Why some individuals never accept feedback, and what works

The first time I realised feedback wasn’t landing, we had already run three performance cycles and two “culture resets.” People nodded in the room, promised changes in Slack, and went right back to the old pattern by Friday. It would have been easy to blame attitude. It wasn’t attitude. It was design. Early-stage teams are built fast and explained slowly. When speed outruns clarity, even smart people start hearing feedback as a threat, not a support. If you’ve ever wondered why some people never take feedback, start by asking what your system is teaching them to expect when they listen.

In Malaysia and Singapore, I’ve watched capable operators shut down not because they were thin-skinned, but because the feedback felt like a public verdict. We put them on the spot in a weekly all-hands, wrapped a “quick note” in a joke, or delivered a long speech with no clear next step. In Riyadh, a founder I worked with kept losing senior hires because the feedback felt like a status correction in front of juniors. No one said that out loud. They just stopped engaging. Culture isn’t the excuse here; it’s the context. If listening means losing face, people will choose face.

The situation usually starts with good intentions. A founder wants higher quality, fewer mistakes, faster handoffs. They do what they’ve been taught: make it specific, make it timely, make it kind. That advice is fine as far as manners go, but it ignores incentives and structure. Early teams often lack three things that make feedback feel safe to act on: a clear owner for the outcome, a visible loop where effort is noticed, and a boundary that protects people from being corrected by anyone at any time. Without those, feedback becomes ambient noise. It may be courteous at times, cutting at others, and seldom beneficial.

I learned this the hard way with a product lead who looked defensive every time I gave notes. I tried softer language. I tried more data. Nothing moved. The turning point came when I stopped giving “notes” and instead clarified the contract. I told him, privately and plainly, that he owned conversion after trial to day-30 retention, not “product” in the abstract. That single sentence did more than any coaching. Now feedback wasn’t about his personality. It was about a metric he had authority over, and a runway to fix it without drive-by comments from everyone else. His posture changed because the power balance changed.

That’s the first truth most leaders avoid: people ignore feedback when their ownership is fuzzy. If three people “kind of own” an outcome, no one owns the consequence of ignoring advice. The second truth is even less comfortable: people ignore feedback when your follow-through is inconsistent. If every “urgent” note carries the same energy, exhaustion becomes the rational response. The third truth is cultural but practical: people ignore feedback when the forum humiliates them, even lightly. A private message with a clear ask beats a clever quip in a group chat every single time.

There is also the timing problem. Feedback given at the wrong moment makes even good advice sound like blame. In Singapore, teams favour speed; we comment mid-sprint and expect changes the same day. In KSA, seniority can demand more context-setting and a slower rhythm to preserve alignment. In both places, the rule is simple: change the rhythm if you want a different result. I’ve seen more progress by scheduling feedback at the beginning of a cycle, paired with the resource decision, than by sprinkling half-requests across the week. When the plan changes, people change. When it’s just talk, they protect themselves.

If you want to get through to the person who never seems to listen, start by shrinking the target. In one Malaysian startup, we stopped arguing about “quality” and chose one visible defect to kill over two weeks, with one owner. We didn’t ask them to agree with the theory. We asked them to run the experiment and hold the line. Quietly, the wins stacked up, and the defensive posture softened because results replaced debate. Momentum is a better teacher than a lecture.

The language you use matters, but not for the reasons you think. Politeness helps, yes. What helps more is separating judgment from instruction. “This missed the brief” is a judgment; it invites a story about why. “Ship the revised draft by 4 p.m. with two examples of the new tone” is instruction; it invites action. In Saudi teams with strong hierarchy, I’ve found that explicitly naming the lane “I’m giving product feedback as CEO, not rewriting as a PM” prevents people from hearing your comment as an attempt to take their job. In Singaporean teams, a short “why it matters” pairs well with the instruction, because pragmatism drives adoption. Adjust your voice to the local energy, but keep the spine of the message firm.

The tough cases are usually the high-performers who have never had to listen. They deliver fast and clean, but they warp the room. Telling them they need to “be more coachable” won’t work. Show them the cost. In one portfolio company, a star engineer wouldn’t accept code review notes. We stopped arguing. We showed the latency data, the incident log, and the hours teammates were spending around his choices. Then we gave him a protected path to fix it without the theatre of a “performance plan.” We made listening the fastest route to winning. He took it. Not because he suddenly loved feedback, but because the system made the alternative slower.

There’s also the founder variable. If your team doesn’t take feedback, check your own hygiene. Do you change priorities without closing the loop? Do you give advice that conflicts with the constraints you’ve set? Do you praise the result without naming what behaviour got you there? People don’t resist feedback in a vacuum; they mirror the level of clarity and consistency they receive. The most honest line I’ve said to a team, and the one that changed the most, was this: “If you’ve been ignoring feedback, that’s on me. I didn’t make it actionable, owned, or safe enough to try. That changes now.”

So, how do you actually get through to them? You don’t start with a script. You start with structure. Define the smallest accountable outcome and name the person who owns it. Move the conversation into a forum that protects dignity and speeds action. Give a time-bound ask tied to a resource decision, not a floating opinion. Close the loop publicly only when the work is visible, not to score points. When you’ve built that rhythm, the same words you used last month suddenly start working, because the system now makes listening rational.

In Southeast Asia and KSA, face and hierarchy will always be part of the equation. Respect that without letting it run you. Frame feedback as stewardship of the mission, not a personal downgrade. Offer people a way to improve that doesn’t require them to admit incompetence in front of peers. You’re not coddling them; you’re clearing the path for the behaviour you want. Over time, once the rhythm is set, you can increase candour without breaking trust. It’s a sequence, not a stunt.

If you’ve been frustrated for months, remember this: people who “never” take feedback often start listening after a single design change in how you give it. The person didn’t transform overnight. The environment did. You clarified authority. You adjusted timing. You removed public theatre. You connected effort to an outcome that mattered to them. That’s why it worked.

Here’s the quiet test I use now, and it keeps me honest. Before I speak, I ask myself if the person has the power, the protection, and the path to act on what I’m about to say. If any one of those is missing, I fix that first. Then I talk. It’s not softer leadership. It’s smarter operating. And if you’ve been wondering why some people never take feedback and how to get through to them, this is the real answer: redesign the conditions, and the conversation starts to land.

What I’d do differently if I were starting again is simple. I would set ownership contracts before I set performance targets. I would schedule feedback windows into the operating calendar instead of sprinkling “quick notes” across people’s week. I would stop treating politeness as progress and start measuring whether anything changed in the work. Most of all, I would build a culture where listening is the fastest route to winning—not the fastest route to losing face. That’s when feedback stops feeling like a verdict and starts feeling like a tool.