How Can Leaders Give and Receive Feedback in a Way That Actually Helps People Grow? | A Three-Way Feedback Conversation with Carlo Bos, Lottie Martinez & Christie Mann
Summary:
What if feedback was less about judging performance and more about helping people see what they cannot yet see for themselves?
This week on The UpLevel Podcast, Christie Mann, Carlo Bos, and Lottie Martínez invite listeners behind the scenes of UpLevel’s work developing its faculty for a large-scale global leadership initiative with a leading technology company.
The conversation is a real three-way feedback session following a three-day client delivery. The team uses a deliberate process designed to create space for people to give feedback clearly, receive it openly, and recover when needed. Each of them practices here exactly what they teach their clients.
The feedback also surfaces deeper leadership questions:
--How do you know when to step forward?
--When should you create more room for someone else?
--How can you receive feedback without immediately defending, explaining, or fixing?
--What does psychological safety actually require from the people giving feedback?
--What happens when leaders treat feedback as part of an ongoing relationship rather than a performance review?
This conversation offers a rare look at leadership development from the inside. The team earned a 100% net promoter score from the client, yet they still take time to examine what contributed to that result and where each person can continue to grow. That’s the heart of stewardship, the work continuing well past a successful delivery.
In This Episode:
Why strong teams need feedback even when performance is already excellent
How to create psychological safety around feedback
The difference between evaluating someone and developing someone
Why feedback can include amplification, not only correction
How leaders can become more discerning about when to take up space and when to create it
What it means to “stay” in a difficult conversation
How leaders can receive feedback without becoming defensive or reactive
Why client stewardship requires both boundaries and relationships
How leaders can make invisible skills visible so others can develop them
What it means to embody the work you teach
Organizations that build real leadership capacity don’t stop at a great outcome. The strongest ones build in moments like this one, deliberate, designed feedback that keeps the people delivering the work growing too. If you’re thinking about what it takes to build this kind of practice into your own organization, the Leadership Development ROI Guide walks through what that looks like in practice. You can download it here: https://www.uplevelproductions.com/freeresources-1
Order of Topics:
Why high-performing teams still need feedback
How to create psychological safety during feedback conversations
What makes feedback developmental rather than evaluative
How to receive feedback without immediately defending yourself
Knowing when to take up space and when to create space
Building the capacity to stay in difficult conversations
Trusting your authority as a leader
Using feedback to amplify strengths
Developing faculty and leadership capability
What “Being the Work” looks like in practice
Action Items:
For leaders and teams
Schedule a debrief after your next win. Put 40 minutes on the calendar within two weeks of finishing a project that went well, and use the time to name what contributed to the result so your team can repeat it.
Write a design alliance before the feedback starts. Ask everyone to agree on how they’ll receive feedback, how they’ll give it, and what they’ll do if something feels sticky.
Ask each person to give themselves feedback first. Invite a plus and a delta from the receiver before anyone else speaks. The giver can then build on what the person already sees, and anything that’s already been said doesn’t need to be repeated.
Use two glows and two grows. Keep the amount of feedback small enough to be remembered. A glow names something to turn the dial up on, and a grow offers a developmental invitation.
Organize feedback around shared competencies. UpLevel used four: embodying the program stake and client context, co-active presence and front of the room capability, faculty partnership and development, and client and onsite stewardship and program excellence. Choose three or four that fit your team, so feedback has a common reference point.
Build in time to share, receive, and recover. Leave a pause between rounds so people can breathe and take in what they heard. Feedback can land heavily even when it’s kind.
Close with a word or two for your current state. Ask everyone to name how they feel before you hang up. The words in this episode were “seen and tended to,” “deeply grateful,” and “honored and complete.”
For your own reflection
Name one place you tend to over-function and one place you tend to check out. Both came up in this conversation, and each points to a different choice you could make about when to take up space and when to create it.
Practice receiving feedback without answering it right away. In client settings, try listening fully, letting the feedback sink in, and then showing the next day how you’ve worked with it. Giving an example in the moment can wait.
Notice what a colleague does that you want to bottle up. Pick one thing you’ve seen someone do well this month and decide where you’ll try it.
For coaches, facilitators, and faculty teams
Invest in the third chair. Give newer facilitators a seat at the front of the room and a three-way debrief afterward, so they receive the same development as the lead faculty.
Co-create authority for your partner. In your next delivery, look for one moment to hand the thread to your partner.
Practice the stay with clients. When a client conversation keeps going, ask yourself who the relationships in the room are and whether now is the time to stay longer or to draw the line. Both can be the right choice.
About Carlo and Lottie:
Carlo Bos is a leadership development expert, executive coach, and former Co-CEO of the Co-Active Training Institute, where he led during a pivotal period of transformation from 2018 to 2023. Over the past 20 years, he has worked with executives across industries as an assessments expert, program designer, and master facilitator, building and scaling leadership programs that have reached thousands. Having sat on both sides of the leadership and development table, Carlo is passionate about cultivating authentic, values-driven leadership. Today, he focuses on restoring healthy male leadership while helping organizations scale human intelligence alongside rapid advances in AI, in service of growth, inclusion, and impact.
Lottie Martínez is an executive coach, leadership development facilitator, and co-founder of Blue Bridge, a talent development firm. Since 2015, she has accumulated over 2,800 hours of executive coaching experience. She designs and facilitates leadership development programs and works with C-suite leaders and leadership teams, supporting transformation across at least ten countries. A faculty member at the Co-Active Training Institute since 2016, she trains coaches globally and serves on a nonprofit board. Her background in engineering and international consulting, complemented by an MBA, brings a business and systems perspective to developing leaders and strengthening teams.
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About UpLevel Productions: Founded by Christie Mann, MA, CPCC, PCC, and Rachel Baldi, CPCC, PCC, UpLevel creates, produces, and delivers Transformative Experiences, Workshops, Training, Events + Media that develop leaders who make our world a healthier, more alive, and connected place to be. As Associate CTI Faculty Partners, UpLevel is licensed to sell, produce, and deliver Co-Active coach training and leadership development programs around the world to support the transformational growth of individuals and culture inside the workplace and organization. www.uplevelproductions.com Instagram @uplevelproductions Facebook & LinkedIn @uplevelproductionscompany
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