Giving Feedback Without Deluding or Soul-crushing Others
- Courtney Branson
- Dec 26, 2025
- 8 min read
Dear Readers,
Recently, we talked about you, how to connect with your spirit before writing your self-assessment, but if you’re also giving feedback, you’re not off the hook yet.
Before you give feedback to anyone—your team, peers, manager—we’re going to start with you again. One of the biggest flaws with reviews or feedback is that the giver all too often unintentionally projects themselves onto the other person or makes a lot of assumptions. (Sometimes, it’s both.)
With feedback, you have the power to shape someone; use it for good.
Go into any feedback cycle by first pausing and asking yourself—What lens am I bringing to this feedback?
We all have biases, triggers, tendencies, and preferences. Pretending we don’t can cause more harm than acknowledging them.
So right now, the question isn’t—What do I think of them? It’s—What’s shaping the way I see them? There’s not an easy-bake answer; it takes soul-searching to unearth what’s shaping your lens.
Our values often come from childhood and mold our behavior. Things like accountability, perfectionism, urgency can all stem from an unconscious place. They also influence how we view other people and assess their “value” or “worth.”
It’s important to ground ourselves in the philosophy that everyone arrives with inherent worth. Our feedback should reflect that we know the difference between guiding growth and judging others.
So, let’s make a little map of you to identify your hot spots.
Set a five minute timer and write any value or belief that comes to mind.
Afterward, go back through your notes and reflect.
Why do you believe this?
When did you first believe this thing?
How has it impacted who you are and how you see others?
I’m going to pause to be vulnerable—there are things that I believe that I actively know that I need to stop believing because they don’t serve me or my loved ones. Please be honest with yourself; this reflection is just between you and the page.
Here’s a snippet of my reflection:
Values & Beliefs:
I value financial freedom.
If you’re going to do anything, do it well.
Origin:
Money felt uncomfortable and scarce growing up. I wasn’t sure I’d ever live on my own, especially when I graduated from college into the Great Recession.
As a child, I received love and attention when I got good grades or won awards. If I failed or was difficult, then I might be ostracized or hurt.
Impact:
I overwork, overextend, or people-please to prove my worth and be rewarded.
I fall into the perfectionism or bust trap—I may avoid or procrastinate something if I don’t think I can do it flawlessly.
I tend to be self-reliant and willing to take on burdens for others in order to be helpful, liked, and seen as a “pleasure to work with.”
These behaviors have made me feel safe, accomplished, and likable. But they’ve also led me to hold others to high standards or feel resentment if I perceive someone doing less for the same rewards. Part of me is still 10 years old.
So, yes, this exercise will disinfect your demons in the sunshine.
The easy path is to stop digging, but it’s not the fair one.
The first time I did this exercise, I'd just come out of a heart-to-heart with a team member. She expressed concern for my well-being and about the standards I held for myself, which had unfortunately become her standards. I already knew I was hurting myself, but I didn’t realize that I was hurting others by proxy.
My subsequent reflection unearthed a lot from my childhood. In particular, it surfaced how financial instability, paired with parents who over-indexed on achievement, shaped my conditioning.
And even though I don’t rationally believe achievement equates to worthiness, there is still an underlying part of me that believes it. So, I’ve learned to be conscious of that predisposition when evaluating someone.
If we don’t understand our past hurts, then we can’t understand how we’ll project them.
Feedback given from a wound becomes a weapon.
Your words carry weight; they may stay with someone for an entire career.
So many of us have been harmed by others' projections. I still think about being called fragile by a manager or being called dramatic by my family. It colors how I see myself. It makes me question my reactions, which can also lead to not trusting my intuition lest it be “dramatic.”
So, while it may seem counterintuitive, the first step is inward: sorting through our own biases, preferences, and inclinations. That way, when we give feedback to others, we’re illuminating strengths and opportunities, not seeking to punish or soothe our discomfort.
And what you like and dislike cuts both ways. Just as easily as our lens can lead to harsh feedback, it can also lend itself to glowing feedback. There’s a horn and halo effect for a reason. If you’re looking for more insight into the human mind, I like this curated list of biases by The Decision Lab.
Feedback is not a neutral act; it’s just as much shaped by care and protection as it is power and insecurity.
Once you feel connected to yourself, take a pause.
When you’re ready, come back to this reflection. Have a person in mind, and answer the questions that resonate; skip the ones that don’t.
What preferences or expectations do you have coming into this?
Are you reacting to them or responding to their work?
Do you feel competitive, irritated, or frustrated with this person?
Will your feedback help them grow or simply justify how you feel?
Would you feel safe receiving the feedback you’re about to give?
Feedback may be a fickle creature, but I truly believe that we owe it to others to share our perspective, especially when we have power over them.
People can’t grow in a company or act in their best interest if they don’t understand how others perceive them.
The things you share and how you share them speak volumes about your intentions, sense of self, and relationship with the receiver.
The relationship is a critical element of feedback—When you give feedback as a peer, you’re really taking a stance on the relationship.
So, here’s the thing: you’ve likely been told all the basics on giving peer feedback:
be specific, not vague
name patterns, not one-offs
give real examples, not fluff or moral confetti
focus on impact, not personality or preference
recap past convos, don’t introduce new info
I’m not going to give you the full spiel, but we have another article—What Do We Owe to Each Other With a Culture of Feedback that does the heavy lifting on dos and don'ts. Instead, the thing I want to impress upon you is to contemplate the relationship you want with this peer. Your feedback will shape the relationship.
What do you want for this relationship?
Care: Do you care about this person?
Intent: Will your feedback help them grow?
Perspective: Are you ready for their view back?
Tone: Are you approaching them with curiosity?
If you’re not ready to answer yes to those questions, reconsider if now is the time to give feedback. A peer review is not a catharsis. It’s more like a conversation.
Always leave open the possibility that you’re wrong about or misunderstanding something. Their manager will read this feedback, and if you emotionally purge, it hurts you sometimes more than it hurts them.
I’ve seen peer reviews that eviscerate the other person, but the reality was almost always that their priorities were at odds, often due to leaders being at odds.
Peer feedback is a web of sensitivities. You want to give feedback to better the relationship or the person, but you also don’t want to trip on a live wire.
This type of emotional and nuanced complexity is one of the reasons we built EverMore. It’s a private space insulated from social consequence to surface and refine raw thoughts.
The stakes are even higher as a manager—you’re navigating the responsibility that comes with authority.
Managers hold asymmetrical authority.
Your feedback carries more weight than you intend or acknowledge. We hold futures in our hands, yet sometimes, we become managers before we’ve even learned the emotional discipline or training that leadership requires.
Good feedback requires disentangling personal preference from legitimate critique.
Otherwise, it becomes easy to mistake discomfort for deficiency or familiarity for competence. It's a bias to relate to and favor people who work or think like us.
To give your team accurate feedback, you have to see the situation accurately.
Consider:
What context and expectations shaped their year?
What invisible work or pressures did they carry?
What support and resources did you give or fail to give?
As you capture their wins, losses, and next steps, reflect on:
When did they thrive even with the odds against them?
When they stumbled, what would have made success more likely?
What company problems or goals could be solved with their talents?
To wrap up, take a look back:
Is your feedback clear, kind, and rooted in specific examples?
Are you projecting your own style, preferences, or biases?
Are you using this review to build their career or justify your decisions?
Humans have limitations, so don’t neglect compassion in your review.
There are so many pressures at work, so there are bound to be hiccups. Beyond personal struggles, often the work systems fail us—not enough resources, lack of clarity, frequent pivoting, or inconsistent direction, to name a few. As a manager, take the time to reflect on your role in their career and performance.
Speak to their potential without collapsing into fantasy.
As a manager, I try to marry honesty with hopefulness. I want to name the reality of a situation without shrinking the possibility of the future. No extreme is good.
An overwhelmingly positive, sugarcoated review isn’t a virtue. It usually reflects avoidance rather than care—a reluctance to engage honestly with someone’s growth. Everyone has room to improve; feedback doesn’t need to become a fantasy to be humane.
On the flip, too often, I read reviews where the manager has given ultimatums, death sentences, and written an individual’s future, saying things like “not fit for leadership” or “doesn’t have executive presence.” As a reviewer, you don’t need to write their story or ending.
Instead, internally acknowledge, you’re an unreliable narrator or a distorted mirror. You’re offering fragments shaped by your proximity, power, and timing.
Even when we do our best, sometimes the feedback lands hard.
Sometimes reviews sting because the feedback is a surprise or poorly delivered, or sometimes because it’s true. Often it’s a combination.
When that happens, I like to listen for the second reaction. Not everyone (myself included) takes feedback well the first time, even if they care deeply. So, I like to give space to my team and then see what the second reaction is, not the first.
Questions you can ask your team in the meantime:
What parts feel true?
What feels inaccurate or missing context?
What do you need clarified?
What is stirring up an old wound or past negativity?
What does it look like to use this information constructively?
Remind your team that their review isn’t a verdict; they don’t need to accept everything outright or go into self-protection mode. They just need to put the fragments together.
As their manager, help them find what rings true, what aligns, and what steady, authentic progress for them and the company looks like. From there, help them build a performance preview to fold past learnings into future expectations.
So much of our performance approach looks backward; it’s time to start looking forward. If you need help, consider getting EverMore for yourself or your team.
xoxo,
Courtney
p.s. If you’re wondering what else you can do going forward, our next piece is how we’d build a performance review system from scratch, so subscribe to follow along.
Courtney Branson is the cofounder of EverMore, the career reflection engine. She's a former Chief People Officer and will forever be designing kind and innovative cultures. You can find her on LinkedIn, Instagram, and as the cohost of the Dear Evermore podcast.
