you decide what to do next. That sounds pretty straightforward, but here's what's happening subconsciously in that moment. The feedback is coming through someone else's wiring, their perspective,
their priorities, their interpretation of what they observe. It's not an objective read on what happened. It's one person's experience of you filtered through how they see the world. And the way you receive it is filtered through your own wiring too. What you hear, what you dismiss, what you hold on to, what you deflect. All of that is shaped by your own patterns, your own blind spots, and your own sense of who you are at work.

Recognizing that, for feedback to truly land, two things have to be true. The person giving it has to be seeing something real. And the person receiving it has to be genuinely open to what's being reflected. Not just open to theory, but open enough to sit with it before deciding what it means. That second part is where most professionals quietly struggle. Not because they don't care.

Because it's genuinely hard to hear something about yourself that doesn't match how you see yourself from the inside. There's a difference between hearing feedback and receiving it. Hearing it means the words register. You understood what was said, you nod, you thank the person, and you move on. It's similar to how many people think about active listening, the appearance of engagement without the depth of it. Receiving it means something different.

It means sitting with what was said long enough to examine it honestly, not to accept it wholesale, not all feedback is accurate, but to genuinely ask, there something here worth looking at? What might this person be seeing that I can't see from the inside? That examination is reflection and reflection, real reflection, not replay, is what turns feedback into something useful. Without it,

Feedback accumulates but doesn't improve you. You collect the moments, you hear the words, but the same patterns keep showing up in slightly different situations. And it's genuinely hard to understand why.

The more confident we are in our own judgment, the more likely we are to filter feedback through what we already believe about ourselves. We accept the parts that confirm what we know, and we find reasons to discount the parts that don't fit.

That's not defensiveness in the dramatic sense. It's quieter than that. It shows up as a reasonable explanation for why the feedback doesn't quite apply.

or a mental note that the person giving it doesn't fully understand the context, or a decision to file it away and revisit it later, which means never. None of those responses feel like dismissal from the inside. They feel like thoughtful consideration.

But the gap between your intent and what's actually happening is exactly where the feedback stops working. Consider what's actually happening when someone gives you feedback, a manager, a peer, or a direct report. They're not delivering a verdict. They're sharing their experience with you. That experience is real, even if it's incomplete, even if it's colored by their own wiring and priorities, even if you disagree with their interpretation.

Because regardless of whether the feedback is perfectly delivered or perfectly accurate, it's telling you something about the signal you're sending. Not necessarily the signal you intended, but the signal that they received.

And you don't get to decide what signal you're sending. The people around you do. Which means feedback, even imperfect feedback, even feedback you

partially disagree with is one of the only windows you have into how you're actually landing, not how you intend to land, how you're actually landing. That's not a small thing. That's the information most professionals spend their entire careers trying to guess at. For professionals leading teams, this dynamic runs in both directions simultaneously. You're receiving feedback from above, from your own manager, from stakeholders.

from the results your team produces, and you're giving feedback to the people you lead in the moments that shape how they grow. Both directions require the same skill. Truly receiving what's being reflected at you and giving feedback in a way that actually lands for the person receiving it, which means understanding their wiring, not just delivering your observation. A manager who can't receive feedback struggles to improve as a leader.

a manager who can't give feedback in a way that lands struggles to develop their team. And the gap between the feedback you think you're giving and what your team experiences is one of the quietest, most expensive gaps in any organization.

The Performance Loop™ which we've explored in depth in earlier episodes, applies here directly. Intelligence x reflection x adjustment = growth. In the context of feedback, intelligence means noticing the signals around you, including the feedback signals, with enough clarity to examine them honestly. Reflection means sitting with what was said long enough to separate what's useful from what isn't. And adjustment means making a deliberate change based on what reflections surface.

not just filing the feedback away, but actually doing something different next time.

If you want to go deeper on the performance loop, those earlier episodes are worth listening to.

But that loop applied to feedback is what makes growth compound rather than just accumulating experience. The next time you receive feedback from your manager or a peer or someone on your team, try sitting with one question before you decide what to do with it.

Not, is it accurate? But rather, what might this person be seeing that I can't see from the inside? That shift from evaluating the feedback to examining what it might be reflecting is where receiving becomes different from hearing. It doesn't mean accepting everything uncritically. It means giving the feedback enough space to show you something before you close the door on it.

When was the last time you received feedback that genuinely changed something? Not feedback you agreed with in the moment and then quietly set aside, feedback that actually shifted how you show up in a conversation, in a meeting, in a relationship at work. If that question takes a moment to answer, it might be less about whether you're getting feedback and more about what happens once it arrives.

The thinking in these episodes is designed to provoke a question. Zandra is built to help you answer it personally in the context of your own work. Zandra.app. Thanks for listening to The Career Edge. I'll see you in the next episode.