How to Deal With Feedback That Challenges Your Leadership

by Kerry Siggins | May 7, 2026 | Podcast

Feedback that challenges your leadership cuts far deeper than feedback about strategy or execution. It challenges your identity, your intentions, and the way you see yourself as a leader. One of those moments happened to me several years ago when an executive on my team sat across from me and told me I was the problem.

He told me I was hard to work for. That I drove too hard, moved too fast, and left people behind. That what I saw as visionary leadership felt erratic to the people around me.

Then he quit.

In this episode, I share the full story of that conversation and what it forced me to confront about myself as a leader. At the time, I believed my intensity and pace were necessary to grow the company. What I did not fully understand was how those same strengths, left unchecked, were impacting the people around me.

That feedback hit so hard because part of it was true.

This conversation is about the painful process of examining the gap between who we believe we are and how we are actually being experienced. I talk openly about the instinct to defend ourselves, the temptation to spiral into self-doubt, and the deeper work of sitting with discomfort long enough to ask: what part of this do I need to own?

I also share how that moment changed the way I lead. Instead of dismissing the feedback or internalizing all of it, I focused on one word: erratic. I built a new leadership standard around becoming cool, calm, and collected, and I created accountability systems with my team to help me change not just my intentions, but my behavior.

Because leadership maturity is not measured by how well we avoid hard truths. It is measured by how willing we are to examine them.

Mic Drop Moments

“Feedback that hurts is usually pointing at something that matters.”
“The gap between who you think you are and how others experience you is where leadership growth happens.”
“Your strengths, left unchecked, will eventually become your liabilities.”
“Insight does not change behavior. Accountability does.”

Key Takeaways

Hard feedback often reveals patterns we have been unwilling to examine.
You do not have to agree with all feedback, but you do have to examine it honestly.
Transformation only happens when insight turns into behavioral change.
Leaders who grow the most build accountability systems around their development.
The most important leadership work often begins when we ask: what if part of this is true?