How to Recognize “Hidden Feedback”

When Maya* became chief marketing officer at a consumer goods company, she soon found herself fielding her CEO’s detailed questions about campaign timelines, with a frequency that struck her as unusual for someone of her seniority. What she initially dismissed as the CEO’s micromanagement actually concealed his deeper—but unstated—concern about her ability to drive execution in agile and timely ways. Unbeknownst to Maya, the CEO was beginning to doubt he’d made the right decision to hire her.

Meanwhile, HR SVP Leon noticed his peers on the leadership team beginning to send representatives to his senior talent reviews, rather than attending themselves as they used to do. Leon grew increasingly frustrated with their lack of engagement but failed to realize that their behavior reflected their unstated perceptions that he wasn’t using their time efficiently (and relatedly, that if this is how he runs meetings, his function must be bloated and ineffective).

These scenarios illustrate a common leadership challenge: recognizing when seemingly tactical interactions are actually masking deeper feedback. When leaders fail to pick up on “hidden feedback” signals, they miss the chance to understand and respond to critical information—about their business, their relationships, or their organization. This failure to detect feedback can hit leaders from every direction: upward from those they manage, downward from those they report to, laterally from peers, or externally from investors, board members, clients, vendors, or strategic partners. No matter where the breakdown happens, the consequences—worse decisions, persistent errors, strained relationships, and stagnant growth—are costly.

Why Vital Feedback Stays Hidden

Despite countless books, articles, and trainings that encourage people to provide direct feedback, speak candidly, or “say the thing,” tremendously important feedback often remains unspoken, or at best gets delivered indirectly, masked within routine exchanges, questions, or seemingly minor suggestions. Why is this?

First, feedback providers often hesitate to deliver direct messages, particularly if they have any kind of fear about repercussions or when the culture they’re operating within discourages directness. Second, people sometimes incorrectly assume that they’ve given the feedback more explicitly than they really have (“I made the same correction three times. Isn’t it obvious that I’m displeased with this?”). Finally, people with critiques or suggestions may not even consciously realize that they have important feedback to give. They may be rushing quickly between tasks, out of touch with their actual concerns, lacking the words to express their intuitions, or only vaguely aware of the broader message that would be important to convey.

Regardless of the cause, when feedback stays hidden, leaders are the ones left in the dark. Key concerns go unspoken, early warning signs get missed, and valuable insights never make it to them. By the time problems become impossible to ignore, leaders are left wondering: Why didn’t anyone tell me sooner?

How to Detect and Learn from Hidden Feedback

Leaders can take practical steps to uncover hidden feedback and ensure they’re hearing what truly matters. If you want to be certain you’re getting the feedback you need, try these four strategies:

1. Look for hidden feedback cues.

Like the ripples created by a current beneath still water, hidden feedback leaves subtle patterns—if you know how to spot them. By training your curiosity to recognize these signals, you can uncover unspoken concerns before they escalate. Here are three key indicators to watch for:

• Repeated questions or suggestions about seemingly small details. When stakeholders repeatedly return to ostensibly minor suggestions or questions, this may mask broader, unstated concerns about capability, readiness, or performance. These micro-moments typically aggregate into unspoken feedback about perceptions of leadership blind spots or weaknesses.

• Increased involvement in tactical decisions. When people suddenly engage (or send in proxies to engage) in decisions that would not typically involve them, or when they request more reviews than usual, it can indicate eroding confidence.

• Unexpected decreases in engagement. When people decrease their involvement or participation without explaining why, it can be a signal that they either don’t want to engage or have deprioritized the work—both of which may indicate growing concerns about leadership effectiveness or strategic alignment.

If you notice these patterns, don’t ignore them—get curious. What’s going unsaid? What concerns might be hiding beneath the surface? The sooner you look into the real message, the sooner you can address it.

Examples in action:

In addition to simply providing the timeline data her CEO kept requesting, CMO Maya began to wonder whether her boss had more concerns than he was stating. She started taking mental notes of the patterns of his requests, which led her to grow curious about the possible reasons why he frequently asked about execution timelines.

After SVP Leon got past his frustration at his peers’ seeming disrespect of his meetings, he recognized that perhaps there was more to their decreased engagement. He asked himself what valid—or at least understandable—reasons might be behind their choice to send delegates rather than attend his meetings themselves.

2. Make it safe for others to tell you the truth.

Whether you realize it or not, people are always assessing the risk of telling you the full truth. The safer they feel, the more willing they’ll be to share the feedback you need—and the less they’ll need to work up the courage to do so.

One way to make them more comfortable sharing candidly is to normalize feedback by framing it as a natural part of your ongoing learning. This might sound like:

• “As I look ahead, I’m trying to grow my leadership, and I value your perspective. What blind spots should I be aware of that I might not be seeing?”

• “I’d value your perspective on how my message landed in today’s meeting. What signals or reactions did you notice? And how did it land with you?”

• “Given your role, you might see things I’m missing. What patterns or concerns should I be aware of?”

Even when asked, however, sometimes others are reluctant to give direct feedback. In these instances, it can help to instead request strategic counsel and advice. This kind of reframing lowers barriers, taps into people’s natural desire to be helpful, and often leads to richer insights about performance gaps and development opportunities. This could sound like:

• “As part of my professional development, I’m always looking to improve. What’s one thing you think I could be doing differently to raise my game?”

• “Based on your experience and vantage point, how might you approach this challenge differently than I am?”

• “If you were mentoring someone facing similar circumstances, what guidance would you offer?”

In some cases, you may need to articulate the pattern you’re seeing and more explicitly ask if there might be something important you should be hearing. This direct acknowledgment often makes space for stakeholders to surface concerns they’ve been hesitant to address explicitly. This could sound like:

• “I’ve noticed this topic coming up in several conversations. Is there a broader concern we should be discussing?”

• “This seems to be a recurring theme in our interactions. What underlying issues could we be addressing?”

• “I’m seeing a pattern here that might signal something important. Could you help me understand if there’s more to explore?”

Examples in action:

After Maya’s curiosity was piqued, she directly said to her CEO, “I’ve noticed you’re particularly interested in our timelines. Is there any broader concern about our execution speed, or anything else? If so, I’d love to understand it so we can step up and perform at our best.”

Similarly, Leon approached his peers individually, saying, “I’ve noticed a pattern in attendance at my senior talent meetings. I’m curious if there’s something about our process that isn’t working for you, or if you have suggestions for how to make them better.”

3. Listen to learn.

Whichever question you end up asking, whether or not you uncover the hidden feedback depends fully on how well you listen. The kind of listening that matters is very different from the listening most of us do. It is not listening to prove a point, defend yourself, or look like you’re listening. Listening to learn means deeply and intentionally seeking to understand the most essential messages someone is conveying to you. Here’s how to do it:

Give it time. When you ask someone for feedback who hasn’t been giving it, it may catch them off guard. If they become quiet, don’t rush to fill the silence—let them gather their thoughts. You may also need to return to the conversation when they’re ready. You can even preempt this by previewing the question for them and letting them know that you’d like their thoughts on it the next time you get together. For example, “I’d love your perspective on _____. Can you give it some thought, and let’s discuss when we meet next?”

Pull the thread. Once they start sharing, don’t assume the first thing they say is the only or even the most important feedback they have for you. Especially if they’re reluctant feedback-givers, they may dip their toe in the water with an insignificant suggestion or beat around the bush to see how you react. Once they begin to share something, encourage them to go deeper by pulling the thread with follow-up questions, such as, “That’s interesting. Can you say more about that?” or “Very helpful. Can you share an example?” or “Great to know that. What else?”

Tell back and test. Finally, make sure you actually understand the feedback before you respond prematurely. To avoid this pitfall, paraphrase what you heard and check if you got it right. This is one of the most underutilized but impactful strategies that every leader should have in their toolbox. Not only does it significantly increase the chances you’ll hear the other person accurately, but it also signals to them how much you value what they have to say, since you’re taking the time to check if you’ve grasped their message.

Examples in action:

After Maya asked the question, her CEO admitted he was indeed worried about the company’s ability to respond quickly to market changes. Maya asked him to say more, and he said that his concern applied to every function of the company. Maya then said, “But just to check, do you specifically feel concerned about marketing?” The CEO confirmed that he did worry about marketing’s execution speed and shared some examples of what made him worried.

Leon discovered from his peers that his meetings were perceived as inefficient. This surprised him, since he always put a lot of time and effort into developing detailed agendas with structured opportunities for everyone to share their views. After he asked for examples, he found out that his busy peers would have preferred to receive his updates and questions in advance and to only have meetings for controversial issues that require live engagement.

4. Reward the risk they took.

Once you’ve heard the feedback, it’s essential that you provide positive reinforcement to the feedback-giver for being more direct with you than they have in the past. If they haven’t consistently been giving you feedback up to this point, chances are they’ve felt some level of discomfort in speaking up. Acknowledge and reward their effort. Thank them for taking the time—and possibly the risk—to share their perspective.

It’s worth noting that expressing appreciation doesn’t mean you’re automatically agreeing with the feedback or committing to take the actions they may want you to take. It simply signals that you value their input and are open to learning from them. More importantly, it’s an investment in the relationship, because the way you respond to their feedback has everything to do with whether they’ll continue to be open with you or whether future feedback will stay hidden.

It’s now up to you to process their input and decide how you want to act on it. It often helps to enlist a friend, coach, or mentor to help you with this. Once you do, close the loop by following up. Share how you made sense of their feedback and what, if anything, you plan to do about it. Ask for their reactions and if there’s anything else they think you should consider (again, you’re not obligated to do what they say). This reconnection is essential if you want them to continue being direct with you, since you’re showing them they’re not wasting their time or energy by doing so.

Examples in action:

While it stung initially, the honest conversation between Maya and her CEO led her to develop a more agile marketing approach with regular velocity metrics in her reports. She went back to the CEO and not only expressed gratitude for his input but also shared her new approach and asked how well it addressed his concerns. Not long after, the CEO commented that his confidence in the marketing team’s campaigns had never been higher.

Although it felt uncomfortable at first, Leon revamped his meeting approach and thanked his peers for their candor. Within a few months, he realized that much of what he had been convening meetings to discuss was far more efficiently handled via emails, and when he did call meetings, executive attendance returned and cross-departmental collaboration significantly improved.

. . .

The gap between the feedback leaders need and the feedback they actually hear represents one of the most significant yet addressable barriers to leadership effectiveness. By developing the skills to detect hidden feedback cues, create psychological safety for honest dialogue, listen with genuine curiosity, and reward candor, leaders can transform these seemingly ordinary exchanges into extraordinary growth opportunities. In business environments where adaptation is paramount, leaders who systematically uncover and leverage hidden feedback gain an unmatched competitive advantage: They see around corners others miss, repair cracks before they become chasms, and build the kind of trust-based cultures that withstand the most challenging circumstances.

*Names have been changed for privacy.

Copyright 2025 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.

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