The Naked Truth: Leadership, Teams, and the Illusion of Feedback

In a world awash with information, teams and leaders often struggle not with access to the truth, but with the courage to face it. In boardrooms, project updates, performance reviews, and even casual check-ins, challenging conversations become a battleground between perception and reality. 

But what if we take a different perspective? That most feedback isn’t truth at all – it’s just data, filtered through bias, fear, and self-preservation?

This article makes the business case for shifting how we think about feedback. It explores the psychology behind why teams avoid the truth, why leaders reward palatable lies, and how wilful blindness quietly derails strategy. 

Because if your organisation can’t handle the truth – it won’t handle the future either.

Contents

• Introduction: A Short Story
• Inconvenient Truths and Leadership
• Feedback as Data, Not Decree
• The Danger of Misinterpretation
• Case Study: When Silence Costs More Than Mistakes
• How Leaders Can Respond More Wisely
• Conclusion: A Culture Ready for Truth

If you prefer to listen instead, here is a short, AI-generated Deep Dive conversation that draws together the key points of this article. It’s not a verbatim transcription; more an exploration of themes, just in a different format.

Introduction: A Short Story

I am going to start with a short story. 

It’s from the 19th century but still feels relevant today, and concerns our complex relationship with the truth…

And right now, it seems that the world still prefers the Lie dressed as Truth rather than facing the bare, uncomfortable reality of Truth herself.

What I appreciate about this story and this painting by French artist, Jean-Léon Gérôme is that they (metaphorically) lay bare the fundamental challenge that we have, both with how we handle “naked truth” and how we approach/avoid difficult conversations with others.

The painting was possibly a commentary on the Dreyfus Affair, a political conspiracy that shocked France in the 1890’s, but both the story and painting have much deeper historical roots. They reach right back to the Greek philosopher, Democritus and his quote about Truth residing in a well, (symbolising the concealment and/or oppression of truth) and the whip that Truth wields in the painting is her allegorical righteous anger at being hidden, and the discomfort the truth can bring when revealed.

The meaning is clear: eventually, the truth will hit hard, shaming those who have ignored it.

Of truth we know nothing, for truth is in a well”

Democritus (c.460BCE – c.370BCE)

And taking this back into our modern business world, let’s link Democritus with Israeli-American psychologist, Daniel Kahneman (1934 – 2024). 

The Greek thinker argued that perception was a subjective element; influenced by our individual experiences. And over two millennia later, Daniel Kahneman agrees; suggesting in Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), that our brains prioritise stories that feel coherent, not necessarily those that are true.

So maybe we have always had a troubled relationship with the idea (or maybe reality) of truth?

It seems that we prefer familiar lies to uncomfortable truths. And so leaders must contend not only with what is real, but what is perceived.

Inconvenient Truths and Leadership

Now, more than ever, leadership demands courage to speak truth to power and confront what Margaret Heffernan calls “wilful blindness”: the refusal to acknowledge facts that are inconvenient or just plain uncomfortable. 

In her book, Wilful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril, she outlines how organisations, and the leaders within them, have a tendency to look away from difficult truths, stemming in large part from fear, ego-attachment, inertia, or cultural pressure.

And the more status, power or reputation we have to lose, the greater the desire to move away from the exposure.

This blindness is a toxic protective mechanism. Telling or hearing difficult truths threatens our sense of identity, our credibility, our status, or the complicity of our relationships. We hide behind groupthink, hoping that silence, feigned ignorance or reassuring platitudes will shield us from the discomfort.

But as history and research show, it rarely does.

The iconic courtroom scene from “A Few Good Men” echoes the tension. Colonel Jessup’s furious retort: “You can’t handle the truth!” captures the core dilemma: we seek the truth but fear that it will destabilise more than it will clarify.

And yet, without it, we are building on fragile foundations.

But it’s not just about making great drama.

The CEO Magazine suggests that leaders who fail to face into difficult truths are allowing dysfunction to fester, diminishing innovation and eroding trust. 

we’re familiar with the undermining symptoms of this short-sightedness: the blame game, denial, the blind eye, the ball drop, withholding information or truth, being reactive at crisis point rather than proactive at causal point, lack of collaboration and engagement, and/or a general unwillingness to serve outside of the specific KPIs of one’s own role.

CEO Magazine, 2019

The antidote lies in developing a culture where truth can be spoken without punishment; in fostering the psychological safety that Amy Edmondson argues for.

But this culture isn’t built by policy; it’s shaped by daily behaviour.

Even with psychological safety, inconvenient truths challenge leaders to move from knowing to acting. 

Awareness without action breeds cynicism. And so we must learn to tolerate discomfort, challenge our complicity with others, and publicly value dissent, not just tolerate it.

Feedback as Data, Not Decree

Feedback has long been treated as a central pillar of performance management; something to be sought out and acted upon, but rarely challenged.

However, there are an increasing number of voices questioning the “take it all” notion of feedback. Take Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall in their HBR article, The Feedback Fallacy, arguing that feedback is more a mirror of the giver than an objective measure of the receiver.

Neuroscience backs this up. Receiving feedback, especially when negative, can quickly activate the brain’s threat response, making it harder to listen and learn. 

I am certainly not suggesting that we should avoid feedback – quite the opposite. 

But we do need to reframe it. Feedback should be treated as data: incomplete, subjective, and yet potentially valuable.

What this requires is a feedback culture of volume, diversity and frequency – multiple data sets given and received frequently (and I am talking daily, weekly) rather than annual set piece questionnaires.

And by ramping up the data set, we avoid the feedback pinball machine; bouncing from one piece of contradictory feedback to another. Instead we have the chance to see trends and patterns of useful feedback whilst recognising outlier data as interesting but not necessarily actionable.

This is something that we cover more extensively with our Leadership Loopholes.

Attachment Theory offers further insight. We withhold truth or soften feedback because we fear disrupting relationships. As psychologist John Bowlby suggested, humans are wired for attachment which, in the workplace, means we may prioritise harmony over honesty. 

And Canadian psychologist, Gabor Maté goes further. In his recent book, The Myth of Normal, he argues that when we choose attachment (concern for connection with others) over authenticity (care for ourselves), we are prioritising someone else’s opinion – and their acceptance of us – over our own sense of self.

“We’re born with a need for attachment and a need for authenticity. Most people abandon their true selves (authenticity) to please others and keep the relationships (attachments), even if they are ones that are toxic and destructive.”

The Myth of Normal, Gabor Maté, 2024

We need to be able to discern when empathy morphs into collusion.

Organisations, teams and individuals who lean into this nuance avoid the trap of taking feedback at face value. Instead, they look for patterns across multiple data points. They triangulate, contextualise, and interpret feedback with the same rigour they apply to financial or sales metrics.

To do this well, feedback needs to shift from a monologue to a dialogue. When we ask, “What did you see? What might I not be noticing?” we position feedback as insight, not indictment. Feedback becomes a mechanism for collective sense-making, not individual judgment.

The Danger of Misinterpretation

The cost of mistaking feedback for truth is high. Misinterpreted feedback derails careers, sours relationships, and lowers engagement. A study by Professor Frederik Anseel from UNSW Business School revealed that feedback framed as immutable judgement diminishes both motivation and organisational commitment.

After all, perception is filtered through bias, emotion, and context. What feels like truth to one person may be shaped by unspoken expectations, personal history, or organisational norms. 

Truth, in teams, is negotiated – not absolute.

More broadly, disengaged employees – often the casualties of poor feedback cultures – cost the UK economy up to £340 billion annually (Gallup UK Workplace Report, 2023). This isn’t just about morale; it’s a bottom-line issue. People disengage when they feel unheard, misjudged, or evaluated unfairly.

If we are in the business of creating high performance cultures, then we must learn to distinguish between feedback as evaluation and feedback as exploration. 

One closes doors; the other opens them. And we must be mindful of the subtle social dynamics that discourage candour. Protecting relationships is human – but in the absence of truth, relationships decay anyway.

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“Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man’s son may, but in the end truth will out.” 

Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare (1596)

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Case Study: When Silence Costs More Than Mistakes

Context

Veridata Analytics, (not their real name) is a fast-growing European tech firm, with a reputation built on innovation and delivery speed. Backed by recent Series B funding, it was preparing to launch InsightOS, a flagship AI platform promising real-time customer analytics for enterprise clients.

The internal mood was upbeat. Update meetings were filled with positivity. Leaders praised the team’s “resilience under pressure” and “laser focus.” Risks were discussed in vague terms, and slides leaned heavy on green status indicators. Senior management interpreted this as alignment and momentum.

The Problem

Beneath the surface, the product team was grappling with real issues. The natural language processing engine produced inconsistent results, the front-end lacked accessibility compliance, and integration with clients’ CRM systems remained untested. Developers raised concerns but middle managers were reluctant to escalate. One product lead admitted privately,
“It’s better to be the person who ‘makes it happen’ than the one who slows things down with problems.”

There was no formal mechanism for surfacing dissent – and an unspoken culture of heroism over honesty started to embed itself.

The Outcome

InsightOS launched on schedule but within a month, problems erupted. Key clients experienced data anomalies, user frustration, and delays in implementation.

Internally, frustration mounted. Engineering felt ignored. Sales accused product of overpromising. Leadership was blindsided. A confidential employee pulse survey revealed a steep drop in psychological safety and team trust, particularly in R&D and customer success. Attrition increased among early-career staff.

The cost of silence was now painfully clear – in credibility, lost revenue, and internal morale.

What changed?

Facing hard truths, Veridata’s executive team brought us in to design a six-month internal reset:

Truth-Telling Workshops: Facilitated sessions across functions focused on surfacing hidden concerns, separating feedback from blame, and rebuilding trust. Employees were invited to share “the hardest truth they hadn’t yet told” – anonymously, if need be.

Red Team Reviews: Before any significant launch, a cross-functional team challenges assumptions, stress-tests plans, and plays devil’s advocate – with executive sponsorship.

The “Data Not Decree” Principle: Feedback is now framed as data, not a final judgment. This shift allows more voices in the room, particularly from earlier-career employees. We helped leaders appreciate how to receive feedback without defensiveness.

Leadership Role-Modelling: Senior leaders committed to showing fallibility – publicly sharing when they’d missed signals or made flawed assumptions. This visibly reset the culture around vulnerability and truth-telling.

Quarterly ‘Post-Mortem with Purpose’: After every significant project, the team ran structured retrospectives not just on outcomes, but on what truths were ignored, distorted, or missed – and why.

The Result?

One quarter after the reset, employee engagement scores rebounded by 26%. Feature stability improved and clients began to re-engage. And equally importantly, internal feedback mechanisms were no longer feared – they were trusted.

Veridata is now in a very different place – seeing transparency not as a risk, but as a strategic asset. As one team lead put it, “We used to launch at full speed with blindfolds on. Now, we’ve still got pace – but we’ve got our eyes wide open.”

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How Leaders Can Respond More Wisely

Many articles and workshops on this topic will quite rightly emphasise psychological safety and regular check-in’s as a starting point. And I don’t disagree.

But I wanted to offer some other, less obvious, but actionable ways that leaders can respond:

Conclusion: A Culture Ready for Truth

The story of the Truth and Lie is a reminder that robust candour is not always comfortable, for all parties concerned. 

But I would argue that authentic leadership is about resisting the allure of the clothed Lie. And this means creating teams that can hear, hold, and act on truths that are difficult to face into.

Feedback, then, becomes not a tool for correction, but a practice of curiosity. Not a verdict, but a window.

In a world that is only going to get more complex and volatile, the organisations that thrive will be those that see feedback not as decree, but as data – and truth not as threat, but as the path to insight.

And perhaps most importantly: those that can distinguish between perception and reality, between relationship and performance, and between a convenient silence and a courageous voice. 

As Colonel Jessup shouted in A Few Good Men, “You can’t handle the truth!” But the best leaders must prove that they can. And do.

If you would like to know more about how we help leaders and teams lean into the truth, just reach out and we can talk it through…