Feedback is a Gift

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Feedback is survival (and so much more)

Put your hand on a hot stove, and the feedback from your nervous system is pain. It causes you to jerk your hand away. It’s not a pleasant sensation! But without that unpleasant experience, courtesy of feedback from your functioning nervous system, you might just let your hand sit there and cook. Yuck!

Feedback is how we learn and survive. Imagine our proverbial cave-dwelling ancestors. Whether it was the sensation of pain, vomiting from eating the wrong thing, or a friend’s harrowing tale of escape from a sabertooth tiger, all these feedback mechanisms allowed them to survive (and pass on their genes to us!). In a modern setting, feedback from others is how we learn to improve, have better relationships, and achieve more in our careers and lives.

Thoughtful, valid feedback is an incredible gift.

But it doesn’t always feel that way.

A bubble without feedback

In the third season of the TV show 30 Rock, the main character Liz Lemon dates a handsome doctor named Drew. She sees people accommodate him because of how attractive he is, including free food, job offers, and being forgiven for parking tickets that he fully deserved. Liz’s boss Jack informs her of “The Bubble,” wherein attractive people reside, a place full of free drinks and kindness.

The problem, Liz discovers, is that because of the Bubble, Drew has never gotten honest feedback and is completely incompetent at basically everything. As she puts it: “He is a doctor who doesn’t know the Heimlich maneuver. He can’t play tennis. He can’t cook. He’s as bad at sex as I am.” And he’s also blissfully oblivious to his own incompetence (classic Dunning-Kruger effect1).

Liz decides to break Drew out of the Bubble. When she finally convinces him of its existence, he tells her not to coddle him. “I am an adult,” he insists. “You can be honest with me. I can take it.”

You can guess what happens next.

When Liz easily destroys him in a tennis match, bursting his belief that he is a skilled tennis pro, he throws his racket to the ground and accuses her of cheating. After that, he decides he doesn’t want to work to improve himself—he wants to remain in the Bubble in blissful ignorance. And it ends their relationship.

Drew rejects Liz’s feedback because it did not feel like a gift.

Cognitive dissonance and feedback

Why did Drew have such a strong, negative reaction? Because having his beliefs challenged about his tennis skill (or identity in general) caused him to experience cognitive dissonance.2,3

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological effect wherein new information challenges our current beliefs, and the mental clash makes us uncomfortable. The greater the clash between our beliefs and the information, the greater the discomfort — up to the point that we might throw our tennis racket on the ground and break up with our girlfriend rather than face the truth.

Critical feedback can cause cognitive dissonance, leading us to react defensively and potentially reject or ignore the information. Oftentimes, the more accurate critical feedback is, the more intensely we react. This is because there’s no defense against it (whereas inaccurate feedback can be easily rebutted). Additionally, we might also struggle with self-loathing and experience shame when we receive critical feedback, which is also awful.

So, how do we overcome cognitive dissonance in order to receive the gift of valid feedback?

Try to detach

The first step is to start to separate our beliefs from our identity and instead, define ourselves by our values. In his book, Think Again,4 organizational psychologist Adam Grant describes taking on a scientist-like mindset towards information. He recommends treating your ideas as hunches to be tested—rather than truths to be defended—as this allows you to view being wrong as a joyful discovery that makes you less wrong than before.

Changing how we define our identity is easier written than done. While this requires practice, embracing the idea that there is value in updating our beliefs when presented with new evidence creates more space for us to accept feedback.

There is always room for improvement (growth mindset)

The next step is to accept that no matter how good we are at something, there is always room for improvement.

According to the Dunning-Kruger effect, people with a high level of task competence are also highly competent at assessing their own task ability. They are very aware of the flaws in their performance, whereas, conversely, people with a low level of competence are poor at assessing their abilities (and typically overestimate their skill). Meaning, the true expert is going to be more willing to accept feedback than someone who has mid-level abilities.

If you are convinced that you have no room for improvement in a certain area, you are probably experiencing the Dunning-Kruger effect. If this is the case, try not to be Drew. Think like a scientist, detach from that belief, and be willing to update your perspective.

And think about this: Why do Olympic athletes have coaches? They are already the best of the best! They have coaches because they are intimately aware of the weaknesses in their performance and they are eager for even a small, incremental improvement. By adopting this kind of growth mindset, receiving feedback the way an Olympian takes input from their coach, we enable ourselves to become better than we ever have been.

Don’t shoot the messenger

If we allow our beliefs to form our identity, or we are experiencing the Dunning-Kruger effect, or we feel shame in response to critical feedback, we can react defensively. In those moments, we are tempted to shoot the messenger and pretend the issue they raised doesn’t exist.

But let’s go back to the stove example. What if, instead of recognizing that it was a mistake to touch the stove, we said “The pain itself is the problem. I should be able to touch a hot stove if I want.” And we found a way to shut down our ability to feel pain. Problem solved!

How do you think that would actually work out?

Death. Death is how that would work out. Without pain to tell us to stop doing things that hurt us, we die. 

Pain is data. 

Feedback is data. 

You don’t want or need to shut down the feedback mechanism. You need to analyze the data.

Is the feedback valid?

When analyzing feedback, it is important to assess its validity. Once you have moved past the initial sting, examine it carefully before deciding to implement it. 

I had this lesson emphasized during a performance review. I received some anonymized peer feedback and my boss gave me a caveat: I needed to decide for myself if the feedback was something I wanted to follow. She told me the story of a former coworker who consistently got feedback that she was “too nice” to be taken seriously. Because being a nice person was an important part of her identity, the woman decided it wasn’t worth contorting her values to get ahead. And there was no guarantee that contorting herself that way would actually lead to success!

Ultimately, you are the arbiter of your own fate. You get to decide if the feedback is right for you. But do this with a sense of detachment and a growth mindset. Don’t reject feedback because it’s hard or it makes you uncomfortable. The feedback that is the most uncomfortable is probably the feedback you most need to implement. Just like an insult hits the hardest when it is closest to the truth, feedback that hits a nerve likely does so because you know it’s something you could do better. 

So don’t reject feedback out of fear or discomfort, but also don’t implement it without examining it. And you couldn’t implement all feedback even if you tried, because different people will frequently give you opposing feedback. That’s because feedback doesn’t just speak to you, it also speaks to the giver.

Feedback says “I care”

Feedback is a gift that can make the giver feel vulnerable. Offering feedback exposes them to a potentially negative reaction. Imagine that a coworker wants to give you feedback on something. They aren’t your boss; you don’t have a hierarchical obligation to listen. Offering feedback in that scenario can be downright scary, because you might react poorly.

Why would someone be willing to take this kind of risk? One possible reason is that they care about you and your relationship. Feedback can be more than just a gift; it can be an investment.

For example, I once had a miscommunication with a coworker over a presentation to external parties. Because I tried to be polite rather than blunt and direct, he didn’t realize I was saying (repeatedly) that he was out of time and that I was asking him to stop talking. He kept going, upset the schedule, and left me feeling ignored. When I brought it up later, I was scared his response would be more disrespect. Instead, we realized it was a simple miscommunication and agreed on how to avoid it again in the future. I even got an apology and a hug.

The side effect of this was bonding. I attribute that conversation as the moment we became friends. His receptiveness allowed me to trust him more and brought us closer. I wasn’t thinking of it this way at the time, but my feedback to him was also an overture, a request saying, “Can we make our relationship stronger?” I love that his answer was yes.

So when you are tempted to shoot the messenger, take a pause and consider their motivation. Part of their message may be: “I care about you and our relationship. Let’s make things better.” When this is the case, use that to temper your reaction and be gentle when responding. The feedback may be both a gift and an offer to strengthen your relationship.

Harder, better, faster, stronger

Embracing feedback is a high-impact, data-driven path to personal growth. It will help you identify blind spots, strengthen relationships, and continuously upgrade your skills with the growth mindset of an Olympian. To use feedback effectively, you must learn to detach your identity from your ideas, adopt a scientist’s approach to analyzing data, and critically assess the validity of the feedback before adopting it. Viewing feedback as an investment rather than an insult will enable you to build both your own skills and stronger relationships. I encourage you to embrace the data, pop any bubbles you find yourself in, and make yourself even more awesome! 

First published in the Virtuous Cycles Newsletter on 20.06.2026
by Christina C. C. Willis

Recommended reading

References

  1. Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of personality and social psychology, 77(6), 1121–1134. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.77.6.1121
  2. Woods, T. (2026). Cognitive dissonance. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/cognitive-dissonance
  3. Cherry, K. (2026). What is cognitive dissonance? Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-cognitive-dissonance-2795012
  4. Grant, A. (2021). Think again. Viking. https://adamgrant.net/book/think-again/

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