People Management
March 18, 2026
Feedforward, clarity for a career beyond feedback
Leaders need to help teams see and build possible professional futures
There is much talk about the importance of feedback in organizations. And rightly so. Over the past few decades, it has consolidated itself as one of the main tools for performance management, learning, and alignment between leadership and teams. Daniela do Lago, author of books on careers, defines it as one of the most important people management practices. When well conducted, feedback helps to interpret facts and perceptions, correct courses, and provide visibility to what has worked or what needs to be reviewed. In essence, it is a tool for reading the journey.
Not by chance, it is usually associated with evaluation cycles, continuous improvement initiatives, and formal career development programs. And this, perhaps, is its main limitation.
Feedback, by nature, looks back. It is anchored in what has already happened: a delivery made, a behavior observed, a poorly conducted meeting, a conflict, a decision, a result. Its logic is retrospective. And although this is important, it is not always enough to answer one of the most decisive questions in professional life: what needs to be built from now on?
This question seems simple, but it profoundly alters the role of leadership, because developing people is not just about helping them understand the past. It is also about helping them gain clarity about the future. And this is one of the great challenges of middle management, as discussed in one of my texts published in this column (Between strategies and solutions: the role of middle management), when addressing the role of these leaders in translating strategy, culture, and direction for the team.
It is in this context that the concept of feedforward, proposed by American entrepreneur Marshall Goldsmith, gains strength. His provocation is quite direct: instead of focusing on the past, look at what can be done from now on. The change in emphasis seems subtle, but it has a great impact.
The feedforward affects the emotional climate of development conversations. Goldsmith observes that this approach tends to be perceived as less personal and less defensive, precisely because it does not rely on criticism of something accomplished, but on suggestions for something that can still be built. Instead of directing the conversation to justifications about past mistakes or successes, it shifts the focus to possibility, action, and progress.
Management
This does not mean, under any circumstances, abandoning feedback. The issue is not to replace one practice with the other, as if they were opposites. Goldsmith himself does not advocate for the end of feedback or evaluations. The point is different. In many daily development interactions, just looking back is not enough. It is necessary to offer direction.
In various contexts, people receive feedback on what they delivered, but still lack clarity on what they need to develop to advance. They know where they went wrong, but do not necessarily understand which competencies will be decisive in the next cycle. They understand how they were evaluated, but do not see which competencies, knowledge, skills, and attitudes could bring them closer to new professional opportunities. In many cases, there needs to be less evaluation and more direction.
This lack of direction also appears in recent studies on careers. When discussing the difficulty many professionals have in visualizing possible futures, the researchDream Career 2025, by Cia de Talentos, touches on a sensitive point of our time. Many people work, deliver, strive, and even perform well, but without perspective, the future seems diffuse. And, when this happens, development can lose momentum.
The research also reinforces this perception by showing that, for the young audience, development remains one of the main factors of attraction in organizations. What is sought is clarity: career plans, structured paths, concrete experiences, applied learning, and tangible growth prospects. Ultimately, what this audience seeks is direction.
Possible futures
It is the ability to envision possible futures, imagine paths, and find references amidst global complexities. In practice, those who translate this “how” are, to a large extent, the direct leaders. Therefore, the role of these leaders as interpreters of expectations, possibilities, and professional trajectories becomes increasingly evident, helping to make career futures “visible” for their teams. Leaders need to see possible futures. And more than that, they need to help the team see them too.
I use “futures” here, in the plural, on purpose, as this is one of the lenses through which I usually observe the world. Instead of imagining the future as a single, straight, and predictable line, I prefer to understand it as a field of possibilities that opens up from the choices, contexts, and signals we can interpret in the present. A logic that also applies to professional trajectories.
For a long time, career was treated as a relatively stable ladder. There was an expected path, predictable progressions, and an implicit roadmap to follow within organizations. This model, however, no longer explains the reality of many professional trajectories well. New specializations emerge, areas begin to overlap, roles change more frequently, and technology continuously redefines valued competencies. In this scenario, the very value of work takes on new interpretations.
Professor Silvio Meira, chief scientist and one of the founders of TDS Company, often says that leadership should invest a large part of its time thinking about the future. The professor’s provocation, who also helped create Porto Digital, is valid because it shifts leadership from a purely reactive place to one capable of imagining scenarios. Instead of just managing demands, correcting deviations, and responding to urgencies, leading also means offering direction amidst uncertainty.
This has important practical implications. It is not enough to ask people for career protagonism if development conversations continue to be limited to retrospective, generic, or excessively immediate performance-centered observations. In many cases, the professional even receives frequent feedback but still cannot answer fundamental questions about next steps.
When leadership cannot sustain this type of conversation, development runs the risk of becoming reactive. The professional improves what was pointed out, corrects what was criticized, adjusts the recent delivery, but continues without a clear vision.
This is why the feedforward offers such a relevant contribution. It shifts the conversation from review to projection. It does not eliminate considerations of the journey, but refuses to remain solely in the past. Instead of just asking “how was it?”, it adds “what needs to be done from now on?”. Instead of limiting itself to “what was missing?”, it proposes “what to do now?”. It is less about closing the past and more about opening the future.
Ultimately, feedforward helps leadership develop an increasingly necessary capability: understanding that trajectories are not given, but built. That development is not just correcting flaws, but expanding possibilities. And that career clarity does not mean predicting exactly what will happen, but making possible paths, expected competencies, involved choices, and contextual signals more visible. Feedback and feedforward are not opposites. They are complementary lenses. Feedback interprets. Feedforward guides.
Kim Scott, author of “Radical Candor” and a consultant for various Silicon Valley companies, has publicly stated that she dislikes labels and terms. Perhaps, in the end, more important than the name is ensuring that leadership can offer the team two things: clarity on what worked or didn’t work in the past and understanding of expectations, possibilities, and future paths.
Because feedback alone is not enough. With less linear careers, more dynamic organizations, and increasingly accelerated transformations, developing people requires more than reading the path. It requires the ability to make futures less invisible.
And perhaps one of the most relevant functions of leadership today is precisely this: not only to interpret what has been left behind, but to help people see and build the possible futures of their own trajectories.
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Who wrote this column
Lucas Tangi
