Embracing Feedback: How Growth Mindset Transformed My Leadership Journey

“True leadership begins when you stop managing tasks and start owning outcomes — with clarity, courage, and care.”

Leadership is often described as a journey rather than a destination — a continuous process of learning, adapting, and refining one’s approach. Recently, I received a comprehensive performance review that was both encouraging and challenging.

It was a profound reminder that leadership growth never truly ends — no matter how much progress you’ve already made. I want to share how I’ve approached that feedback with a growth mindset and translated it into a detailed plan for raising the bar not only for myself but for my entire pod.

The Feedback: Strengths and Stretch Opportunities

My review celebrated a number of strengths, including:

• Self-leadership & reliability: I’ve grown significantly from last year, becoming more dependable, proactive, and assertive. My manager noted I’ve moved from being a “facilitator” who kept things moving to a “driver” who actively leads delivery momentum, even amid shifting priorities and pressures.

• Communication improvements: My manager described my engagement and clarity as a "drastic improvement," especially in interactions with pod leads and during sprint ceremonies. This increased visibility and proactive communication helped the team align better.

• Pod ownership & delivery: I successfully transitioned the pod through a major org pivot and led the delivery of cross-functional features like the Bonus Multiplier (v1.47), marking a new level of pod maturity.

• Emotional intelligence: Empathy and psychological safety have remained foundational to maintaining team cohesion and resilience.

• Learning from failure: I’m actively applying lessons learned from challenging projects such as Image Rendering and Unity 6 to improve future delivery.

  
  

  What’s Working: Building on Solid Foundations

  
  

  The review recognized several strengths that form the foundation of my leadership and delivery style — and they’re the bedrock from which I’m accelerating my growth.

  
  

  Becoming a True Driver: From Facilitator to Owner

  
  

  Over the past year, I’ve consciously shifted from simply facilitating delivery to owning outcomes. This means more than managing schedules or tasks — it means proactively steering the ship, identifying risks early, and rallying the team through challenges.

  
  

  For example, a major milestone was the on-time delivery of the Bonus Multiplier feature (version 1.47), our pod’s first fully cross-functional Unity client feature. Leading that from planning to release demonstrated not only delivery capability but also strategic coordination across multiple disciplines.

  
  

  During high-pressure periods, I’ve worked to maintain calm, clarity, and resilience — qualities that help stabilize team morale and culture amid change and ambiguity.

  
  

  Communication as a Catalyst

  
  

  My manager described my communication improvements as “drastic,” highlighting increased engagement with pod leads and stakeholders. I’ve doubled down on:

  
  

  • Proactive, tailored updates that focus on outcomes, blockers, and decisions needed—not just status reports.

  • Seeking and acting on feedback about my tone and clarity to continuously refine how I connect with different audiences.

  • Driving clarity in sprint rituals and retrospectives to foster transparency and shared ownership.

  This heightened communication has been critical in helping the team align faster and build trust with leadership.

  
  

  Taking Pod Ownership Seriously

  
  

  Owning the pod’s delivery lifecycle means more than managing timelines. It means:

  
  

  • Driving collaboration across disciplines by clarifying dependencies and escalating misalignments early.

  • Defining clear performance expectations and tracking metrics like sprint velocity and scope creep to hold the team accountable.

  • Nurturing a culture of psychological safety where people feel empowered to speak up, innovate, and challenge the status quo.

    
    

  Together, these create the conditions for sustainable, high-quality delivery and continuous improvement.

  
  

But the feedback also highlighted critical growth areas:

Where I’m Growing: Stretching Into Senior Leadership

No leadership journey is without challenges — and my review surfaced critical growth areas that I’m actively addressing to prepare myself for senior roles.

Situational Leadership: Balancing Empathy with Accountability

My manager highlighted that while my empathy and focus on psychological safety are strengths, they can sometimes “backfire if not used in conjunction with context.” Simply put, I need to be bolder and more neutral in naming performance gaps — shifting from over-praising to a fact-based, data-driven approach.

For example, the suggested language was:

“We committed to X, and here’s the delta. What’s blocking us from hitting this consistently?”

This is a powerful pivot from cushioning feedback towards calling out reality early and clearly. It’s about blending psychological safety with firm performance expectations.

So while I prioritize psychological safety, I’m learning that overemphasizing positivity can blur reality and slow necessary course corrections.

To sharpen this edge, I’m practicing:

• Using data-driven, neutral language when naming performance gaps — “Here’s what we committed to, here’s the delta, what’s blocking us?”

• Coaching myself to balance praise with constructive reality checks to motivate improvement without sugarcoating.

• Documenting clear definitions of “good,” “great,” and “underperforming” within the pod to calibrate expectations and conversations.

Attention to Detail: Building Trust Through Accuracy

There was a specific mention of a “calculation error” in reporting metrics, which highlighted how small errors can undermine leadership trust.

As the producer and delivery lens for the pod, it’s critical I double-check sprint metrics, build QA layers, and use checklists before sending any major updates. My manager emphasized that “critical information must be reliable,” and flagged this as a key leadership responsibility at senior levels.

This small mistake that skewed performance perception, revealed how critical precision is at senior levels. To fix this, I’ll be implementing:

• Peer reviews and checklists for sprint metrics and reporting.

• A cadence for reviewing data before sharing to catch inconsistencies early.

• A mindset shift to treat my operational outputs as key lenses through which leadership views pod performance.

  
  

Optimised Communication: From Volume to Precision

My manager encouraged me to “sharpen the focus, cut the clutter, and know my audience.” While my communication cadence and volume increased, the next step is to refine messaging to lead with impact, not task lists, and to tailor updates strategically.

For instance, I’ve redesigned sprint recaps with a clear format:

• Top-line impact: “What we shipped + how it moved the roadmap or key metrics”

• Risk highlight: “What didn’t go to plan + how we’re fixing it”

• Calls to action: Tailored to relevant stakeholders to drive decisions.

  
  

This approach helps cut fluff and increases executive alignment.

With increased communication volume, the next step is precision and strategic influence so its key to focus on things such as the following:

• Targeting messages by audience and cutting clutter to ensure critical info reaches decision-makers effectively.

• Leading updates with “so what?” — framing impact, risks, and calls to action upfront.

• Auditing and consolidating communications like Slack updates to maximize traction and minimize noise.

Cross-Functional Influence: Clarifying Ownership and Escalation

To reduce last-minute delivery pressure, my manager wants me to escalate misalignments earlier and clarify ownership across pods — backend, QA, Avatar, and Fashion Creation.

I’ve started creating shared Confluence pages for initiative overviews, updated weekly with TL;DR executive summaries. This ensures broader visibility and proactive resolution of dependencies.

Here are some more examples of how you can make an impact:

• Escalate and clarify dependencies across pods and disciplines earlier to prevent last-minute delivery pressures.

• Carve out time for strategic roadmap shaping and long-term planning, balancing this with day-to-day execution.

• Grow confidence in holding tough prioritization conversations and navigating ambiguity.

Strategic Delivery Mindset: Elevating Beyond Execution

Currently, my focus has been on day-to-day execution and managing sprint delivery. My manager encouraged carving out space to influence the roadmap and raise strategic proposals, balancing short-term delivery with long-term vision.

For example, I’m now leading backlog prioritisation around MongoDB optimizations, integrating consulting recommendations into the DevOps and Data Engineering roadmap — moving beyond firefighting to strategic leadership.

Turning Feedback Into Action: My Growth Roadmap

Feedback without action is just noise.

Receiving detailed feedback is invaluable, but the real leadership test is how you act on it. Here’s how I’m addressing each growth area with specific actions tied directly to the feedback and OKRs that i spent time curating. Here’s how I’m translating insights into measurable growth:

1. Situational Leadership: Balancing Empathy with Accountability

Objective: Raise the pod’s standards through measurable uplift in accountability and delivery reliability.

Key Result: Track and share sprint velocity trends and scope creep reduction; call out underperformance factually and early.

• Role-play tough conversations: Working with my manager and mentors to practice neutral, firm feedback delivery using real pod scenarios, reducing “sugarcoating” and increasing clarity.

• Document performance levels: Defining what “good,” “great,” and “underperforming” look like for the pod, using concrete examples and metrics to align communication.

• Embed feedback in rituals: Including growth edges alongside praise in retros and 1:1s, reinforcing performance culture without compromising psychological safety.

• Protect scope rigor: Enforcing “scope freeze” checkpoints in sprint planning to guard focus, explicitly calling out blockers or scope creep early, and using data-backed language when performance dips.

  
  
  
  

2. Attention to Detail: Building Trust Through Accuracy

Objective: Improve delivery transparency through robust quality assurance of reporting.

Key Result: Implement QA cadence for sprint metrics with zero calculation errors across quarter.

• Peer QA: Having a trusted colleague review sprint reports and dashboards before distribution.

• Checklists: Using structured review templates to verify metric accuracy, prevent misinterpretation, and catch errors pre-release.

• Spot audits: Randomly sampling past reports to identify patterns and refine processes.

• Standardized reporting: Deploying reusable templates for sprint summaries to reduce human error and ensure consistency.

  
  

3. Optimised Communication: From Volume to Precision

Objective: Elevate leadership voice in performance conversations through outcome-oriented communication.

Key Result: Redesign sprint recap format and maintain weekly Confluence status page with executive summaries.

• Audience focus: Tailoring communication to stakeholders’ needs, asking “Who needs to act on this?” and “What’s the impact?”

• Consolidated updates: Replacing templated Slack posts with targeted, direct messages to key decision-makers, increasing traction and action.

• Impact-first summaries: Leading sprint recaps with outcomes and risks, followed by clear calls to action.

• Soliciting feedback: Gathering input from leads on communication clarity and adjusting tone accordingly.

4. Cross-Functional Influence: Clarifying Ownership and Escalation

Objective: Strengthen cross-discipline alignment to reduce delivery friction.

Key Result: Formalize prioritisation process and escalation triggers, with 100% documented alignment across pods.

• Dependency mapping: Collaborating with backend, QA, and fashion creation pods to clarify roles and identify blockers early.

• Escalation guidelines: Defining when and how to escalate scope or priority conflicts.

• Shared documentation: Maintaining cross-pod initiative trackers updated weekly for transparency.

• Direct senior engagement: Proactively involving senior stakeholders when roadmap pivots or misalignments arise.

  
  

5. Strategic Delivery Mindset: Elevating Beyond Execution

Objective: Grow into strategic delivery leadership.

Key Result: Propose and own at least two cross-org initiatives influencing roadmap within quarter.

• Time-blocking: Setting weekly calendar blocks dedicated to strategic thinking and roadmap shaping.

• Delegation: Empowering leads and engineers to own refinement and backlog grooming.

• Leading initiatives: Driving integration of MongoDB performance improvements and DevOps enhancements into broader delivery plans.

• Mentorship: Seeking coaching on strategic leadership and managing upward influence.

Why Embracing Feedback Matters

Feedback isn’t a judgment — it’s an opportunity to uncover blind spots and accelerate growth. By being open, reflective, and proactive, I’m modeling a culture where continuous learning and accountability coexist.

I want my pod to see that leadership means stepping into discomfort, owning challenges head-on, and relentlessly pursuing excellence — not just in outcomes but in how we grow as a team.

Receiving thoughtful feedback is one of the most powerful tools for growth — especially as a leader navigating the complex, cross-functional world of product delivery. Recently, I received a comprehensive review from my manager that not only celebrated my progress but also challenged me to step fully into my next level of leadership.

Today, I want to share that feedback openly, reflect on what I’m doing well, where I’m stretching, and how I’m turning insights into a clear, actionable plan for growth. My hope is this story resonates with others who are committed to continuous learning and leadership evolution.

From Delivery to Leadership

I’ve come to see leadership as a dynamic balance — between driving results and cultivating people, between supporting safety and demanding rigor, between managing today and shaping tomorrow.

The feedback I received wasn’t just a performance check-in — it was a roadmap. A call to lean into my strengths while stretching intentionally. To stop facilitating and start driving. To lead with empathy and with edge.

And while the journey is challenging, it’s also deeply inspiring.

Every sprint, every conversation, every lesson is an opportunity to grow not just as a producer, but as a strategic leader — one who delivers outcomes with clarity, courage, and care.

What’s Next?

I’m committed to embedding these actions over the next quarter, tracking progress with my manager, and iterating based on ongoing feedback. My vision is a pod that delivers predictably, innovates confidently, and holds itself accountable — all while maintaining a culture of psychological safety.

Leadership is a journey without a final destination, but every step forward counts. I’m excited to continue raising the bar and invite others to embrace their own growth journeys alongside me.

Building on Strengths: Fueling My Leadership Growth

While growth areas are vital, it’s equally important to recognize and amplify what’s already working well. My recent feedback reaffirmed several core strengths that form the foundation of my leadership — and I’m consciously leveraging these to accelerate my progression toward senior leadership.

Self-Leadership & Reliability: Becoming a True Driver

Over the past year, I’ve transformed from being primarily a facilitator to stepping fully into a driver role. This means I’m not just managing tasks and schedules but owning outcomes and proactively removing blockers — even under shifting priorities and pressure. For example:

• Taking initiative: I lead by identifying risks early and mobilizing the team to course-correct before issues escalate.

• Consistent delivery: The successful rollout of the Bonus Multiplier (v1.47) was a pivotal moment, showcasing our pod’s delivery maturity and my ability to steward complex, cross-functional features through to completion.

• Resilience: I maintain calm, clarity, and steady focus during organizational pivots and delivery crunch times, which helps stabilize the team culture and keeps momentum moving.

  
  

Communication Improvements: Driving Clarity and Engagement

My manager described my communication progress as “drastic” — particularly with pod leads and key stakeholders. I’m capitalizing on this by:

• Proactive engagement: I no longer wait to be asked but anticipate questions and needs, sharing sprint updates that not only report status but also highlight risks and decisions needed.

• Tailoring messages: I focus on audience relevance, cutting through noise and leading with impact, which strengthens stakeholder trust and streamlines alignment.

• Seeking feedback: I regularly solicit input on my tone and messaging clarity, ensuring I improve iteratively and maintain strong connection with the team and leadership.

  
  

Pod Ownership & Delivery: Raising the Bar

I’ve taken full ownership of the pod’s delivery flow, sprint rituals, and strategic pushback:

• Driving cross-disciplinary collaboration: By clarifying dependencies and escalating misalignments early, I’m reducing friction and improving throughput.

• Embedding performance standards: Together with pod leads, I’m codifying what good delivery looks like — setting clear expectations and tracking metrics like velocity and scope creep to measure progress.

• Creating psychological safety: I balance high expectations with empathy, nurturing a culture where the team feels safe to speak up and innovate, while holding accountability firmly.

  
  

The Road Ahead: Accelerating Toward Senior Leadership

These strengths aren’t just endpoints — they’re springboards. I’m intentionally using them to build the strategic leadership presence and influence necessary to step into senior roles:

1. Expanding Influence Beyond the Pod

I’m seeking opportunities to:

• Lead or participate in cross-org strategic initiatives to gain broader visibility and impact.

• Build stronger relationships with senior stakeholders by sharpening my communication and negotiation skills.

  
  

2. Deepening Strategic Delivery Ownership

I’m carving out regular time for:

• Shaping the roadmap and prioritisation — not just executing it.

• Proposing new initiatives that align with company goals, such as integrating MongoDB optimisations into our DevOps and data engineering backlogs.

  
  

3. Strengthening Performance Leadership

I’m:

• Practicing neutral, data-driven feedback to hold the pod to high standards.

• Co-creating clear performance benchmarks to drive consistency.

• Modeling managerial courage by addressing difficult issues early and factually.

  
  

4. Building Leadership Presence

To move into executive leadership, I’m investing in:

• Coaching and mentorship focused on executive communication and situational leadership.

• Leading feedback rituals that elevate team accountability and self-reflection.

• Refining my ability to deliver concise, impact-focused messaging that drives timely decisions.

Conclusion: From Solid Foundations to Strategic Leadership

My journey isn’t just about fixing weaknesses — it’s about doubling down on what’s working and scaling it strategically. By building on my reliability, communication, and pod ownership, while embracing the growth edges, I’m charting a clear path toward senior leadership.

This plan is intentional, measurable, and evolving. With every sprint, every conversation, and every decision, I’m stepping closer to the leader I aspire to be — someone who not only delivers results but also inspires and elevates others at scale.

Final Thoughts: An Invitation to Growth

If you’re reading this as a fellow leader or aspiring one, I hope my story encourages you to embrace feedback — even the tough bits — as a gift. Reflect deeply, act decisively, and above all, keep growing.

Leadership is not a destination. It’s a continuous evolution. And with the right mindset and support, we all have the power to rise.

Thank you for reading! If you resonate with this approach or have insights on balancing empathy with accountability in leadership, I’d love to hear your thoughts.