Hillary Spreizer, CEO and Owner of The Latitude Group, a recruiting firm focused on aligning talent strategy with business outcomes, learned early on how ambiguous feedback can obscure real performance.

“When I got started in recruiting, I was told I was ‘too emotionally connected to candidates,’” Spreizer says. When she pressed for specifics, the explanation she received pointed to time management: “My call time was too high per candidate, and that was impacting my pipeline.”

Yet her results told a different story. “When I looked at my delivery rate compared to my male counterparts,” she says, “I was higher than most.”

That disconnect highlighted a broader issue: feedback reflecting preference rather than performance. “It taught me the importance of feedback being grounded in data. Realistically, I was doing something my leader didn’t like, but he couldn’t articulate what it was in a clear way,” she says. “It was a lose-lose situation.”

Today, Spreizer emphasizes the need for clear communication standards and data-driven evaluation. “Constructive feedback needs to be delivered consistently and based on common, well-defined language, rooted in data,” she says.

Without that foundation, feedback becomes subjective — and often inequitable. As Spreizer sees it, “If the goal is for someone to use that information to course-correct or pivot, ambiguity will always get in the way.” Moreover, she says, “Gendered feedback fuels that ambiguity and creates more chaos.”

Read the full article, with insights from all four business leaders, here.