If you need a form to tell someone how they're doing, you've already missed the moment.
In this episode of the Northbound Podcast, Chris challenges one of the most common — and most ineffective — leadership tools in modern organizations: feedback forms. While forms promise structure and safety, they often drain feedback of what actually makes it work — presence, trust, and human connection.
Using the trail as a metaphor once again, Chris explains why broken gear slows you down in the backcountry and how broken feedback processes do the same thing in leadership. Transformational leaders don't hide behind paperwork or checklists. They give feedback in real time, face to face, when it actually matters — and they document it after the human moment, not instead of it.
If your feedback process feels heavy, awkward, or ineffective, it might be time to throw it away.
Why feedback forms often act as bad gear in leadership
How forms shift feedback from relationship to compliance
Why growth doesn't happen on paper — it happens in conversation
The danger of letting process replace presence
What real-time, transformational feedback actually sounds like
Why listening first builds trust and confidence
How to document feedback without killing the moment
Why leaders should write things down after the conversation
How forms create false safety and distance instead of trust
Why Northbound leadership prioritizes growth over paperwork
Feedback forms are often heavy, impersonal, and ineffective in the moment
Growth happens in real-time conversations, not checklists
Transformational leadership is relational, personal, and human — not procedural
The best feedback is timely, present, and face to face
Documentation is important, but it should never replace the conversation
Strong leaders fix broken processes instead of normalizing them
Northbound leaders defend people, not tools
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