Why Feedback Gives Us the Power of Choice
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In this series, Elizabeth Ballin, PCC, offers reflections from her coaching and mindfulness practice on how people discover insight, meaning, and resilience in the changing landscape of modern life. Her perspective is rooted in years of working with people from many cultures and in a driven curiosity that understands human growth as life in motion.
After writing a recent article on communication overwhelm, I found myself reflecting on another theme that frequently emerges in my coaching conversations. Across industries, roles, and life situations, many of the people I coach express a similar feeling: they don't feel heard or recognised. Without feedback, they lack the information needed to make informed choices, and their sense of agency is compromised.
Reading Daryl Austin's article, "The Surprising Power of Simply Not Responding," in The Atlantic helped me understand why. Austin describes silence as a kind of psychological quicksand, creating severe stress in both corporate and personal relationships. He observed that it "might be employed by passive personality types to avoid conflict, while strong personality types use it as a means of punishment or control." Whether it shows up as quiet firing at work or emotional distancing at home, withheld feedback leaves people feeling invisible and undervalued.[1]
What struck me was how closely this matched what I was hearing from clients. Two patterns in particular have stayed with me.
The stories we create in the absence of feedback
One pattern that many people will recognise involves applying for internal promotions. The process begins with genuine investment: preparing well, believing there is a strong chance, and putting real emotional energy into the outcome. When the position ultimately goes to someone else, the disappointment is understandable. Yet the greatest frustration often comes not from the decision itself, but from what happens afterwards.
Many people want and seek feedback. They need to understand why they did not get the position, what skills they may be missing, where they could improve, and what would make them a stronger candidate next time. Yet meaningful feedback is not always forthcoming.
Without that information, self-doubt begins to take hold. People start to question where they stand. Was there ever a genuine intention to consider internal candidates? Was the outcome already decided? Should they develop different skills, build stronger relationships, or consider opportunities elsewhere?
As self-doubt persists, the mind naturally begins to fill in the gaps. Some wonder whether the organisation sees a future for them at all, while others interpret the silence as an indirect message that it may be time to move on. In the absence of feedback, there is very little else to work with, and what begins as disappointment can evolve into stress, frustration, and sleepless nights.
Interestingly, many people find that this experience teaches them something important about themselves. The silence itself reveals the kind of leadership, communication, and culture they want to be part of: one that does not make them feel invisible.
This dynamic is not limited to the workplace. Consider someone who has spent several months building a relationship, only to be ghosted without explanation. While rejection is painful, many people find the silence harder to process than an honest conversation. It leaves us with a sense of hope, and that makes us cling on.
As one person put it, "If they had simply told me the relationship wasn't working, I would have cried in my soup for a few days, questioned what went wrong, and eventually let it go."
The pain is often not really about rejection. An honest answer may hurt, but it provides something to work with. Silence, on the other hand, leaves people trying to make sense of what happened. It creates a deep fear of the unknown, invites endless speculation, and keeps us hoping.
Both examples share the absence of a response. It is the lack of an answer, more than the outcome itself, that causes the most harm. Whether a response is negative or positive, it allows us to move on. That is what feedback really gives us: the power to choose the next step.
Without that, we expend energy focusing on uncertainty rather than directing it toward anything meaningful.
The strain of not knowing
People share ideas in meetings and may not get any response, or they send proposals and receive no acknowledgement. They contribute, suggest, create, and communicate, yet are left wondering whether anyone noticed or whether they are having an impact in their career. What really strikes me is that this is happening at a time when communication has never been easier or more prevalent. We can send messages instantly, connect across continents, and communicate at a scale unimaginable just a few decades ago. Even so, many people feel increasingly invisible and isolated.
The issue is not communication itself, but the growing lack of acknowledgement. Without acknowledgement, communication loses its purpose, and people do not receive the information they need to respond to.
You cannot have a one-sided conversation. A simple nod, a question, a challenge, or a thank you says, "I heard you." Without that, communication remains in the air, and it becomes half a conversation.
When there is no feedback at all, we naturally fill in the gaps ourselves, creating stories, veering toward catastrophic thinking, or convincing ourselves that things are progressing when they are not. We delay decision-making, and energy that could be used productively is wasted while we wait. Over time, this uncertainty can contribute to stress, burnout, and disengagement. It is not about our capacity to handle difficult news, but about how we function better when we understand where we stand.
This can also play out in particularly challenging ways in organisations. Information about restructuring, promotions, or strategic decisions may be delayed or tightly controlled, sometimes for unclear reasons. For employees, the result is often the same: rumours fill the gaps, assumptions replace facts, and energy that could be directed toward productive work is diverted to trying to understand what is happening behind the scenes.
As I reflect on this growing absence of feedback and acknowledgement, I am conscious of my own frustration with it and how easy it would be to point the finger elsewhere, at organisations, leaders, technology, or the increasingly busy lives we lead. Yet if I am honest, I think we also need to point the finger at ourselves.
When silence is necessary
Of course, there is an important exception worth noting. When someone is being harassed or subjected to aggression, the solution is not immediate silence. First, say something clear and direct, such as "I do not want to speak to you anymore" or "I am not willing to continue this conversation." That directness matters because it gives the other person the opportunity to change course and respect the boundary. If that request continues to be ignored, silence becomes the appropriate response, i.e., a firm and conscious withdrawal of engagement. In that sense, silence becomes the last word rather than the first, and it carries real weight precisely because something was said before it.
Choosing how we respond
Outside of those situations, I notice this in my own life. Although I almost always respond, there are times when I catch myself hesitating, wondering whether I should wait before replying or whether I am being drawn into the waiting game that has become so common in both professional and personal relationships. Like everyone else, not getting a response can consume me if I let it. Over time, I have realised that this is not who I want to be. By responding, I choose to take the lead rather than mirror others' behaviour. What I can control is how I show up.
If I want to live in a world where people feel heard, recognised, and acknowledged, I need to help create it myself. If we value feedback, acknowledgement, and real communication, then it is our responsibility to offer the same so others can make informed choices. The culture we experience is often the culture we create together.
This does not mean responding immediately to every message. Rather, it means recognising that most communication reflects a person seeking clarity, acknowledgement, or information, and that our silence can communicate messages we never intended to send, often more powerfully than we realise.
This week, choose one message you have been sitting on and send a reply, even if it feels uncomfortable. It does not need to be perfect. A simple reply can be more powerful than it appears, and it will likely make you feel lighter, too.
In a world increasingly filled with uncertainty, that may be one of the greatest gifts we can give one another and ourselves. If we want more clarity, we have to be willing to give it because clarity is something we create together, and it begins when and how we choose to respond.
Read more from Elizabeth Ballin
Elizabeth Ballin, Professional Certified Coach
Elizabeth Ballin, PCC, is an ICF-accredited professional coach and mindfulness practitioner working globally with people and professionals from many backgrounds. She combines emotional insight, cultural intelligence, and practical structure to support meaningful growth. She brings a lifelong multicultural awareness, deepened by twelve years of coaching across more than twenty cultures, which helps her attune to the emotional and practical realities her clients face. Her writing spans themes such as curiosity, creativity, well-being, communication, judgment, and the inner shifts that support meaningful growth in the complexity of modern life.
Reference:
[1] (Daryl Austin, "The Surprising Power of Simply Not Responding," The Atlantic, March 2021)
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