Feedback that lands and leading difficult personalities

Feedback that lands stays on the task and the next action. Feedback that fails climbs into identity. Difficult personalities are what happens when a high performer has been allowed to treat the standard as optional because the numbers still look good. I coach the three together because they fail together: praise that is a label, correction that is a character study, and a “genius” nobody will contract. The organisation does not experience a development programme. It experiences whether the person in the chief executive role will name behaviour, protect the work, and still hold the person who is expensive to hold.

This is not a personality makeover. I do not sell those. It is not therapy. It is not a workshop on types. It is a working relationship with a standard, a scoreboard and a conversation you can close. If the live problem is the talk you will not have, or the call you will not make, start in trust under pressure.

If the live problem is a culture that will not hold a miss, read accountability that scales. This chapter is the personal version of the same spine: praise and feedback that change what people do this week, an honest account of why feedback so often makes things worse, and a way to lead the people who drain the room without pretending they are a weather system.

Frequency is not a soft extra. Gallup found that 80 per cent of employees who received meaningful feedback in the past week are fully engaged, and that people are 3.6 times more likely to strongly agree they are motivated to do outstanding work when their manager provides daily rather than annual feedback. That is not a plea to hover. It is a plea to stop storing the truth for a review cycle. At this altitude the review cycle is already theatre. The work is live. The feedback should be too.

Give and receive praise and feedback

Praise and feedback that change behaviour name an action, an impact and a next stretch. Labels do not. “You are a natural leader” is incense. “You framed the two options and named the irreversible cost before we opened the pack” is something a person can do again on Thursday. I want the second sentence in the room. I will not spend coaching hours on the first.

Focus area 24 is blunt on this: reward and celebrate actions rather than performance labels, and understand their effects. Labels feel generous in the moment. They are expensive later. A label becomes a costume. The person starts protecting the costume. When you later need to correct a miss, you are not correcting a forecast. You are attacking an identity you handed them. That is how feedback becomes a fight.

Give praise the way you would give a useful note to an athlete after a race. What did they do. What did it do to the result. What is the next inch. Do it close to the work, in the room that saw the work when you can, and without a tax. A tax is the praise that arrives with a “but” you have been storing. Split them. If you have a correction, have it. Do not launder it through a compliment so you can feel kind.

Give corrective feedback on the same card. Action. Impact. Ask. Close. That is the sibling of the Name, Evidence, Impact, Ask, Close structure for tougher talks. You do not need a different personality for praise and for correction. You need the same precision. People trust a chair who uses one standard on good news and bad news. They do not trust a chair who is poetic on wins and forensic on misses, or the reverse.

How to give it, in practice:

Stay on the task. “In the Monday pack the downside was in appendix four, and the board heard a clean story. I need the downside on page two next cycle.” That is feedback. “You are political” is a diagnosis you cannot inspect. If you cannot point at a page, a date, a sentence or a number, you are not ready.

Ask for the next proof, not for remorse. A revised pack, a customer call, a decision right handed back — those are proofs. Put a date on them.

Do it while the work is still warm. Annual feedback is an archive. Weekly is a craft. Daily, on live work, is how you stay in step with the business. The meeting is for patterns. The sentence is for the play.

Receive it as if you still have something to learn, because you do. The CEOs who stall here do it in 90 seconds: they explain, they contextualise, they put the other person on trial for tone. Write it down. Ask one clarifying question: “Which action, specifically?” Repeat the ask. Thank them for the cost of saying it. If you need to disagree, do it the next day against the facts. Defence in the moment is how you train the inner circle to bring you fog.

Receiving praise is a skill as well. Do not bat it away as humility. That trains people to stop being specific. Do not swallow it as identity. That trains you to need the next hit. Take the action. File it. Go back to the work. If someone praises a label — “you’re a visionary” — ask them which decision they mean. You are teaching them the standard you want.

Feedback that cannot be written on a card will not survive the week.

I use a Trusted Feedback Loop with senior people: a small, named circle, a short cadence, and questions about behaviour rather than about “how am I doing.” “How am I doing” invites a performance. “Where did my last decision land, and what did I do in the room that helped or hurt it?” invites a fact. If you want the awareness work underneath this, it lives in self and team awareness. Awareness without a loop is trivia. A loop without a standard is a salon.

Praise the action. If you praise the label, you will have to fight the costume later.

Do not praise heroics that broke the system. If someone saved the week by ignoring a decision right, thank the save and then repair the right. Otherwise you have taught the company that the standard is optional when someone is talented. That is how you manufacture the difficult personality you will later claim you “inherited.”

Do not run praise as a public currency and correction as a private hobby, or the reverse, without knowing why. Public praise of actions teaches the room what good looks like. Public correction of a person teaches the room to hide. Private praise of a favourite teaches politics. Private correction of a public miss teaches the team that the miss did not happen. Choose on purpose. If you cannot explain the choice, you are managing your own discomfort.

When the table cannot give or receive this without theatre, do not add a 360 for its own sake. Coach the executive team. A 1:1 can prepare the chief executive. It cannot watch the politics. Feedback among equals is a performance system, not a vibe — the same point as safety at the executive table, aimed at the sentence rather than the climate.

Why feedback may fail

Feedback fails when it takes attention off the work and puts it on the self, when it arrives without permission or precision, or when nothing happens after the sentence. I say that as a coach who has watched expensive conversations produce worse quarters. The instinct in the chief executive role is to give more: more colour, more examples, more of your autobiography. More is often the problem.

The research on this is older than most of the frameworks sold around it, and it is more honest.

Over one-third is the sentence I want in your head before you book another “honest conversation” as a substitute for a standard. Feedback is not automatically a gift. It is an intervention. Interventions have side effects. If you aim at the person, you should not be surprised when the work gets worse.

Failure has a weekly shape.

No permission. You ambush. You use a town hall, a joke, a board pack or a 1:1 they thought was about something else. Adults can hear hard things. They cannot hear a trap. Ask for ten minutes on a named topic. If they cannot do it now, book it inside two days, not after the offsite.

No precision. You speak in traits. Strategic. Commercial. Executive presence. Collaborative. Those words feel senior. They are fog. Translate each into an action you saw and an action you want. If you cannot, you do not yet have feedback. You have a grievance.

Wrong altitude. You correct a draft as if it were a character. Or you treat a pattern of missed dates as a one-off typo. Match the altitude to the miss. A single pack gets a sentence. A quarter of buried downsides gets a protocol. A year of the same miss gets a role conversation, not a longer coaching metaphor.

Identity climb. You say “always” and “never.” You compare them to a sibling on the team. You bring their tone into a discussion of a number. They will climb with you. You will spend the hour on whether they are “that kind of person.” Kluger and DeNisi already told you where that hour goes.

No follow-up. You had a cathartic talk and did not write the ask. They heard support. You heard a turnaround. Thirty days later you are angry and they are confused. The artefact is the job. Three lines. Owner. Date. If you skip it, you are practising speech, not leadership.

The system will not hold it. You give clean feedback inside a company that still rewards the opposite. The hero who broke the process gets the bonus. The person who told you the downside early gets the cold face. In that climate, precise feedback is cruelty. Fix the accountability artefacts or you are asking people to be brave for your entertainment.

Follow-up is where most of my clients think they are done. They are not. The loop is: observe the next instance, name it, close it. If the next instance does not happen because you never look, you did not give feedback. You gave a speech and went back to email.

Permission is not a legal form. It is a sentence: “I want twenty minutes on how the last two packs landed with the board. Is now possible, or tomorrow at eight?” If they say tomorrow, take tomorrow. If they never have a slot, that is data about the relationship, not about the diary.

Precision is a writing problem before it is a courage problem. Write the action as if a sceptical chair would have to sign it. If you would not put it in minutes, do not put it in a 1:1 as if it were fact.

I keep a short list of things not to do, because they fail so reliably. Do not sandwich. The sandwich teaches people to wait for the blade, and to discount the praise. Do not outsource the sentence to HR so you can stay liked. Do not give feedback about a person to a room that cannot act on it. Do not use a 360 as a weapon you were unwilling to wield in person. Do not collect other people’s grievances and deliver them as “the team feels.” If the team feels it, the team can be in the room, or you can own the judgement as yours.

When feedback has already failed, do not double the dose. Change the altitude. If task-level notes have not moved the work, you are in a tough conversation about the seat, not in a longer feedback session about the soul. Kindness is naming that shift early.

Lead difficult personalities

A difficult personality at this level is usually a high performer with an edge the system has agreed to carry. Intensity, brilliance, political skill, victimhood, chaos — the mask changes. The bill does not. Other people route around them. You tell yourself you cannot afford to lose them. You are already paying, just not on their line.

I will not diagnose people in this chapter. I am not a clinician and I do not run a zoo of types. I will describe patterns I see in the chief executive role, and the contract that makes them leadable — or not. If you need a personality model, you are looking for a story. If you need a company that still works on Monday, you need expectations, autonomy, consequences and a date.

Start with the work, not the mask. What do they own. What does good look like. What is out of bounds. What happens if they miss. Write it. If you cannot write it, you do not have a difficult person. You have an unwritten job, and they are filling the vacuum with their preferences.

The contract I use is dull on purpose.

Expectations. Three outcomes the seat must produce, in language a night shift could repeat. Not “be more collaborative.” “One joint forecast with sales, owned by you, every Monday, with the downside on page one.”

Autonomy. What they do not have to ask you. Difficult people often become difficult because you hover, or because you never actually gave them the right. Name the right. Then stop snatching it. If you cannot stop, the problem is you.

Consequences. What happens at day 30 and day 90 if the proof is missing: help, redesign, or a change of owner. Written before you are angry, so it is not invented in the room. This is the same ladder as accountability culture, applied to one expensive seat.

Cadence. When you will look. Weekly on the work. Monthly on the pattern. Do not wait for an incident. Incidents make you theatrical. Cadence makes you fair.

The mask is optional. The contract is not.

Patterns, not labels — because labels are how you climb into identity and fail the Kluger test.

The brilliant bottleneck will not share the work, the client, or the logic. The company is a hostage to their calendar. Contract: documented decision rights, a deputy named, two pieces of work transferred in 30 days. Kill: the deputy still cannot run the desk.

The politician runs a second company in the corridor. Charming in the room you can see, different in the one you cannot. Contract: no private deals that do not survive the ops meeting; one scoreboard; you will ask the other party, in their presence, what was agreed. Kill: a corridor version of a closed call, twice.

The victim has a climate for every miss. The market, the board, the other function, you. Contract: fact, cause, next proof, in the same format as everyone else. Empathy for load; no exemption from the artefact. Kill: three cycles with a story and no proof.

The chaos creator loves a new fire. They are indispensable in a crisis they helped design. Contract: no new workstream without a kill criterion; you will not praise the save that broke the process. Kill: a hero weekend that was avoidable, twice.

The absentee expert is always in another geography, another deal, another “more important” room. Contract: presence on the two meetings that actually run the business, or the seat changes. Kill: they miss the cadence and still expect the mandate.

The bully with a number uses force as a management system and hides behind the P&L. This is not an edge. This is a values call. Contract is the wrong word if people are being harmed. You already know. Waiting is the decision. The tough conversation belongs this week, not after the bonus.

None of these people are helped by you becoming a better amateur psychologist. They are helped by a standard that does not blink because they are talented. High performers sometimes come with edges. Intensity can fuel results. It can also empty the bench. Your job is to know which week you are in.

Do not take the bait of the mask. Talk to the work. Do not make them your project in a way that orphans the rest of the team. I have watched CEOs spend half their week on one difficult seat and then wonder why the quiet players left. Attention is a signal. So is who gets the exception.

Do not triangulate. If A tells you about B, walk it into a three-person meeting or decline the file. You are not a postbox. You are the chief executive. Use the team when the pattern is the team’s. A difficult person is often a symptom of a table that will not dissent. Winning teams hold morale under pressure without making one person the weather.

When the contract is missed, move. Help, redesign, or change of owner. “One more quarter” is how a year happens. If you want a rescue, time-box it and name the proof. If you want them to leave, do not run a six-month development arc as a way to avoid the sentence. That is your discomfort, billed to everyone around them.

I have no interest in making executives softer. I have interest in making edges usable. Usable means the rest of the company can still do its job. If they cannot, the talent is not talent. It is a private firm inside your firm.

I will not tell you that clean feedback produces a gentle culture. I will tell you it produces a culture in which people still know what the work is. That is enough. Softness without a standard is how high performers become unleadable. A standard without care is how you empty the room. The craft is the sentence, the date and the close.

If you have a person you have been managing around, or a feedback conversation you keep rehearsing in your head, book a confidential 30-minute conversation. We will write the action, the impact and the ask, and we will see whether you need a note, a contract, or a close. Bring the live problem, not a polished version of it.