The Quiet

At a certain level of leadership, the feedback stops.

People assume you don't need it anymore. You've arrived. You're senior. You're the expert. You're the one who gives feedback now. And you stop asking for it. Because asking feels like weakness. Like you should already know this. Like needing input signals incompetence at a level where competence is assumed.

So it goes quiet.

No one tells you that your last communication didn't land the way you thought it did. No one mentions that the strategy you're so confident about has a blind spot everyone can see but you. No one says "you're wrong about this" because at your level, being wrong isn't supposed to happen as often.

The silence feels like respect. It feels like trust. It feels like you've finally reached the level where people assume you have it figured out.

It's actually isolation. And it's one of the most dangerous things that happens to leaders at the senior level.

What The Quiet Costs You

You lose your sharpness. The edges that made you effective early in your career, the ability to question your own assumptions, the willingness to be wrong and adjust quickly, those start to dull. When no one is pushing back on your thinking, your thinking stops evolving.

You lose calibration to reality. Your read of situations is only as good as the information you're working from. When that information flow slows to a trickle, when people stop telling you the small things that are off, you lose the early warning system that keeps you from making big mistakes.

You become less coachable. This happens so gradually you don't notice it. But when you go months or years without someone giving you direct feedback, receiving it becomes harder. Your identity calcifies around being the person who has the answers. Being challenged starts to feel like disrespect instead of investment.

Your growth stalls. Every significant period of growth in your career has come during times when someone was giving you real feedback. Uncomfortable feedback. Feedback that required you to see yourself differently and adjust. When the feedback stops, the growth stops. You plateau without realizing it.

You make decisions from an increasingly narrow perspective. The higher you go, the more complex the decisions become. The more you need input from people who see what you can't see from where you're sitting. When that input stops flowing, you're making multimillion-dollar decisions from your own limited perspective, convinced you have all the information you need.

Why The Quiet Happens

People assume you're beyond feedback. At your level, the implicit message is that you've mastered the fundamentals. You don't need coaching anymore. You're the one who coaches others.

You stop creating space for it. Early in your career, you asked for feedback regularly. "How am I doing?" "What could I have done better?" "What am I missing?" At some point, you stopped asking. Because it felt junior. Because you thought you should know. Because asking felt like admitting you didn't have it figured out.

The power dynamic makes it risky. Even when people want to give you feedback, the risk calculation is different at your level. Telling a peer their idea needs work is one thing. Telling someone senior to you is another. Most people choose silence over risk.

You reward certainty and penalize doubt. If you respond to questions with impatience, if you signal that doubt is weakness, if you value people who execute without questioning, you're training your environment to stop giving you input. And then you wonder why no one speaks up.

What You Do About The Quiet

Name it. The first step is recognizing you're in it. If you can't remember the last time someone gave you uncomfortable feedback, you're in the quiet. If the feedback you do receive is always gentle, always prefaced with affirmation, always about small adjustments rather than real challenges, you're in the quiet.

Create structured opportunities for feedback. Don't rely on it happening organically. It won't. Schedule it. "I want 30 minutes this month to hear what I'm not seeing. What's not working that I think is working? Where is my thinking weakest?" Make it safe by making it expected.

Reward the people who give it to you. Show genuine gratitude and, more importantly, take visible action. When someone tells you something hard and you adjust because of it, tell them. "You were right about X. I changed Y because of your input. Thank you." This signals to others that feedback is valued.

Go find people who don't report to you. The power dynamic makes feedback from direct reports complicated. Find peers, mentors, coaches, advisors who have nothing to lose by being direct with you. Invest in those relationships. Protect them. Use them.

Understand why private coaching exists at this level. A trusted colleague can give you valuable perspective. But they're still inside your organizational ecosystem. They're still navigating relationships with some of the same people you are. They're still affected by the outcomes of your decisions.

A private coach exists entirely outside that system. No organizational politics. No career risk. No shared stakeholders to manage. Their only investment is in your growth and effectiveness.

This is why coaching becomes more valuable, not less, as you advance. The higher you go, the fewer people can speak to you without filter. The complexity you're navigating requires someone who can see patterns you can't see from inside your role. Someone who has worked with enough senior leaders to recognize when you're rationalizing, when you're in your own way, when the story you're telling yourself about a situation isn't the story everyone else is experiencing.

Coaching at this level isn't remedial. It's the thing that keeps you from plateauing when everyone around you has stopped pushing you to grow.

Ask better questions. "How's it going?" gets you nothing. "What am I not seeing?" is better. "If you were me, what would you do differently?" is better. "What would you tell me if there were no consequences?" is better. Specific questions get specific answers

Separate feedback from your identity. The reason the quiet feels comfortable is because it protects your sense of self. No one is challenging who you are or how you lead, so you get to stay settled in your self-perception. Growth requires being willing to have that self-perception challenged. The feedback isn't about whether you're good enough. It's about whether you're getting better.

The Leaders Who Stay Sharp

The leaders who continue to grow at the senior level, who stay calibrated to reality, who make better decisions as they gain more authority, all share one thing in common.

They refuse to accept the quiet. They create conditions where feedback is expected and rewarded. They surround themselves with people who have the security and insight to tell them what they need to hear. They invest in coaching relationships designed specifically to break through the isolation that comes with authority.

The quiet is seductive. It feels like respect. It feels like arrival.

It often creates stagnation. Slow, comfortable, professionally acceptable stagnation.

At a certain level, people stop giving you feedback. At a certain level of wisdom, you realize you need it more than ever.

The question is whether you'll go find it before the silence costs you something you can't get back.