"What if your feedback is based on a story, not a fact?"
There’s a moment right before you speak to someone when something’s already happened in your mind. Let's say you’ve observed something, a teammate missing a meeting, replying late, raising concerns, merging code without discussion. And without meaning to, you start filling in the blanks. They’re disengaged. They’re not aligned. They’re resistant to change. They don’t care about quality. Can you see what's happened? What began as feedback has tipped into a certainty-driven response, not a conversation, but a quiet conviction about who they are and what they’ve done. That’s the Ladder of Inference in action. It’s how we all move from observation to meaning, to assumption, to conclusion, to action. And it happens fast. Especially under pressure. The problem isn’t that you’re wrong. It’s that by the time you speak, you may no longer be responding to what actually happened, you’re responding to a version of events shaped by your interpretation. I’ve done this more times than I can count. I’ve given feedback with certainty in my voice, when really, I was standing on a story I hadn’t checked. The fix isn’t to stop interpreting. That’s human. It’s to pause long enough to ask yourself: What did I actually observe? What else might be true? Is my feedback about the work, or about a narrative I’ve built around it? That pause changes everything. Until next time, ✉️ Enjoying The Messy Middle? If someone sent this email your way and you’d like to get it direct, you can sign up here. |