There’s a specific kind of feedback that almost never happens in organizations. Not the annual review kind. Not the great job on that presentation kind. The kind that would actually change something. In this episode we look at why that feedback doesn’t get delivered — and what it looks like when someone is brave enough to deliver it anyway — through the story of Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan, and the triangle offense.
What we cover:
What the feedback nobody gives actually sounds like — three specific versions of it that are true for someone sitting in a one-on-one right now, hearing something vague about continued growth instead
What Phil Jackson saw in 1989 that nobody else in the Bulls organization was willing to name — and why seeing it clearly was actually the harder of the two decisions he had to make
Why Jackson didn’t deliver the feedback through a conversation — and what installing the triangle offense reveals about how specific feedback actually lands versus how it gets defended against
What it cost Jackson to hold the line when Jordan pushed back — in his first year, with the best player in the league, with the front office watching
The shift: when Jordan stopped fighting the triangle and what it made possible for Scottie Pippen, for the team, and ultimately for Jordan himself
Kim Scott’s ruinous empathy — the quadrant where most leaders actually live — and why the result looks like kindness and functions like negligence
The asymmetry that explains why this keeps happening: vague feedback is low-cost for the giver and high-cost for the receiver, and most organizational systems don’t create enough incentive to close that gap
Warren Buffett on what it’s meant to have Charlie Munger tell him when he’s wrong — and why that relationship is rare enough that Buffett keeps mentioning it
The question to take into your next performance conversation:
Not what rating does this person deserve. What do they need to hear from me that they aren’t going to hear from anyone else? Someone in that person’s life needs to tell them what’s actually limiting their signal. In most organizations that person is their direct leader. If it isn’t you — it’s probably nobody.
This episode is inspired by and aligned with the latest Ready Set article published on Substack — The Feedback Nobody Gives. Find it at thereadyset.c2advising.com.
The Ready Set is a behavioral leadership model built on 15+ years of observational data. New content drops weekly on Substack.
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