Your Feedback Pattern

Cristina Stensvaag
4 days ago
2 min read

When feedback gets hard, you tend to...

May 26, 2026

Originally published in One More Rep, a weekly newsletter for people managers who want to get better through practice. Subscribe here — it's free.

Week 21. Rep 21. Three weeks of feedback work. This week you find out what it's showing you about how you lead.

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The Moment

You've done three reps this month. You identified what you've been sitting on. You structured feedback using the CLEAR framework. You had the hard conversation. You didn't do these things to learn feedback. You did them to build habits.

The Pattern

Feedback isn't a skill you either have or don't. It's a set of habits: what you notice, what you say, and what you do when the conversation gets uncomfortable.

Some of those habits are sticking, and some might take longer. And until you look at all of the work you did this month, you're assessing conversation by conversation without seeing the larger picture.

Why This Matters

It isn't a breakthrough conversation that makes you better at feedback. It is knowing yourself and your pattern well enough to keep working on the right habits.

This week you'll step back from the individual reps and look at what May actually showed you: where you're growing, what you're avoiding, and what one thing would make the biggest difference in how you lead your team going forward.

Rep

This Week's Practice

Review your three feedback conversations from this month, not to grade yourself, but to see what's true across them. Look for the good (and the bad) habits that showed up consistently.

Your Rep

Answer these three questions in writing before the end of the week.

Where did you show up well across all three conversations?
Where did the same resistance show up more than once?
What's the one feedback habit you most need to build from here?

What to Notice

Success looks like:

Your answers are specific enough to act on, not just reflect on
The resistance pattern you name is uncomfortable because it's accurate
The habit you identify in the third question is something you'd recognize in real time

Resistance looks like:

Writing what you wish were true instead of what the month showed you
Identifying three areas to improve instead of committing to one
Treating this as a review instead of a rep

It's working when:

You can finish this sentence without hesitating: "When feedback gets hard, I tend to..."

Common Mistakes

Mistake #1: Focusing only on what went wrong. Where you showed up well is just as important. You need to know what's working so you can do it deliberately, not just accidentally.

Mistake #2: Stopping at the insight. The three questions are only useful if the answer to the third one becomes something you're actively practicing in June. Write it somewhere you'll see it.

Reflect

What did this month's feedback work cost you in energy, in discomfort, in time? Was it worth it?
What would change for your team if the habit you identified became reliable?

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Cristina Stensvaag is co-founder of LeaderReps and creator of One More Rep, a weekly practice-based leadership newsletter for people managers.