Most senior leaders have invested in feedback: training, toolkits, PDR prompts, even new frameworks. And yet the same issues keep resurfacing. Misunderstandings repeat. Friction between teams hardens. Problems get raised, then quietly parked.
That’s because feedback on its own often stays at the surface. It tells you what someone thinks, but not what the team needs to shift to improve how work actually happens.
Real change usually comes from something deeper: team conversation that turns feedback into shared learning, shared decisions, and new habits.
This matters across the public sector. In higher education, it might show up in assessment handovers or student support pathways. In the NHS, it’s how teams learn after complex cases. In local authorities, it’s how teams coordinate around residents and community need. Different context, same pattern: feedback without collective reflection rarely changes the system.
Feedback is often treated like a fix. Someone gives it, someone receives it, something improves.
In real teams, that is not how it plays out.
Common barriers senior leaders see:
This is why psychological safety matters. Research on psychological safety shows teams learn and improve when people feel safe to take interpersonal risks, like speaking up, admitting mistakes, and asking for help.
If the environment does not support learning behaviour, feedback becomes noise, not change.
Related Strengthify reading: How to Make Feedback Work: Turning Team Reflection Into Real Change
If feedback is the data, team reflection is the meaning making.
Reflection helps teams answer:
There is strong evidence that team learning behaviour is a route through which psychological safety influences performance. In other words, safety supports learning, learning supports improvement.
More recent research also points to the value of team reflexivity, teams taking time to reflect on objectives, processes, and ways of working, as a driver of feedback seeking and learning.
This is the shift senior leaders can sponsor: not more feedback, but better team learning loops.
A senior operational lead once described a familiar cycle:
“We ask for feedback. People share it. Everyone nods. Then we go back to normal and nothing changes. It’s not lack of honesty. It’s that we never turn it into a team decision.”
When we looked closer, the team had plenty of feedback. What it lacked was a shared process for turning that feedback into new ways of working.
Once the team introduced short, structured reflection moments, things changed quickly. Not because they worked harder, but because they worked with more clarity: what to stop, what to continue, what to test, and who owned the next step.
This is what team development looks like under pressure: small routines that create shared learning.
Teams often avoid reflection because it can slip into blame or negativity. That is where a working strengths lens is powerful.
Strengths-based feedback does not ignore what is hard. It helps teams talk about it without losing hope, because the conversation stays grounded in contribution and possibility.
It supports:
Related Strengthify reading: Strengths and Struggles: Talk About What’s Hard Work
Here’s a practical menu senior leaders can encourage managers and teams to use. The key is structure: start with reality, move to learning, finish with action.
1) Start with what is happening
Use these to surface the pattern without blaming people.
2) Then name what is working
This is where strengths and progress become visible.
3) Move into learning
This is where teams turn experience into improvement.
Psychological safety research consistently highlights leaders framing work as learning, inviting participation, and responding productively when people raise issues.
4) Finish with action and ownership
Reflection only becomes change when someone owns the next step.
A useful rule: one decision, one owner, one review date.
Senior leaders do not need to facilitate every conversation. But you can create the conditions where team conversation becomes normal rather than exceptional.
Protect small reflection time
Five to ten minutes at the right moment beats a two hour review nobody repeats.
Reward learning, not just delivery
If people are only rewarded for output, feedback will stay cautious. If learning is valued, honesty increases.
Make psychological safety a leadership behaviour, not a statement
Leaders set the tone through responses. When someone raises an issue, do you punish, minimise, or get curious? Research emphasises that safety is shaped by how leaders respond in the moment.
Encourage team led learning loops
Ask teams to bring you one thing they are testing, not a long report. That keeps change active and practical.
In complex public sector environments, change rarely lands through a one off intervention. What tends to work is a programme that helps teams build shared language and then embed habits that make improvement routine.
That programme often includes:
If you are sponsoring change across services, we can help you build a strengths-based development approach that strengthens feedback culture and turns reflection into real change.
Contact Strengthify to discuss a long term approach to team learning and change.
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Final thought
Feedback matters. But feedback alone rarely changes how teams work.
If you want change that lasts, build the habit of team conversation: honest enough to name what is hard, strengths-led enough to keep hope and momentum, and structured enough to lead to clear action.
That is how feedback becomes a culture, not a moment.