Looking for an easier way to give feedback?

At Bright Morning, we’ve been doing a lot of work around feedback. We realized that focusing here was one of the fastest ways to take our high-performing team even higher.

Our leadership model calls on each of us to provide direct, honest, and helpful feedback—up, down, and sideways.

But giving that kind of feedback is hard for many of us.
We don’t want to rock relationships.
We don’t want to overstep.
We don’t want to be “too much.”

So we soften. We hedge. We offer so many caveats that the message gets lost.

One of the insights that has come out of our work is this:

There’s a better way to honor your relationships than softening your feedback.
You can be direct and strengthen connection when you pair clarity with a little playfulness.

That’s why we’re practicing—at end-of-month meetings, in weekly prompts, and with team-generated scenarios. We’re normalizing the discomfort and building the muscle.

And one of our favorite discoveries has been how much playfulness helps feedback land. It keeps the connection intact while offering the clarity people deserve.

For example, instead of version:
“This draft isn’t clear enough yet.”

We’re playing with:
“I adore your creativity, AND my brain did three somersaults trying to follow this section. I need you to give this another pass for clarity and then send it back my way.”

These two approaches communicate the same expectation, but the playful one carries the added benefit of genuine connection—and far less anxiety for both people.

If you want to strengthen your team this year, start here:
Say the thing clearly. Then add a little lightness. Practice regularly. Normalize feedback.

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The impact this focus has had on our own team inspired us to dedicate an entire month to feedback inside the

Team Leader Learning Library.

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