The Gift of Feedback

Feedback has long carried the weight of judgment. Up until now, my experience with feedback revolved around the story I told myself, "my work is being criticized." In the Army, feedback arrived through Officer Evaluation Reports—formal, stiff, and often more about protecting reputations than cultivating growth. Two to three bullet points per leadership attribute used to describe a year of work. In policing, feedback was nearly absent. Performance reviews were pencil-whipped exercises. Rarely negative, rarely exceptional—just paperwork to move along.

Peers providing the gift of feedback.

For years, I craved something more. Not the accolades. Not criticism disguised as counseling. Real feedback. The kind that sharpens, the kind that exposes blind spots, the kind that demands growth. If I wanted to know how others felt I could grow as a leader, like a rare mineral, I had to mine for it. I sought out mentors and nurtured relationships. I assessed their strengths and weaknesses. I searched for bespoke candor that I could aim at myself. To find someone who was up for advocating for my growth, I would search outside the hierarchy of my own organization and that required effort. Effort that, at the time, was rarely worth the squeeze.

A strategy I developed was to pay attention to the examples around me. I organized my occurrences of people into two categories: Leadership or "I want to do things that way" and Leadershit or "I don't want to do things that way." Yet, this didn't satiate. This wasn't feedback for my own growth as it relates to a vision of who I might become. This was raw comparison and judgement.

At Novus Global, I found real feedback. A form of fierce advocacy and love aimed at growth and vision AND it was organic to the firm.

Our culture rests on the values of “G.O. L.I.V.E.”—Growth, Ownership, Love, Integrity, Vision, and Energy. These aren’t words on a wall. They are alive, practiced, and measured daily. And within that framework, for me, feedback is reclaimed from a criticism to defend my ego against and is, instead, a gift to receive and wield.

We say: if you withhold feedback, you withhold love. If you see someone reaching for a vision and stay silent about how they could grow, you are not advocating for them—you are abandoning them.

That changes everything.

Instead of waiting for performance reviews, we seek feedback weekly, even daily and we have a process to do just that. Instead of fearing critiques, we welcome it, for at it's root is a gift to be leveraged. Instead of insulating ourselves with ego, we lean into vulnerability, knowing that being refined is the only way forward; that what got us here, won't get us there.

This occurred to me as a paradox when I first encountered the culture at Novus Global. What once felt like an insult or an attack now feels like love. Feedback no longer defines my worth, rather it becomes a tool that expands my capacity.

If I am telling on myself, at first I did not believe it. I expected to interact with the values in the same way I had with other organizations: writing on the walls. Like Alice stepping into Oz, I wondered if these values, these commitments to living them out, were real. Then, I experienced them. A few days after I signed with Novus Global, I found myself at the spring conference. Within two hours of being in a building full of Novus Global coaches, leaders, and staff, I found myself receiving feedback. Since then I've experienced feedback asked for and offered publicly across the firm daily. Today, I get to sit with my team of coaches and listen to 20 minutes of their feedback for me. Steel sharpens steel and

I feel at home.

Imagine if every leader embraced this. Instead of whispers in the hallway, there would be courage in the boardroom. Instead of mediocrity on paper, there would be excellence in practice. Instead of defensiveness, there would be growth.

Leaders, if you want to transform your culture, start here: stop treating feedback as a punishment and begin treating it as the highest form of advocacy. It may be the greatest gift you ever receive. It may be the greatest gift they ever receive.