How not to trigger defensiveness when you criticise

^{Hi! Welcome. You being here means more than you know. Knowing it lands with someone like you keeps me going. I'm Lavena Xu-Johnson. I write about psychology for founders. Why? Because scaling a business means scaling ourselves first.}

Hi founders,

Welcome to every new reader who joined in the new year. Nothing resets my nervous system like coming back to the newsletter and finding you here again.

It’s been a hectic start to the year on our side, as we've been prioritizing and executing our plans for 2026.

For many of us, the last month of 2025 was heavy on feedback: the positives, the criticisms, and the reviews of how we worked and how our teams performed.

Criticism and conflict resolution, more broadly, are not easy. It becomes especially hard when the stakes are high: when one person’s performance affects a team’s outcome, when resentment has built up before the conversation, when the runway is tight, and when risks are involved that could change the futures of many others. I am always struck by leaders who can give constructive criticism without leaving psychological bruises, while still creating real behavioural change and lasting impact.

To kick off 2026, we are going to explore frameworks to help us navigate a hard one-on-one conversation.

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In 1999, three social psychologists from Stanford University, Geoffrey Cohen, Claude Steele, and Lee Ross, published a paper called The Mentor’s Dilemma: Providing Critical Feedback Across the Racial Divide.

The study is worth decoding because it reaches far more than the education setting - it’s a study about what criticism means in almost any relationship. What was even more fascinating was the researchers'’ background - they weren’t communication researchers, but psychologists who studied how people misread each other’s motives in high stress social context (Professor Lee Ross), identity-linked pressure and how it affects performance (Professor Claude Steele), and how to utilise small psychological shifts to change how people interpret threat and belonging (Professor Geoffrey L Cohen).

In the paper, two student groups received largely critical feedback. The researchers then tested different ways to frame the same criticism and how they were perceived by the student groups. They framed the way they delivered the criticism in three types (while the criticism itself remained the same):

The third type changed the outcomes of how well the students received the feedback, and the researchers called it “the wise criticism”; the added messages were:

When the criticism was delivered without the buffer of ‘assurance of capability’, students were more likely to interpret it through the lens of bias and rejection, and motivation dropped. Praise alone did not improve how feedback was received, nor did high expectations alone. When it arrived with both layers, students responded well, motivation and identification improved.

This is familiar to most leaders: criticism at work is rarely processed as neutral information; it is often processed as a social signal, especially when ambiguity is present - differences in background, seniority, gender, status, identity, and race.

In startups, feedback lives inside a constant inner noise of uncertainty: Do I belong here? Am I safe here? Am I still valued here? Is my role shrinking? Is my future at stake?

Even high performers can carry a private version of this, especially when the organisation is moving fast, and the social terrain changes weekly. Founders are not immune either. When you give criticism, you are usually also managing your own threat narrative: pressure, responsibility, the fear that you are carrying everyone on your back.

Cohen, Steele, and Ross were researching racial mistrust in mentoring, but the psychological mechanism can apply to work situations in which people have any reason to doubt their standing: criticism doesn’t land as guidance, and the feedback becomes irrelevant and unhelpful.

This is why founders often default to two extremes:

When you criticise someone’s work, you are sending two messages at once:

Most leaders focus on the first and assume the second will be inferred correctly. In reality, the second is where most people panic. Wise feedback makes the second message explicit, so the first message can be heard.

1) Set the standard first

Instead of conveying disappointment, focus on the standard, the culture you’re setting, and move the discussion from personality to common norms and shared rules.

2) Add the buffer: assurance of capability

One of the most interesting parts of the 1999 study is that praise did not work the same way as assurance of capability. Praise sounds like: you are good. Wise feedback is: you are capable of accomplishing something difficult, and I am invested in your capability.

We often reach for praise because it is socially easier, but what people need in times of threat is not admiration, but trust.

After giving the criticism, firmly say: “I’m being direct because I believe you can meet that bar.” It turns criticism from a threat into a form of inclusion. It says: You are not being demoted from the team; you are being invited deeper into the culture.

Wise feedback is not about being gentle or removing pressure in a crisis; it is about removing interpretive ambiguity and preventing mistrust. By saying, “This is a high-pressure quarter, and I am going to be more direct. I’m doing that because the standard matters and because I believe you can hit it with the right structure,” you reiterated the performance and protected the relationship.

This could feel unnatural at first because, to an extent, it can feel emotionally exposing, and it forces founders to admit they care whether the team member stays stagnant or grows. Being emotionally distant or detached can feel safer, but it could also make feedback feel more like a rejection.

Most of us think delivering good criticism is about choosing the right words, but this study suggests it is about controlling the meaning behind your criticism. When people feel trusted, they can hear “your work missed the standard” instead of “you missed the standard as a person.”

We often think of criticism as a test of the other person’s maturity, but it is also a test of our ability to achieve two goals at once: maintaining standards and belonging.

For a practical experiment for this week: pick one feedback conversation you are avoiding, and write your opening in two sentences only.

Next edition, we will take this into group conflict, where the question is no longer “do I belong” but “which side am I on,” and why teams turn disagreement into identity attacks so quickly.

As always, hit reply if something in here hits home.

Until next week,
Lavena

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