A few years back, I watched a seasoned team lead sit down with one of his brightest young managers after a major project completely derailed.
The manager walked into the office visibly bracing for impact, shoulders pinned to his ears, ready to defend every decision he’d made. For twenty straight minutes, the leader methodically went down a checklist of every single thing that went wrong: missed deadlines, blown budgets, mismanaged timelines. Every point was entirely accurate. Every critique was completely fair.
By the end of it, the young manager looked utterly defeated. He didn't walk out inspired to fix the problem; he walked out paralyzed by the fear of ever making another decision.
That meeting stuck with me because it highlights a trap we fall into all the time as leaders. We think our primary job is to be the resident inspector general of yesterday's mistakes. But if all we ever do is dissect what went wrong, we accidentally train our people to stop trying.
That is why I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the balance between feedback and feedforward, and how mastering both changes everything in our corporate offices, our ministry teams, and our homes.
The Limits of Looking Backward
We spend a ridiculous amount of time in leadership looking in the rearview mirror. We sit down for performance reviews, post-mortems, and quarterly check-ins, and we spend ninety percent of the time dissecting what went wrong last month, last quarter, or last year. And look, we have to look back. Accountability matters. Scripture reminds us in Proverbs to pay attention to the condition of our flocks and know the state of our herds. We need to know what actually happened.
Feedback is retrospective. It looks at what is already done. It is crucial for catching errors, setting baseline standards, and making sure we aren't repeating the same blind spots.
The problem is how it feels. Even when delivered with the best intentions, feedback often triggers defensiveness. People feel like their character is on trial because we are talking about a failure that already happened. It’s hard to build confidence when someone feels like they’re constantly being audited.
Jesus gave us a great model for dealing with the past, but notice how He always pivoted toward the future. When He met people in their mess, He named the reality of it, but His ultimate word was almost always directional: "Go, and sin no more." He diagnosed the past just enough to redeem the future.
Stepping Into Feedforward
This is where feedforward comes in, a concept popularized by executive coach Marshall Goldsmith. Instead of telling someone what they did wrong yesterday, feedforward focuses entirely on how they can succeed tomorrow.
You don't talk about past mistakes. You offer solutions, ideas, and suggestions for the next iteration.
When you shift the conversation this way, the psychological dynamic completely changes. The ego steps down. People stop defending why they messed up last week and start brainstorming how to win next week. It removes the fear of failure and replaces it with momentum.
As leaders, we see this biblical principle in how Paul coached Timothy or how iron sharpens iron. We aren't just pointing out a dull blade; we are actively working together on the grindstone to shape a better edge for the work ahead.
Striking the Balance on the Ground
You can't throw out feedback entirely; otherwise standards slip into chaos. And you can't live exclusively in feedforward, or you will ignore recurring structural problems or bad behavior that needs real correction.
Here is what it actually looks like in daily practice:
- Use feedback when accountability is broken. If a deadline was missed because of carelessness, or a core value was violated, you have to address what happened clearly and directly.
- Use feedforward for growth and innovation. When someone is stretching into a new responsibility, trying a creative approach, or trying to break through a wall, give them prospective guidance. Help them see the runway ahead of them.
Leadership isn't about being an inspector general finding every flaw, nor is it about being a cheerleader ignoring reality. It’s about being a steady guide who can look at what went wrong, deal with it honestly, and then immediately turn the team's eyes toward what can go right.
How are you balancing the two in your teams right now? Are you spending all your time auditing yesterday, or are you actually building a runway for tomorrow?
Yours in daily growth,
Rumishael