When Feedback Crosses the Line

by Bin Zhao, Rebecca L. Dunkailo, Judith Clair and Ryan L. Boyd

March 2, 2026

Deagreez/Getty Images

Summary.

Most leaders believe that being direct and honest with negative feedback helps employees improve. And it can—when done thoughtfully. Our research shows, however, that when feedback comes across as belittling or humiliating, it often backfires, impairing performance rather than enhancing it.

Bin Zhao , a professor of Management and Organization Studies at the Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University (Canada), is a leading researcher on learning from errors and negative performance feedback. She has over a decade of experience teaching and consulting on performance management.

Rebecca L. Dunkailo is an obstetric anesthesiologist and associate professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. She studies speaking-up, feedback, and how team interactions impact everyday work, especially in times of high stress.

Judith Clair is a professor in the Department of Management and Organization at Boston College, where she is the McKiernan Family Faculty Fellow. Her research examines identity, diversity, work–family dynamics, and the professions, with a particular focus on how major organizational change events, such as downsizing, affect individuals and organizations.

Ryan L. Boyd is a computational social scientist at the University of Texas at Dallas. His work examines how language reflects and shapes human thought, feeling, and behavior across contexts. He co-edited the Handbook of Language Analysis in Psychology and is one of the leading scholars behind widely used text-analysis tools such as LIWC.

Read more on Feedback or related topics Giving feedback, Receiving feedback, Employee performance management, Developing employees, Management skills, Management styles and Managing employees

When Feedback Crosses the Line

Summary.

Partner Center