You’re in the weekly leadership meeting when your most senior hire cuts across a junior team member. Again. It’s the third time this month and you can see people starting to pull back. You know it needs addressing, but this person is also central to the business, trusted by clients, and not someone who takes criticism easily.
So you say nothing. The meeting ends the way it started.
If you’re in an owner-managed services firm, that moment is familiar. The people who most need feedback are often the hardest to give it to, because of the authority they carry, the relationships they hold, or the fact that raising it feels like a bigger risk than the problem itself. The research says that calculation is usually wrong.
What is upward feedback, and why do people avoid it?
Upward feedback means telling someone above you what you observe and what it costs the business. Research from the Centre for Creative Leadership shows leaders who receive quality feedback from those below them are significantly more likely to improve over 12 to 18 months. A 2023 CMI survey found 82% of UK managers say their culture actively discourages speaking up about poor management.
The avoidance is not irrational. Telling someone senior that their behaviour is creating a problem requires a level of psychological safety that many workplaces quietly undermine. London Business School research on team performance shows that teams where people feel able to challenge authority without fear of humiliation deliver better learning outcomes and stronger results. The gap between those who believe feedback is valuable and those who actually give it upward is largely explained by culture and by the absence of a clear method.
Harvard Business Review reports that 72% of employees believe their performance would improve if they received more corrective feedback from managers, provided it is delivered constructively. The same principle applies in reverse: leaders improve faster when the people closest to them say what they’re actually seeing.
For a founder or owner-manager reading this, the more useful question is whether the people around you have a way to give feedback, rather than whether feedback has value in the abstract. Because if the method is absent, the silence that follows is not agreement. It’s avoidance.
Why does this matter for your owner-managed business?
When upward feedback doesn’t land, problems compound quietly. CIPD’s 2024 Good Work Index found 35% of UK employees considering leaving cite poor management as a key reason. ACAS estimates unresolved workplace conflict costs UK organisations £28.5 billion a year, roughly £1,000 per employee. For an owner-managed services firm, where retaining good people is expensive and client relationships often rest on the same individuals, that cost is not abstract.
Small teams amplify the effect. In a ten-person firm, one senior person’s unaddressed behaviour pattern affects a proportionally larger share of the team than in a large corporate. There is no HR buffer, no sideways move, no matrix structure to absorb the friction. The founder or owner often ends up carrying the cost of what nobody said, through turnover they didn’t anticipate, client relationships that quietly cooled, or the slow erosion of a culture that was once straightforward.
Owner-managers who actively invite upward feedback, and who demonstrate how they respond when it comes by acknowledging it, acting on it, explaining when they choose not to, tend to build teams that surface problems earlier. The alternative, a culture where people tell leaders what they want to hear, is usually more comfortable and considerably more expensive.
Where will you actually meet this challenge?
In an owner-managed services firm, upward feedback typically surfaces in one of three situations: a senior hire whose behaviour is creating friction clients are beginning to notice; a director making decisions that exclude the people implementing them; or a long-standing colleague carrying a habit that’s fine one-to-one but disruptive in meetings. Each is recoverable when caught early and significantly harder once the pattern has become normal.
You’ll also meet it when the founder is the subject. Owner-managers who spend years receiving mostly positive signals from their team can be surprised to learn that their communication style, decision-making pace, or meeting dominance has been creating problems they weren’t aware of. That information rarely arrives unprompted. It tends to come out when someone leaves, when an external facilitator runs a session, or when a trusted colleague finally finds the right moment.
Timing matters. London Business School’s “Leadership Playbook” podcast on feedback notes that upward feedback lands better when it is close to the event rather than raised weeks later once the context has faded. Waiting until a formal review is common, but it reduces the usefulness of the conversation. A specific, recent example is more actionable than a general pattern described after the fact.
How do you structure the conversation so it lands?
The Centre for Creative Leadership’s SBI framework (Situation, Behaviour, Impact) gives the conversation a shape that stays factual rather than personal. Situation names the specific context. Behaviour describes what was observable, not what you interpreted. Impact states the business consequence. Radical Candor’s feedback playbook reinforces that naming the impact before unpacking the detail reduces defensiveness, because the leader grasps why it matters before the specifics are debated.
Here’s how the three elements work in practice. Situation: “In Tuesday’s client review meeting.” Behaviour: “You made the call on the revised pricing structure before opening it to questions.” Impact: “The team left unclear on the rationale, and I think it will be harder to present confidently to the client.”
Two things to avoid. First, personality-based critiques. Comments like “you’re a micromanager” or “you’re intimidating” lack specific situations and business consequences. CCL and Radical Candor are consistent: feedback without specifics is easily dismissed and more likely to feel like a personal attack. Second, the feedback sandwich, where criticism is wrapped tightly in praise before and after. HBR’s research on this pattern suggests the recipient often focuses on the positive and loses the actual point.
On channel: Radical Candor recommends in-person or video for any feedback involving emotions or power dynamics. Written channels strip out tone, and the reader fills the gap with whichever interpretation feels most threatening. A 20-minute one-to-one request framed around “a couple of things I think could help us with the client-facing team” is more likely to get a fair hearing than a detailed email.
On language: use “I” and “we” rather than “you always” or “you never.” Absolute statements invite counter-examples. Phrases like “I’ve noticed” and “I’m concerned” frame the conversation as a report from your perspective, not a verdict from on high.
When should you use formal channels instead?
Direct conversation is right for management patterns and performance habits. But some situations require more. ACAS is clear that where behaviour touches safety, harassment, or serious misconduct, informal feedback alone is not adequate. The FCA’s Senior Managers and Certification Regime creates specific obligations in regulated firms. UK GDPR and the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 both impose requirements around how concerns must be raised and documented.
For owner-managed firms outside regulated sectors, ACAS guidance on discipline and grievances sets out when informal routes are appropriate and when formal processes are required. A practical rule: if the behaviour involves potential harm to another person, a data protection obligation, or a legal compliance question, treat it as a formal matter from the start. Informal feedback is not the same as a documented concern, and in some circumstances the absence of documentation creates its own legal exposure.
If you’re the founder and you’re on the receiving end, the same frame applies. Inviting structured feedback and responding to it visibly, whether by acting on it, explaining your reasoning, or acknowledging it openly, is what distinguishes a feedback culture from a feedback event. The conversation is not the end. What you do next is.
