The double standard of feedback

Caroline Esterson
Sep 27
3 min read

Imagine this.

You’ve just been given some brutal feedback.

It stings.

Your eyes well up. The tears come.

And in that moment, your boss decides: you’re not leadership material.

Not because your work is poor. Not because you lack potential.But because you cried.

Meanwhile, this same boss has been known to slam doors, raise voices, and throw full-blown tantrums in meetings. They frame their anger as passion, but they see your tears as weakness.

👀 Double standards, much?

Anger = passion. Tears = weakness. Apparently.

This is one of the many stories Christine Reynolds and I unpacked on this week’s Little Moves, Big Careers podcast. And it cuts to the messy truth of feedback: it’s rarely just about performance.

It’s about power, perception, and how emotion is policed at work.

Whilst people might say "don't take this personally," feedback is personal. It touches our identity, our confidence, our sense of belonging. Pretending otherwise is nonsense. What matters isn’t whether you feel, it’s how you process what comes next.

Feedback is data, not doom.

Christine shared the science too. When someone says, “Can I give you some feedback?”, your brain hears: “Sabre-tooth tiger incoming.” Your cortisol spikes. Fight, flight, or freeze kicks in. Tears, defensiveness, shutdown- it’s biology, not weakness.

So if feedback makes you wobble, well that's human. The trick is building habits that help you move past the cortisol surge into clarity and choice.

Here’s the three-move checklist we talked about:

Pause → Breathe. Buy yourself a few seconds. Let the survival response pass.
Separate → This is about a task, not your worth. Detach self from situation.
Filter → Ask: Have I heard this before? Does it align with my goals? Do I respect the source? If yes, act. If no, let it go.

Feedback doesn't have to be heavy

A study from Gartner tells us that 65% of people welcome feedback but what they welcome is micro- feedback, in the moment. Feedback becomes less terrifying when it’s frequent, small, and normalised. Instead of waiting for the dreaded annual appraisal, take control for yourself and start asking for micro-inputs:

“What did you notice?”
“Any tips?”
“What’s one thing I could tweak?”

It’s feedback without saying the F-word. And the more you ask, the more you train yourself (and others) that growth conversations are part of the rhythm of work, not a gladiator fight in your appraisal.

Let me give you a personal example of why micro-feedback matters.

When I landed my first leadership role, I went from managing one site to 16. I thought I was smashing it. I literally skipped into my six-month review, ready to dazzle with evidence of all the improvements I’d made.

Instead, I walked into three stony-faced Directors who hit me with: ‘Improve immediately or you’re out.’ Brutal. Turns out my ‘mistake’ wasn’t the work, it was that 15 site managers felt steamrolled. My enthusiasm had dented a few egos, and all my evidence meant nothing if the people weren’t with me.

I had a choice: walk away or dig in. I dug in. I found the one manager who hadn’t complained and made him my mentor. Together we built a plan, and I stuck to it. Yes, it was incredibly painful. But over the next month I rebuilt trust and together over the following year we achieved results none of us could have done alone. That experience taught me the hard way: feedback isn’t optional. It’s oxygen. Without it, you’re flying blind.