Flawsome

When was the last time you avoided a tough conversation at work—maybe because you feared conflict or didn’t know how to say what needed to be said? In Fixing Feedback, Georgia Murch argues that most workplaces fail not because of poor strategy but because of broken communication. At every level, from the CEO to the newest hire, individuals struggle to give and receive feedback well. Murch contends that becoming a remarkable communicator—someone others trust, respect, and enjoy working with—is the key to building thriving teams and outstanding organizational cultures.

Murch’s central thesis is simple yet profound: if you want a remarkable job, you need to have remarkable conversations. Communication is not just a soft skill; it’s a measurable driver of engagement, productivity, and culture. She explores how leaders can shift from outdated models of annual performance reviews and command-and-control management to a continuous, self-sustaining ‘feedback flow,’ where giving and receiving feedback becomes second nature.

Feedback as the Lifeblood of High-Performance

Drawing from her decades of leadership and consulting experience, Murch opens with a story about Morgan and Banks, a recruitment firm known for valuing its people. The founders embodied Peter Drucker’s saying that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast.’ When the company was sold and focus shifted from people to numbers, productivity fell and star employees left. This illustrates Murch’s belief: invest in your people and the business will prosper. Without feedback, people won’t know what to replicate or improve. In other words, people matter—a lot.

Across industries, Murch sees feedback as the missing currency. Performance reviews, she says, are stale and artificial, full of surprises and tick-box scoring. Instead, leaders must cultivate real-time feedback built on trust and respect—what she calls ‘remarkable conversations.’ In this environment, every team member becomes a leader, using influence, candor, and empathy to drive change. Everyone who collaborates or communicates with someone else shares responsibility for culture.

The Cost of Poor Communication

Murch presents compelling evidence (citing Gallup and other studies) that disengaged employees cost organizations millions annually. When conversations fail, people noise—conflict, avoidance, and gossip—fills the workplace. Her advice: managers must deal with issues when they arise rather than stepping over ‘broken glass.’ Avoidance makes things worse. She compares it to firefighting—nip small spot fires early before they become raging bushfires.

This builds on timeless principles from thinkers like Gandhi (‘Be the change you wish to see in the world’) and Peter Drucker (‘Most of what we call management makes it difficult for people to get their work done’). For Murch, being a remarkable communicator means managing people noise by addressing problems directly, with kindness and candor.

Remarkable Feedback vs. Being a Dick

Murch frequently repeats her core warning: don’t be a dick. That means avoiding arrogance, blame, gossip, or avoidance—all behaviors that erode trust and collaboration. In personal and professional relationships, unremarkable behaviors make working together painful. The antidote is feedback mastery: learning to hold tough conversations safely. Feedback should be factual, not opinion-based. You separate the real truth from your truth, inviting others into collaborative dialogue rather than defending your own position. (This parallels Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen’s Thanks for the Feedback, which also explores emotional triggers that block learning.)

Ultimately, Murch contends that remarkable communication transforms individuals and entire organizations. It creates a feedback flow—a culture where accountability, transparency, and action replace bureaucracy. High-performing organizations like Atlassian and Zappos succeed because they’ve embedded feedback into everything they do. The result: happier employees, more loyal customers, and resilient leaders.

Why These Ideas Matter

Broken communication costs relationships and revenue. Avoiding difficult conversations might feel safe in the short term, but it poisons morale over time. Murch challenges you to lead from wherever you stand—whether you manage others or not—and to build cultures where honesty and care coexist. Her message is both personal and systemic: by fixing feedback, you fix culture, performance, and even yourself. The journey to being remarkable isn’t about perfection; it’s about continuous improvement, self-awareness, and the willingness to do the work.

Murch argues that the best organizations are defined by their people, not their products. You cannot deliver a remarkable job or relationship without having remarkable conversations. She shows how world-class companies like Zappos and Atlassian demonstrate that communication and collaboration—not perks or pay—drive engagement and success. These businesses empower employees to act autonomously and create cultures of openness. Their secret is constant feedback and trust.

People Noise and Leadership Responsibility

Despite knowing the importance of communication, many managers create or tolerate what Murch calls ‘people noise’—complaints, gossip, resistance, and emotional distractions. She asserts that ‘managers need to manage,’ meaning they must deal with people issues quickly. Ignoring them allows dysfunction to spread. A ‘broken-glass manager,’ she says, is one who steps over issues hoping someone else will fix them. Remarkable managers tackle these spot fires early, directly, and respectfully. This proactive approach builds trust and inspires teams.

The Myth of Time Poverty

Most people claim they’re too busy for feedback. Murch dismantles this excuse. She draws from productivity expert Dermot Crowley, who warns that 21st-century technology combined with 20th-century habits leaves us drowning in emails and meetings. We procrastinate, avoiding tough issues. Murch reminds us that failing to address problems early is like ignoring a small flame until it burns the house down. Timely conversations save time in the long run.

Dealing with Complexity

In matrix structures common to large organizations, communication becomes even more critical. Murch cites Jay Galbraith’s insight that ‘organizations don’t fail—management fails at implementing them.’ When multiple managers and teams overlap, feedback must flow freely across silos. Rather than relying on structure alone, leaders must equip employees with collaboration and conversation skills. Communication becomes the grease that turns the organizational wheels smoothly.

From Performance Reviews to Feedback Flow

Performance reviews, she argues, are outdated fossils. They’re full of surprises and rarely build development. Murch points to Adobe, Accenture, and Deloitte, which replaced annual reviews with continuous ‘pulse checks,’ drastically improving motivation and culture. Frequent, informal feedback improves performance by up to 40%. The future lies in shared accountability—everyone giving and receiving feedback with candor and care. It’s how remarkable cultures are born.

At the heart of remarkable communication is learning to have hard conversations without damaging relationships. Murch teaches a simple yet powerful seven-step framework adapted from Susan Scott’s Fierce Conversations. Preparation is the key—because tough discussions can smell trouble before they start.

Seven Steps to Structure

• State the issue clearly. No ‘shit sandwiches’—get straight to the point. Say what the conversation is about so the person doesn’t have to guess.
• Provide examples. Base feedback on concrete facts, not opinions. Without examples, the discussion risks becoming vague or unfair.
• Share your feelings and opinions, carefully. These come after the facts, never before. Be honest but avoid speculation.
• Clarify what’s at stake. Make consequences visible—whether lost trust, poor results, or formal warnings.
• Own your contribution. Feedback works when both sides take responsibility. Genuine apologies promote reconciliation.
• Show intent to resolve, not control. Collaboration beats command. Be willing to find solutions together.
• Invite their perspective. True communication combines your truth and theirs—what Murch calls ‘the real truth.’

Timing and Method

Murch emphasizes giving feedback face-to-face whenever possible. Emails and texts are dangerous; tone gets lost and conflict deepens. If timing or privacy isn’t right, postpone briefly—but don’t delay indefinitely. Waiting turns issues into crises.

Conflict as a Creative Force

She reframes conflict from something destructive into something essential. Borrowing from Margaret Heffernan’s ideas in Dare to Disagree, Murch says disagreement sparks innovation. Without opposing viewpoints, teams become echo chambers. The Thomas-Kilmann conflict model helps you navigate between avoiding, accommodating, competing, compromising, or collaborating. The ideal zone is collaboration—a win–win blend of courage and curiosity.

Body Language Matters

Nonverbal cues speak louder than words. Murch cites Amy Cuddy’s research on power poses: standing tall and open increases confidence and reduces stress. Before that big conversation, breathe deeply, straighten up, and hold yourself like someone worthy of respect—because body language shapes your own mindset as much as others’ perceptions.

Even well-prepared feedback fails if people don’t feel emotionally safe. Murch calls safety ‘the difference between an outcome and an outbreak.’ When people feel attacked, their brains trigger fight-or-flight responses, making rational conversation impossible. Understanding this biology is the beginning of emotional intelligence at work.

Understanding Fight or Flight

When we perceive a threat—real or imagined—the brain diverts blood from rational thinking to the muscles, prepping us for conflict or escape. That’s why you can’t think clearly during an argument. Murch lists recognizable fight behaviors (like intimidation, dominance, or belittling) and flight behaviors (like silence, avoidance, or deflecting). Both shut down collaboration.

Restoring Safety

She offers seven techniques to re-establish calm:

• Apologize sincerely when respect is broken.
• Use ‘do and don’t’ statements to clarify intent.
• Reconfirm mutual agreements about purpose.
• Ask what’s going on instead of assuming motives.
• Mirror and summarize to show active listening.
• Make silence your ally—it encourages reflection and honesty.
• Validate feelings; never tell someone how they should feel.

Self-Management and Stress

Self-control is essential. Breathing slowly, using positive self-talk, and focusing on facts rather than stories help regulate emotions. Asking open-ended questions (‘How did you see that?’, ‘What do you need?’) keeps dialogue moving. Murch’s practical wisdom echoes Daniel Goleman’s emotional intelligence framework—self-awareness first, empathy second.

“Restoring safety is like pressing the brakes on a runaway car—you can’t move forward until you slow down.”

Mastering safety transforms tough interactions into productive exchanges. It’s how remarkable communicators maintain trust even when emotions run high.

Remarkable communication starts with owning your stuff. Murch uses the metaphor of the iceberg: others only see your words, behaviors, and physicality—the visible 10%. Beneath the surface lie emotions, beliefs, and past experiences that shape those visible reactions. When you fail to recognize what drives you, you risk misunderstanding others and repeating patterns that harm relationships.

The Drama Triangle

Adapting Stephen Karpman’s drama triangle, Murch identifies three dysfunctional roles in workplace conflict: Victims (‘poor me’), Rescuers (‘let me fix you’), and Perpetrators (‘it’s your fault’). These mindsets create emotional chaos. The antidote is accountability: step out of victimhood, stop rescuing, and own your contribution. It requires humility and courage but leads to growth and peace.

Receiving Feedback Gracefully

Drawing from Stone and Heen’s trigger framework, she identifies four blockers to receiving feedback—truth, relationship, identity, and delivery. Recognize when your ego is hijacked and choose curiosity over defensiveness. Find the gold in every conversation: it might sting, but it’s data for improvement. Responding with “Thanks for the feedback” instead of “Thanks, but…” builds emotional maturity.

Balancing Pride and Humility

Healthy pride in achievements is good; inflated pride—ego—is toxic. Murch warns leaders not to confuse expertise with righteousness. Real strength comes from humility: the willingness to listen, learn, and admit you’re wrong. She captures this succinctly—‘Not apologizing is for dicks. Remarkable people offer apologies and mean them.’

Every person has a mental ‘Board of Directors’ (BODs)—internal voices that distort reality. Murch, with psychotherapist Matthew Cooksey, distills fifty known cognitive distortions into ten categories that commonly appear at work. These distortions affect how you perceive situations, make decisions, and treat people.

Meet Your Inner Board

• Blamers: Always someone else’s fault—Murch warns that blame is like drinking poison hoping it kills your enemy.
• All About Me-ers: Believe everything happens in reaction to them, seeing themselves as cause for everything.
• Black-and-White Thinkers: Polarize between perfection and failure with no middle ground.
• Negative Thinkers: Filter out positives; Dr. Daniel Amen’s studies show most people have tens of thousands of negative thoughts daily.
• Catastrophisers and Minimisers: Drama kings and queens or denialists—everything is either terrible or trivial.
• Always Righties: Need to win at all costs; stubbornness isolates them.
• Powerless Victims: ‘Poor me’ thinkers who surrender control of their lives.
• Perfectionists: Chase impossible standards and lose joy in the process.
• Labellers: Generalize based on limited data—turn one mistake into an identity.
• Entitled: Believe they shouldn’t have to earn what they want.

The Cost of Distorted Thinking

These distortions cloud judgment, causing poor decisions and strained relationships. Murch shares how a sales manager lost a valued contract because he led with blame, black-and-white thinking, and entitlement. Once he recognized the distortion and apologized, the relationship recovered. This reflection underscores how self-awareness saves careers.

Removing your BODs doesn’t mean everyone agrees—it means discussions are grounded in reality rather than reaction. As Anaïs Nin said, ‘We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are.’ Awareness of your inner board is the first step to truth and collaboration.

After identifying your cognitive distortions, Murch offers practical tools for rewiring your mind. Escaping negative thought loops requires conscious choice and new habits. These tools build positivity, resilience, and self-leadership.

Stay in Your Lane

Many of us prefer analyzing others’ faults, but maturity means taking responsibility for our own. Inspired by Bev McInnes’s ‘Insight’ program, Murch learned that real growth comes from focusing on how experiences affect you, not others. ‘A healthy relationship can only be built between two people who daily choose each other and take full responsibility,’ she writes.

Positive Practices

• Smile—it’s contagious and scientifically proven to reduce stress and boost immunity (per psychologist James Laird).
• Build a tribe of positive people. If you spend time with cynics, you become one.
• Feed the good wolf. Choose love and compassion over fear and resentment—the Cherokee parable epitomizes this choice.
• Find the gift—even unpleasant feedback can teach valuable lessons.
• Meditate or practise yoga—Sara Lazar’s neuroscience research shows meditation can alter brain regions tied to empathy and focus.
• Express gratitude—whether through journals, photos, or verbal appreciation; gratitude boosts health and happiness.
• Seek advice and feedback—others see blind spots you don’t.
• Get healthy—nutrition, exercise, and sleep sharpen mental clarity.
• Avoid comparison—‘Comparison is the killer of joy,’ Murch reminds, echoing Theodore Roosevelt’s insight.

Together, these practices form a personal toolkit for resilience. Change requires action, but each small step cultivates a more remarkable version of yourself—one fit to lead with empathy and wisdom.

Murch concludes by shifting from personal mastery to organizational integration. Training alone doesn’t change culture; it only educates. Real transformation requires structure, measurement, and accountability. She outlines five elements of successful feedback flow that allow communication habits to become self-sustaining.

The Five Elements of Feedback Flow

• Make the decision: People must believe, understand, and own the change. Without buy-in, systems fail.
• Educate with impact: Use well-designed learning with clear objectives, varied methods, and skilled facilitators. Include deliberate practice, not just theory.
• Structure to remember: Reinforce learning through rhythms and rituals—like annual commemorations or regular check-ins.
• Measure consistently: ‘What you can’t measure, you can’t improve.’ Track engagement, productivity, and behavioral shifts, as Nous Group did in their large-scale change projects.
• Accountability with rigour: Hold yourself, peers, and teams responsible. Accountability breeds responsibility.

Sustaining Change

Murch likens embedding communication habits to planting trees—it requires maintenance and patience. Continuous improvement, as Tom Peters advised, separates excellent firms from the rest. Using Appreciative Inquiry, she urges organizations to amplify what’s working instead of fixating on weaknesses. This fosters momentum and positivity.

Holding to Account

Accountability starts with you: do what you say even when no one’s watching. Use your position and peer relationships to model honesty and courage. Go public—declare your commitments to others to reinforce them. This vulnerability builds trust and drives sustainable change.

“Training is like throwing seeds on dry soil—without systems and accountability, nothing grows.”

When organizations align all five elements, feedback flows effortlessly. Communication becomes cultural, and cultures become remarkable.

Murch ends her book with a powerful rallying cry: knowledge is easy to access; wisdom requires sweat. You can read endless leadership theories, but only practicing them changes behavior. As she writes, ‘Wisdom is combining knowledge with action.’ The difference between intent and transformation is doing the work.

From Culture Takers to Culture Makers

Quoting Jock Cameron and Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, she introduces the concepts of resistance and culture-making. You can either take culture as it is—complaining, judging, avoiding—or you can create it by acting. Resistance whispers that you’re not ready or good enough. Overcoming it means working despite fear, fatigue, and doubt. Like resistance training for muscles, struggle builds strength.

Action Over Entitlement

Entitlement, Murch warns, kills initiative. People who wait for others to fix things become ‘inactive bystanders.’ There’s no such thing as an innocent bystander when change is possible. Be the culture you want to work in. Have the conversations you’ve avoided. Make the adjustments. Do the work.

Fighting Resistance

Resistance manifests as procrastination, perfectionism, or self-doubt. Murch encourages you to treat it like a teacher (echoing the Dalai Lama’s insight that ‘the enemy is a very good teacher’). Whatever holds you back reveals where you most need growth. She turns this concept into practical wisdom: identify your resistance, own your flaws, and deliberately practise new habits until change sticks.

The closing message is unapologetically direct. Be the example, not the talker. Combine your intent with daily action. Build the culture you crave. Whether in communication or leadership, excellence doesn’t arrive; it’s earned through consistent effort. That’s how you become remarkable.