If Your Feedback Only Works When You’re Present, It Didn’t Work
Part 3 about role drift, ownership, and the illusion of impact
I learned this the hard way.
There was a teacher I worked with years ago. Sharp. Warm. Students loved her. But her lessons unraveled halfway through almost every time.
I knew exactly what to fix. So I told her.
“Your transitions need tightening.”
“You’re answering your own questions too quickly.”
“You’re rescuing them before they struggle.”
She nodded. She implemented. The next lesson improved and I left feeling effective. Put a couple more knoches on my coaching belt and knock a couple more ticks in the tracker. Huzzah.
But three weeks later, I sat in the back of her room again — and the same patterns resurfaced.
Crap. My feedback worked when I was there and it did not work when I wasn’t.
If your feedback only works when you’re present, it didn’t work.
It may have reduced friction temporarily but it did not build judgment. As Ronald Heifetz reminds us, leadership is not about providing answers; it is about helping people face adaptive challenges. Adaptive work cannot be done for someone. It must be done by them.
Relief vs. Learning
Relief feels like impact but learning theory tells a different story.
Robert Bjork calls it “desirable difficulty” — the idea that the conditions that make learning feel harder often make it more durable. Struggle, effort, retrieval — these are the very things that build transfer.
A couple of weeks ago, a kid who spends a lot of time at my house had a sleepover. My kids stepped into make breakfast because I was writing…as usual. They started cutting some fruit using real knives.
The visiting kid froze. “Wait. They’re allowed to use those?”
Yes. Carefully, with instruction and with practice. But yes.
Years ago, I had a mentor who used to rant about trusting kids with knives. She’d say, “If you never let them hold the knife, they’ll never learn how to use it. And someday they’ll grab it without you.”
“What if they cut themselves?” the kids asked, shaking his head.
They might. If I always take the knife, they never learn how to handle it.
Leaderhip is full of knives. Every wobbly decision is a knife. You can grab it, or you can let someone else learn to hold it.
Relief is clean. Judgment takes a few uneven slices.
The Transfer Problem
Educational psychology is clear: skills do not automatically transfer. Transfer requires deliberate practice in varied conditions without scaffolds.
If someone can only perform with you present, they have not internalized the reasoning. They have borrowed it.
Peter Senge wrote in The Fifth Discipline that organizations learn only when individuals expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire. When leaders make the decisions, individuals do not expand capacity — they comply.
Capacity is measured in your absence. If they can’t diagnose without you, you didn’t develop them.
The Identity Layer
When my people struggle, I struggle.
I tell myself it’s empathy — and that’s very (f**king) true. I feel everything. I always have. It’s part of why I wanted to numb it for so long.
But there’s another layer. If my people fail, I feel like I fail. Not just intellectually.
Viscerally.
When a lesson tanks, when a meeting derails, or when a teacher shuts down in tears, I don’t just see their struggle. I see a verdict on me.
Somewhere along the way, I internalized this belief: Their performance is a direct reflection of my worth. And when you believe that, you cannot tolerate visible struggle. You step in. You correct. You stabilize. You say it’s to protect them. But you’re really protecing yourself.
Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety reminds us that learning environments require tolerance for risk and visible struggle. But many leaders equate visible struggle with failure.
I did.
If she stumbles, it means I didn’t prepare her well enough. If the team can’t land it, I didn’t coach hard enough. If the system wobbles, I didn’t hold it tight enough.
So I give the answer.
Because if I don’t, and they fail publicly, I will feel it as proof. Proof that I missed something. Proof that I’m not enough. But that belief drove my behavior and my behavior trained dependence.
Carol Dweck’s work is often reduced to “growth vs. fixed mindset,” but the deeper layer is about identity. Development requires confronting gaps in understanding without collapsing into shame.
When I rush to close those gaps for someone, I’m not protecting growth. I’m protecting myself.
Psychologists call this contingent self-worth — when our sense of adequacy is tied to performance in a particular domain. For me, that domain was my people. The best part, there’s an empirical scale (swoon in nerd).
If they struggled publicly, I felt exposed. If they failed, I internalized it. Under ego threat, leaders become more directive, more controlling, more interventionist. Not because they crave power — but because they crave safety.
So I gave the answer to avoid the verdict I feared.
Substitution often masquerades as care but sometimes it’s self-preservation. And care that prevents challenge prevents capacity.
Clarity Is Not Cruelty
Clarity feels risky because it exposes both of us. It exposes their gaps and it exposes my willingness to let them wrestle.
But without clarity, there is no growth — only relief. Naming the standard and refusing to take the knife communicates belief.
Clarity sounds like:
“This is the standard.”
“You own this decision.”
“I’m here to think with you, not for you.”
It also sounds like silence. Silence while someone wrestles, reasons of forms a judgment.
That silence used to make me anxious. It hits different now.
How to Apply This Thinking
Shift the standard.
Don’t ask: Did they fix it?
Ask: Can they navigate it next time — without me?
Before you step in, pause and ask:
Who should be doing the thinking here?
Am I building judgment — or relieving discomfort?
What will transfer when I leave the room?
After you give feedback, test it:
Can they explain their reasoning?
Can they diagnose the pattern themselves?
Would they make a different choice next time without prompting?
Leadership makes judgment portable. And that requires something far harder than stepping in. It requires restraint.