Your feedback debt might be compounding!

I was talking about technical debt with a team last week. Shortcuts in the products/code that quietly pile up until the whole thing groans under the 'interest'.

And when we talked about feedback a bit later it hit me.

There's another kind of debt: Feedback Debt!

It's all the small things you noticed and didn't say. One observation here. A little nudge you swallowed there. Each one tiny. Harmless on its own.

But you don't pay it down. So it compounds. 💡

It gets expensive: most 'traditional' leaders settle the whole account at the annual review. Months of unsaid feedback, dumped in one sitting. That's not a conversation anymore. That's a shock.

And the numbers are blunt. Gallup says that 80% of people who got meaningful feedback in the past week are fully engaged at work.

That stuck with me. Five times the engagement, and the only difference is whether you said the small thing in the moment.

Think of your dentist. Brush and floss a little every day, it stays boring, but quite clean. Skip it for a year and "just check it once," and you've earned yourself a root canal. 🤷

Feedback works the similarly for me.

Here's what I personally believe: psychological safety isn't the absence of hard feedback. It's knowing the small stuff gets handled kindly and often, so the big stuff never ambushes you and becomes a natural progression, rather than a drastic surprise.

So one question for you this week. What's the one piece of feedback you've been saving too long for "the right moment"?