What's more dangerous: Upward feedback or bad leadership?
Someone recently told me, very confidently, “You shouldn’t give feedback to your boss. The power dynamic makes it risky—it can backfire.”
And I thought: Ah yes, the classic workplace strategy—silence as a career plan.
To be fair, they’re not entirely wrong. In the wrong environment, upward feedback can backfire. You get labeled “difficult,” suddenly you’re “not a culture fit,” and—poof—your calendar gets suspiciously emptier, your chance of getting a promotion shrinks.
It happened to me not once, not twice, but three times. One boss told me I needed to learn how to play “politicking.” So expressing needs (or any form of feedback) to my boss(es) and the C-suite quickly got me canceled in those companies.
But let’s be precise about the diagnosis: Upward feedback isn’t the problem.
Fragile leadership is.
If giving honest feedback to your manager feels dangerous, the issue isn’t the feedback. It’s the leadership system you’re operating in.
And we need to stop confusing the symptom with the disease.
Power Doesn’t Excuse Fragility, It Exposes It.
If you hold power and can’t handle feedback from people with less of it, that’s not authority, that's emotional thin ice.
Let’s connect the dots clearly:
Power + inability to receive feedback = fragile leadership.
And fragile leadership creates silence.
Amy Edmondson, who basically gave us the language for psychological safety, defines it as:
“A shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.”
That “risk” includes disagreeing with your boss. It includes saying, “That didn’t land well,” or “I need something different from you.”
So when upward feedback feels unsafe, what you’re actually seeing is a lack of psychological safety—the foundational condition for any high-performing team.
Which leads us directly to the next consequence.
When Leaders Don’t Hear Feedback, Performance Suffers
Google’s Project Aristotle found that the highest-performing teams weren’t the smartest—they were the safest. Psychological safety was the #1 factor in team effectiveness.
Not brilliance. Not experience. Not charisma.
Safety.
Which means the real flex of leadership isn’t “being the smartest person in the room.” It’s being the person others feel safe correcting, challenging, and probing.
Let’s be real, your team already knows your blind spots, so do you. They just might not be telling you, and you might just pretend you’re perfect.
What happens when safety is missing? People self-censor.
And when people self-censor:
Problems surface late
Bad decisions go unchallenged
Innovation quietly dies in meetings where everyone nods or simply disengages
So if a leader shuts down upward feedback, they’re not protecting authority—they’re degrading performance.
And who suffers the most? The business.
Feedback: The Breakfast of Champions… is it Optional?
Ken Blanchard famously said:
“Feedback is the breakfast of champions.”
Some leaders, however, are intermittent fasters when it comes to feedback. Strict diet. Very selective intake. Nothing too spicy. Definitely no criticism. God forbid, feedback is a personal attack!
This is where things start to connect more deeply:
The inability to receive feedback isn’t just a personality quirk—it’s a known leadership failure pattern.
The Center for Creative Leadership identifies resistance to feedback as one of the top derailers for leaders.
In other words, the very behavior meant to “protect” a leader is often what limits—or ends—their effectiveness.
What Do Great Leaders Actually Do Differently?
Feedback doesn’t magically appear because you said, “My door is always open.”
(Respectfully, no one believes that. We know your door is open. It’s your reactions that are the problem.)
Great leaders don’t wait for feedback. They design for it.
And this is where everything ties together:
If psychological safety drives performance, and feedback sustains growth, then a leader’s responsibility is to make both possible.
That looks like:
Asking for specific feedback (not vague “any thoughts?” fishing expeditions)
Responding with curiosity instead of defensiveness or justifications
Demonstrating ownership through visible change, so feedback doesn’t feel pointless
Encouraging—not punishing—those who speak up
To say the brutal truth, I used to get in trouble for: Leaders who punish upward feedback aren’t “protecting standards.” They’re protecting their ego.
And that’s expensive because you stagnate. So, if feedback feels like a threat, you've got work to do.
Leadership Is Not a Destination. It’s a Moving Target
A stagnant leader isn’t stable. They’re outdated. Leadership isn’t static. It shifts with different generations. Different cultures. Different industries and expectations. Different definitions of what “good leadership” even looks like.
A leader who isn’t receiving feedback isn’t evolving; they’re repeating. And repetition without reflection doesn’t build consistency—it builds irrelevance.
As Satya Nadella put it:
“The learn-it-all will always do better than the know-it-all.”
Upward feedback is one of the most immediate ways to stay a “learn-it-all,” because your team experiences your leadership in real time—not in your carefully constructed self-image.
Let’s Acknowledge the Risk (Without Worshipping It)
Yes, giving feedback to your boss can feel risky. But in a healthy organization, that risk is data; in an immature environment, it’s a threat.
If speaking honestly feels dangerous, you’ve learned something important about the system you’re in. So yes, giving feedback to your boss can be risky.
But a leader who makes it risky? That’s the real liability.
Healthy organizations don’t pretend power dynamics don’t exist—they actively reduce the damage they can cause.
They train leaders to receive feedback. They reward honesty. They treat dissent as information, not insubordination.
The alternative is a culture of quiet compliance… followed by loud exits. I speak from painful experience.
The Ted Lasso Standard (Because Of Course)
Ted Lasso doesn’t lead because he’s always right.
He leads because people feel safe enough to tell him when he’s wrong—and he doesn’t spiral into a defensive monologue about “authority.”
He listens. He adjusts. He stays curious.
It’s annoyingly effective.
Final Thought: If You Can’t Hear It, You Can’t Fix It
Upward feedback isn’t a threat to leadership. It’s the quality control system.
If you’re a leader, your job isn’t to avoid discomfort. It’s to create an environment where truth can show up without needing a witness protection program.
Because if your team has to choose between honesty and self-preservation… They will choose self-preservation. Every time.
And you’ll be left confidently leading a version of reality that exists nowhere except your own head.
Are you an employee navigating a challenging work dynamic? Or are you a leader who wants to improve their effectiveness and create kick-ass, psychologically safe teams?
Sources & References
Center for Creative Leadership. FYI for Your Improvement