"You're Not Coachable"

(psssst… Don’t miss the LinkedIn post section break below. Stuff from NARPM National and a viral post about attorneys)

Archimedes said ”Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world”

After reading the last two issues (Part 1, Part 2) you might think I'm advocating for tolerating any harsh feedback from anyone. I'm not. Some feedback isn't coaching. It's abuse. And tolerating abuse doesn't make you coachable. It makes you a victim.

The question isn't whether harsh feedback can help us grow. We've established it can. The question is: how do we tell the difference between feedback that challenges us and feedback that destroys us?

The Three Red Lines

Let me start with the non-negotiables. The lines that, when crossed, mean feedback has become something else entirely.

A few months ago I was engaged in regular online debate with someone in our industry. In a short amount of time things shifted from engaging dialogue to unhealthy exchange so I stepped back. Curious about how things turned south I uploaded several exchanges to Chat GPT and asked for an analysis. GPT gave me this output:

If we are receptive to feedback it changes us. This can be both transformative and destructive. This is why it is critical to set strong boundaries with people who regularly produce overly caustic feedback, or manipulate or deny reality. Here are three things that require boundaries.

First, character assassination. This is when someone attacks your identity rather than addressing your behavior or choices. There's a massive difference between "this decision isn't serving you" and "you are a bad person." Between "this behavior is problematic" and "you should be ashamed of who you are." Between "this needs to change" and "you are unworthy of love and belonging."

If someone is making declarative, conclusive statements about you being a bad person, that's not effective, helpful coaching. That's an attack.

Second, straw man attacks. This is when someone warps your words and reclassifies what you're saying, then argues against that distorted version instead of engaging with what you actually said or did. This person is not providing useful feedback. They're engaged in toxic behavior that requires you to set boundaries.

Third, gaslighting. If a person denies reality, telling you that your experience is invalid and incorrect, or that something that actually did happen didn't happen the way you experienced it, or didn't happen at all, this is completely out of bounds. Any discomfort it produces is not only unhelpful, it's an attack that should be met with very clear boundaries.

Think back to the examples from Issue 1. My brother's observation about being double minded was about a pattern in my behavior, not an attack on my worth as a person. My church leader questioning whether I was being honest with myself was challenging my choices, not my identity. My therapist pushing back on a decision I made was engaging with my actual reasoning, not a distorted version of it.

None of them crossed these three red lines. That's why it was good to let that feedback change me.

Break for LinkedIn content: If you didn’t attend NARPM National I shot quite a few videos and posted them all on LinkedIn. Here are a few of my favorites:

PM Path Builders booth was awesome Post 1, Post 2

Pablo rocking the Injinji socks

Tiffany Rosenbaum about to take the stage

Deb Newell talking with her hands

Neck snapping thrill ride

Breaking into Harry Potter after hours courtesy of Second Nature and Appfolio

Also, this post about attorneys went viral. If you’ve been reading for a while you know principle-agent incentive issues is one of my favorite topics. It’s crazy how much action posts about attorneys gets on LinkedIn.

The Hero-Victim-Villain Triangle

Even when we avoid abusive feedback from others, we can still fall into destructive patterns with how we give it. Or more often, how we avoid giving it.

A therapist once introduced me to a framework that explained a destructive pattern I'd been living for years. It's a triangle with three points: Hero, Victim, Villain.

Here's how the cycle works.

We start as the Hero. In the workplace, this looks like only celebrating wins, encouraging everyone, and smiling through problems. These things are great. Nothing wrong yet. Then we work extra hard to pick up others' slack, pretending everything's fine. We don’t give sharp feedback because we want to force a good feeling. We start to expect problems to correct themselves because we want to keep everything super positive all the time. But underneath, there's a growing sense of upset because our standards aren't being met. We stuff that unhappiness way down deep, but it's relentless. It doesn't go away.

We're becoming the Victim. Giving as much as we can but not having our needs met. The thunderclouds are gathering. The volcano is building up tension. It's only a matter of time before the pressure is too much.

Villain. We berate someone. We fire someone without any feedback leading up to it. We bring the pressure home and yell at the people who deserve our greatest love. Then, like an abusive person, we feel terrible. We go overboard to apologize and treat those we attacked with even more tenderness and kindness. Driving ourselves again toward the Hero. And the cycle begins to repeat.

When this framework was first introduced to me, I immediately could see its application in my life. I'd been living this pattern. Holding back, holding back, overly managing myself with the false belief that feedback is rude and demeaning. Projecting my false belief that incompetence is a cardinal sin, that it means you actually aren't worth as much as a person. Perhaps this is the deepest root of my issues with holding high standards with others.

How do we break this cycle? Honesty. Consistent, timely, direct honesty about what's working and what's not. Feedback that's clear and candid before the pressure builds. Before we become the Victim. Before we explode into the Villain.

Building Your Advisory Board

Honesty breaks the cycle. But honest feedback requires discernment about who deserves your trust and attention. This is why choosing coaches, mentors, and trusted advisors carefully matters so much. Look for people with three qualities: high character, high intelligence, and relevant experience to what you're trying to achieve.

When you have these people in your life, you don't have to process and reprocess their intentions behind the feedback they're giving you. You can trust them. You can lean in without second guessing whether they're trying to help you or hurt you.

But what about everyone else? What about the haters? The critics who show up with negative intent?

I mentioned this video in Issue 1, but it's worth revisiting. Even feedback from people who intend to harm us can be useful if we can do something difficult: extract the information without absorbing the poison. Separate their negative intent from any truth contained in their message.

This requires a level of emotional maturity most of us are still developing. It requires us to filter everything through this lens: is this feedback about my behavior, or is it an attack on my identity?

Feedback about behavior can come from anyone and still be useful. "You interrupted me three times in that meeting" is useful information, even if the person delivering it doesn't like me. "You're a terrible person who doesn't deserve respect" is an identity attack that I can dismiss entirely.

The filter matters more than the source. Pay attention to feedback about behavior. Filter out identity attacks, regardless of who they come from.

Productive vs. Destructive Discomfort

Even with the right filter and the right people, there's still a deeper question we need to answer.

I came to believe a long time ago that nearly all growth is connected to discomfort. So I learned to lean into discomfort. To crave it, even: on the trail and in my professional life. To see it as a sign I was in the place of most rapid growth.

But I've learned something more recently that's equally important. Not all discomfort leads to growth. Some discomfort is just destructive.

I've also learned the importance of boundaries in relationships. When a relationship gets uncomfortable because someone just isn't treating us right, when their toxic, manipulative, negative, punitive behavior is causing us harm, disrupting our peace, or otherwise not supporting the kind of person we want to be and the life we want to live, then it's important to identify that discomfort as unproductive.

I'm not sure I fully understand exactly how to delineate between productive discomfort that comes from direct, even harsh feedback we may be uncomfortable hearing, and the unproductive discomfort of abusive, dysfunctional relationships. But I'm learning to ask myself these questions:

Does this feedback come with a path forward, or just a dead end? Is the source of this discomfort invested in my growth, or their own agenda? After the initial sting, do I feel curious about what I can learn, or just defeated?

Does the feedback address my behavior and choices, or attack my identity? Does it engage with what I actually said and did, or a distorted version? Does it acknowledge my experience while offering a different view, or deny my reality entirely?

If it's the former in each case, lean in. If it's the latter, set boundaries.

The people who've transformed me most in life made me deeply uncomfortable. But they did it with love, with investment in my growth, and with respect for my humanity. They challenged my thinking and my choices. They never attacked my worth.

What feedback in your life has challenged you versus what feedback has just tried to diminish you? How do you tell the difference in the moment, when emotions are running high?

Can we develop the same kind of character-based authority with ourselves that our best mentors have with us? When we deliver harsh feedback to ourselves, how do we ensure we're speaking from a place of love and concern rather than self-attack?

The goal isn't to avoid all discomfort or accept all feedback uncritically. The goal is discernment. Knowing when to lean in and when to walk away. Knowing the difference between a coach and an abuser. I think living close to God, immersing in prayer and scripture are critical to have this discernment.

In the end, maybe the real skill isn't just receiving feedback well. Maybe it's knowing which feedback deserves to be received at all.

What do you think? How do you navigate this in your own life and leadership?