You Need Brave Feedback; Not Gentle Coddling

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Listen, this episode might sting a little—and that's exactly the point. If you're a woman in tech who treats feedback like a personal attack instead of career fuel, I'm talking directly to you.

I've watched with horror as more women have become timid about giving feedback and defensive about receiving it. This pattern is quietly cutting your career growth at the knees while multiplying your stress.

Here's what I know: You wouldn't coddle your code, your product, or your project when it needs iteration. So why are you being so precious about feedback on your own performance?

In this episode, I'm drawing a hard line between toxic workplace BS (which is NOT what we're discussing) and the constructive, developmental, growth-oriented feedback that is actual career generosity. The kind you need to actively seek out, receive with curiosity, and use strategically.

Here's what I cover:

• Why feedback is the accelerated growth engine in tech—and why your career needs the same iterative approach as your code
• The brutal truth about how women are held to higher performance standards (backed by research since the 1970s)
• Why your defensiveness is far more damaging than the original feedback ever was
• How leaders are watching for your response to feedback—not your perfection
• Why you must stop optimizing for likability and start optimizing for clarity and effectiveness
• The mindset shift that changes everything: feedback is data, not identity
• Concrete examples of professional feedback versus unhelpful criticism
• Why avoiding giving feedback makes you unclear and untrustworthy (not nice)

I also share real feedback my clients recently received and how they made it mean something totally different than what was actually said.

The women who enjoy their careers and reach their goals aren't the ones who never get criticism. They're the ones who are seen improving over time—in line with their values, purpose, and boundaries.

Bravery isn't just about bold moves. It's about sitting still in a moment of critique and choosing your growth instead of your ego.

Your Next Steps:

1. Separate the feedback from what your brain tells you. 
2. Make feedback a monthly habit. 
3. Seek feedback from your critics. 
4. Give yourself 24 hours. 
5. Stop optimizing for likability. 

Related Episodes 

• Importance of Specific Feedback in Career Growth
• Aggressive or Just Direct? Navigating Feedback as a Woman in Tech
• E85: How to Deal with Unspecific Career Feedback to Build Your Skills, Relationships, Career, and Salary

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You can be a woman in tech and enjoy your career. When you build the skill of bravery, you will stress less, work less, and then earn more. Check out the following resources designed to help you thrive in your career: 

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What is Build Your Brave Career for Women in Tech?

Women in tech are just stressed out, overworked, overlooked, and underpaid, right? NOPE! Not around here. Around here we build the skill of bravery to stress less, work less, and then earn more as women in tech.

At this point in your career, you're more educated, skilled, and experienced than most of your colleagues, but you are also more stressed, working more, and are pretty sure you’re underpaid. And you are done accepting the status quo. You are ready to get what you’ve already earned and then grow your career even further…without burning out. You don’t know how you’re going to do it (yet!) but you suspect the process will require you to be braver.

Enter the Build Your Brave Career podcast.

Build Your Brave Career is the podcast to help you build the skill of bravery, one episode at a time, so you make the bold moves and big leaps required to craft a career of more impact and income... with less stress and overwork.

Tune in each week for a mix of guest conversations and solo episodes to learn how to build the skill of bravery. We explore the skill of bravery and the role it plays in your career and life including, stressing less, taking decisive action, working less, career growth, relationship building for career success, crafting purpose and fulfillment, salary increases and negotiations, overcoming obstacles, and sharing concrete tips and tricks for career satisfaction.

Your host, Nicole Trick Steinbach is the international bravery coach... but bravery is not something that has ever come naturally to her. Instead, she learned through success and failure how to develop and harness the skill of bravery to create an empowering, lucrative, and global career.

And it worked: Nicole is a former executive in the technology industry without a background in tech, has worked in over 25 countries while running transformational change projects, and is now at home in both the US and Germany.

Today Nicole is a certified and proven one-on-one coach who supports women around the world to build their brave careers, focusing on bespoke approaches for each client to stress, work less, and earn more.

To learn more about how you can build your brave, connect here:
• Website: https://tricksteinbach.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicoletricksteinbach