Is the relentless pressure to scale up suffocating your entrepreneurial spirit? Gwen Bortner and Tonya Kubo challenge the “bigger is better” narrative, diving deep into why strategically staying small might be your greatest competitive advantage. In this episode, they dismantle the scale-or-die myth, exploring how limiting your business size can lead to premium pricing, unparalleled quality, and the elusive work-life balance you crave. They unpack the hidden costs of growth, the power of boutique businesses, and actionable ways to boost profitability without expanding. If you’re questioning the scaling script and seeking a more sustainable path, this episode is your permission slip to redefine success on your own terms.
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Feedback Without Blame
When something goes wrong, most leaders naturally ask, “Why did that happen?” That one word, why, oftentimes will shut down ownership instantly. In this episode, in part three of our series on accountability, Gwen is going to help us unpack feedback because I think we all know there’s a right way and a wrong way to give feedback, Gwen.
I don’t know that we necessarily recognize the little things that make the feedback delivery right or wrong. Gwen, what I would love to do is have you start us off. Why don’t you start us off, first of all, in helping us explain the difference between strategic feedback and accusatory feedback and then we can go from there.
Differentiating Functional/Strategic Feedback From Accusatory Feedback
When we’re looking at doing feedback, we want to be focused on the issue, not the person. That’s really fundamentally the difference between accusatory feedback and what I will call functional feedback. When it’s about you do this and you do that and you do the other thing, there’s no other way then to take it accusatory.
Now, sometimes, that feedback is actually needed because it is about a person. We’re talking about just general day-to-day activities that are going on. This is where this concept of the why question is actually a bad question. It’s our natural tendency because we know about who, what, why, where, how, we learn about all of that really early on. Why is such a logical question, and we’re taught to ask it as a curiosity question. Why did this happen? It’s a standard way to do it. In our mind, we know we’re looking at it as curiosity.
However, what actually happens, and I’d love to say I got full credit for this, but I did not. This was during some training and some sessions I was able to participate in that included Chris Voss. Chris Voss wrote a book called Never Split the Difference. He was the top FBI hostage negotiator for years and years. He understands the importance of words and how a word or two words completely changes how it’s perceived. In those conversations, we weren’t talking about accountability, but when we got here, it was like, This is the accountability piece of it.”
The thing is, when we say why, we think about us. When we hear the word why, when someone asks you why, it’s about your behavior, your attitude, your whatever. We typically jump to excuses. Often, that little voice inside our head that is not such a helpful voice gets triggered and it starts into its monologue that we don’t really need to hear about because we’re lazy, we’re stupid, all the things. None of which are actually true, but that voice loves to reiterate way too much.
What happens is we get focused on defending our value. When what we’re actually trying to do when someone’s asking the why question, most of the time in feedback is we’re actually trying to problem solve. When we’re in defensive mode, we’re not in problem-solving mode at all. If we change the question from a why question to a what question, sometimes it can be a how question, but almost always it’s better as a what question, we actually focus on the activity, the thing, the event and it doesn’t become about me as a person. Since it’s no longer about me as a person, I can actually get into problem-solving mode.
Instead of asking, “Why did you not get that done?” as an example, a typical question and not necessarily meant in any negative way, but easily taken as a negative, we can say, “What prevented you from getting that done?” when you change it to what prevented you, it’s like, “The thing that prevented me from doing it was this and that,” and it becomes about the activity, the thing, the event, the whatever. We move away out of accusation into actual problem-solving. That’s when we can jump into much more productive feedback. It’s the thing that I think we miss a lot of times when we’re doing any feedback.
We start with a why question, so we actually spend a surprising amount and probably way more than anyone’s aware of the time in the conversation getting past all of the reasons, excuses, defensive pieces of it before we get into problem solving. When we change it to what, we can jump into problem solving right away and all of a sudden, that shortens the conversation and it keeps it focused on the thing that we actually want to focus it on.
To me, this is the thing that whenever I share it to people, they’re like, “Huh.” You can play it out. You can ask someone else a question and say, and just ask them the question in two different ways. “Why did you do such and such? What prevented you from doing such and such,” or, “What caused this to happen?” You will very quickly feel it in your mind like, “Yeah, my mind went to a completely different point.”
Here’s the beauty, fundamentally it’s the exact same question. We’re fundamentally getting to the exact same thing. One word different. Usually, it’s a couple of words because you have to rephrase it a little bit to make it a what, but it’s really the difference between the what and the why really changes it from feeling like an accusation to feeling like it is a problem-solving piece.
Can you think of other common why questions we ask that could be replaced with what or how?
Almost every why question can be replaced with what or how.
I asked the question the wrong way. What I meant to say is the common why questions.
The things that we typically hear is like, “Why didn’t that happen?” “Why are we late?” “Why aren’t we getting why aren’t we getting the results that we expected?” it’s almost always about activities, but we ask it in a why way which makes it feel like it’s about me. As I said, it’s almost always a curiosity like there’s obviously a problem here. It’s almost always associated with some problematic issue.
Occasionally, it can be with a non-problematic issue, which could be like, “Why did that work so well?” It doesn’t have quite the same impact because now it’s like, “I’m a hero.” It’s still actually problematic because now it’s about, “Because I’m amazing,” which actually isn’t actually getting to the issue either. What made this work in ways that were even better than we expected?
It’s like what triggered this outcome? How did we get here? What made us finish this so quickly? I also think of like if I were to say, “Why did you finish so quickly?” That sounds like you finishing quickly is a bad thing where if I say, “How did you finish so quickly?” Now it sounds like I’m asking you for tips.
“What made this go so much faster than it has for somebody else,” even.
That can even help you like, “What made this go much faster for you than somebody else?” Could actually help you surface a relationship issue like I have a pre-existing relationship with this person. I’m just able to speak with them more bluntly than the other person could or maybe the other person rubbed them the wrong way.
“I’ve got training that they didn’t have.”
Yeah, like there are all these things that you can surface that you wouldn’t surface because if I even said, “How did you finish so quickly?” then I’m going to respond with tactics. “I did this and then I did this.” Yeah, so that’s interesting. Moving from the strategic feedback versus accusatory. You’ve talked a lot really about framing things, that switch from why to what really reframes from something that feels blamey or maybe even shaming to more curiosity. It disarms that defensive nature that somebody has. It’s also less like interrogation, I would say. More toward reflection and I know that you are a huge proponent for reflection.
For you, that is one of the main things, like your brand of accountability from anybody else’s because you believe that every outcome deserves and requires reflection, whether it’s a positive outcome or a poor outcome. There’s a debrief session over everything whether it goes according to plan or not. I’ve worked on teams where you only had a debrief if it went poorly. We all got in the room and figured out why the launch failed.
The Necessity Of Reflection (Feedback) For Both Positive And Negative Outcomes
To me, this is the key piece of why feedback is the third key element in accountability because it’s not just feedback for negative, it’s feedback always. It’s about that reflection piece. We use the term feedback, but it really is about reflection and problem-solving. To me, it is when we’re talking about feedback in in terms of accountability. Sometimes there isn’t problems to solve. We love that.
Feedback isn’t just feedback—it’s reflection and problem-solving in action. Share on XSometimes it’s only reflection. There’s always an element of reflection that needs to be played into it because there is so much evidence out there. We hear about it, we read about it all the time that it’s actually so much more efficient to repeat the things that you do well and that work than to try to fix the stuff that isn’t or that you’re bad at. This is another reason why that reflection piece is important. It is, as you said, for the positives as well as for the challenges. Using the example that we were talking about before, it’s like, “What made this go so much better than we planned?”
Sometimes it’s because the stars aligned and a whole bunch of things that we had no control over. Just because. Knowing that is also important so that we don’t assume doing that exact same thing is going to get that exact same result the next time because maybe those stars aren’t going to be quite aligned in exactly the same way.
I watched this take place. It was probably late ’22, early ‘23 in the craft world, particularly in the retail craft world because here we hit 2020, we hit COVID. A lot of the retail businesses were like, “I’m going to die because no one can come in.” However, many of them quickly pivoted to be able to do online sales. And have things delivered or do the drop by pickup. They figured that part out.
What happened in the craft world in particular is people who had done crafts of any sort in their life all of a sudden had more time on their hands. They weren’t going to soccer games and they weren’t going out to dinner and they weren’t having parties and all of the other things that fill up the calendar weren’t happening. They had more time and it was like, “I used to really enjoy,” fill in any blank of that type at all.
The Potential Danger Of Missing Reflection On Positive Outcomes
Those businesses started doing really well as you hit mid to late ‘20. Continued to do well in ‘21 because things were still a little wonky. They were doing okay in ‘22, but by the time we hit near the end of ‘22 and the beginning of ‘23, people’s schedules were back what I’m going to call overbooked. People may not perceive it that way, but the time that they had for their craft, their hobby, whatever had drastically diminished back to the level that it was pre-2020. There were people who were making choices about their business sales going up in ‘21 that they weren’t doing the reflection piece to say, “Why is this happening?”
They just assumed that that trajectory was just going to continue on forever. It was like, “No, this was a blip.” Yeah, you need to take advantage of it while you can, but you can’t assume that just because you doubled sales from 2020 to 2021 that you’re going to double sales in 2022 and again in 2023. They were making choices. That’s where if we miss the reflection on what’s working, we can also be making really bad assumptions.
It’s part of what I love about Annie Duke’s book Thinking in Bets. She talks about we naturally, and of course, it makes total sense that we would naturally do this, that we assume a good result is from a good decision and a bad result is from a bad decision. That’s true probably 80% to 90% of the time. It’s not always true. We can get a bad result even though we made a really good decision. We also can get a good result even though we made a bad decision.
Doing that reflection piece allows us to do the analytics part of it to say, was this really a good decision that got a good result, or did we just happen to get a good result because we made an okay decision, a mediocre decision, or even a bad decision, but it just happened to line up so that we get good result? To me, that’s the point that’s really useful in the reflection and as we do that then we can start asking what I would call the problem-solving questions to say can we do this consistently? What would that look like? How do we test it? Those kinds of things.
To me, all of that is part of that feedback loop of accountability. We typically think about accountability for I’ll say the negative side of things, when things didn’t go well, when it doesn’t work. If we’re doing accountability really consistently, we’re doing it consistently, which means we’re going through the process when things are working and when they’re not.
I want to back up just a little bit because, as you’re talking about good decisions sometimes lead to bad outcomes, bad decisions sometimes lead to good outcomes, I can run through a variety of scenarios in my head where that’s true. I like using the pandemic as an example since that’s in recent memory for most of us, but it’s also so extreme. Most of us are never going to have a similar experience in our entire lifetime of something that global, of just paradigm shifting.
I’m going to argue you with that point because this exact same thing happened at 9/11 from a craft standpoint. It wasn’t quite as global. It was definitely more US-based, but the reason I bring it up is there are things that happened. They look different each time, but part of the reason I was able to identify it really fast was I paid attention to the same situation happening at 9/11.
How was it in 9/11 similar?
In that case, people were wanting to cocoon. They wanted the comfort, they wanted the things. Craft businesses, their sales went up through the roof for about a year, maybe a year and a half, and then they dropped off. The problem was everyone was assuming if they’ve done this, they’re going to do this forever. If they’re going up, they’re always going to go up.
I agree. That is the problem that we see in every industry. When things start to go up, nobody ever assumes that it is a bubble that at some point is going to burst. We saw that in the housing industry several years ago. We saw that in dot-com. Those early aughts had all sorts of different examples in different industries, and then COVID, of course, was just a much more global version of it. I’m just thinking what are some less catastrophic experiences that cause things to shoot up that could be like, for instance, in business, I think it is when a business expands.
Sometimes it is the right choice at the right time to expand and sometimes it’s not. There’s a lot of little nuances that make it one way or the other, but almost every business will tie the decision to expand to whatever the outcome is. I was just curious if you had some specific examples there that people might be able to identify with.
Some of the examples are like we’ll use a launch. People will have a launch and it will go exceedingly well. The question is, did it go exceedingly well because it was the right product at the right time and all of the things, or was it for things that you had a whole lot of control over? If you do a similar launch again, will you actually be able to get similar results?
Most everyone’s first default because they don’t actually do the reflection is to say, “Of course I’m going to get those same level, and so I’m going to invest in this thing and that thing and the other thing to make sure that this thing happens,” and then the next launch doesn’t. What they didn’t actually think about was that this was, I’m totally making this up as an example, not necessarily a real one, but I’m sure we’ve there are real examples that are close to this. It’s like, “The reason it went so well is it was your first launch. Your entire list was really excited about it this time and everyone who was super excited about it bought.”
It’s a year later and maybe you’ve grown your list some, but you haven’t doubled your list from where it was before. I’m picking numbers, but if you had 1,000 people on your list and 50 bought, just like I said making up random numbers, you’re like, “There’ll be 50 who buy next time.” It’s like, “Will they? Was a huge percentage now ready a year later that weren’t ready a year before or did the 50 that were going to buy already buy and that’s it? If you grew your list by 200, then maybe you’ll get a few new people that are excited about this product.
If you didn’t grow it to 2,000 from 1,000, are you really going to get 50 new people in? Maybe but maybe not. Part of that is, like I said, is doing that analysis to say where did these sales come from? Did they come out from the universe and you were paying for Facebook ads and you’ll get hit a whole different bunch of people or did they come from your list? If they came from your list, next time, they’re probably also coming from your list. What does that mean?
That’s such a good example. You just gave about a decade of online business knowledge in two minutes right there because even now in 2026, people don’t realize the mathematical side of launches. I’ve worked under the hood of several businesses, I’ve worked on many launches and that is one of the things. If you want to even come close to your first launch of a product, you have to at least double your list by the second launch.
Even if you’re doing social media and email and all the different touch points, you still have to double your list because the most excited people buy the first time. There will be a portion that buy the second time but it’s not going to be as many as bought the first time. You need those new people. Thank you for that really good example because I think between the pandemic example and the example of this, most people will be able to identify that.
There is something else that you have said about feedback in other episodes, but we haven’t really dedicated a lot of time to it that I’m hoping that we can touch on it now. We’ve talked about feedback strategically versus accusatorily. We’ve talked about the importance of reflecting on both wins and losses. The other thing I’ve heard you talk about is how feedback improves delegation.
Feedback improves delegation. Share on XThe Role Of Feedback In Improving “Real Delegation”
Here’s the thing. When we’re talking about delegation, real delegation.
Can you define that? Not everyone knows what that means.
What we often call delegation is assigning of tasks but we still own whether or not it’s getting really done and to some degree, there is an element always of the buck stops here. If we’re the CEO, to some degree, we’re always going to own it. It’s not just feedback, but it really is about accountability as a whole. When you’re using accountability as a whole and feedback is a critical element in it, you’re actually able to delegate in the true way where it’s not just the task, but it’s the ownership and the outcome that the person owns.
It becomes really clear as to what the result is that is expected as part of that. The feedback piece is where you get to be able to continue to build their confidence and also check what I’m going to call their mental processes, for lack of a better description. Sometimes, it really is about making sure they’re thinking about it in the right way. We’ve talked about this at various places before but it’s a constant issue. Stuff that is so obvious to us, we never think to share with other people, because how would they not know? It’s so obvious.
As I said, we’ve done we’ve talked about this many, many times and we’ve all experienced it in both sides. At some point, someone asks the question and your first response is like, “Why are you asking such a dumb question?” Hopefully, you aren’t actually saying those words in your mouth, but you may be saying those words in your head.
You realize it’s like there would be no way that they know all of this other information that sometimes not only goes minutes and hours back, but sometimes goes days, months and years back that is part of that conversation that’s in your head. That’s part of the feedback piece. You start getting an understanding of do they actually understand the context of what the outcome is? Not just the specific, tangible thing, but what all of the implications are of that outcome.
When people really understand the implications and how it fits into the bigger picture and all of those pieces, that’s when real delegation happens because they are now able to make choices and make decisions for situations that weren’t predefined because they’ve got enough understanding of how it fits into the bigger environment.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be the big environment, it can be a little part of the big environment, but they understand how that is as a piece an element in. Where we find is in feedback because we’re having a conversation, because we’re approaching it as reflection and problem solving, is often they’ll say something and it’s like, “It’s because of such and such” and it’s like, “That’s not right” and you realize “I never communicated that piece of information.”
You’re able to give them more and more context in the process of it. Also, as part of feedback in accountability back to when it’s going well, you will be also be able to do the feedback piece where you see something and it’s like, “That was a really great response to this particular situation. What drove that decision for you?”
You can see then that they’re thinking about it in the way that you want or maybe they’re not. Maybe they’re thinking it a completely different way, but it’s actually like, “I hadn’t thought about that. That’s even better than what I was thinking.” That’s really where that delegation piece comes in. There’s a story, I’m pretty sure it’s in Profit First, it might be in one of Mike Michalowicz’s other books, but I’m pretty sure it’s in Profit First.
He talks about bringing in, I think it was a high school student, to do managing of mailings of books and things going out. They had a system and it wasn’t working very well and this is one of those things that he knew he could do true delegation on this because she’s like, “I don’t think it works very well.” and it’s like, “Why don’t you come up with an alternative.”
She came up with an alternative and presented it to Mike. Mike knew that that was going to be a freaking disaster from experience. He also knew that her experiencing the disaster would be a better lesson. It wasn’t like people weren’t going to get their books, it was just going to be slightly delayed. This was not going to be the end of the world for his business. He let that experience happen and she came back and it was like, “Yeah, that didn’t work at all, but I think if I did such and such,” and as she presented that, Mike was like, “I would have never thought of that, but that feels like that’s a really good idea.”
He says, “Why don’t you try that?” She did and by the time of the writing of the book, he says, “It’s been like eight years and we’ve never been able to improve on that system.” Back to she had ownership of it. She also knew that even if it was hard and not working the way she wanted it to, she still had to get the books out. She knew what the goal was and was taking responsibility for that. The feedback process allowed both Mike to get a result he would have never gotten on his own, but also for her to take ownership.
What I like about this train of thought because I think a lot of times, we think about delegation and we’re focusing from the perspective of I want this off my plate, I don’t want to think about it, I just want it to get done. We’re not thinking about how good it feels to the other person to have ownership of the outcome. We’re so desperate to offload whatever it is because very few of us delegate tasks we really enjoy. Let’s just be real. We hold on to those for dear life. We never think about, “If I delegate this really well and if I give them the responsibility but I also let them own the outcome, it’s going to feel really good when it goes well.”
Since it feels so good when it goes well, it will make them less dependent on me over time. That’s one of those things where it’s like, yeah, it takes a little bit more time on the front end. Delivering feedback is a skill. That’s something that you have said several times like delivering it well is a skill, but if you take that time, not only does it save you time in the end, but it can also improve morale.
Hugely. That’s the thing about accountability done well. Back to why it can’t always be about the negative feedback is when accountability is done well, everyone has a much clearer understanding of what success actually looks like. My belief, maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so, I believe most people want to feel successful and be successful. Some people are able to do one but not the other. Some people feel like they’re successful but they’re not actually being successful. Other people are being successful but not feeling successful.
When accountability is done well, everyone has a much clearer understanding of what success actually looks like. Share on XTo me, when accountability is done well, it’s actually both. We’re able to make sure that they have the information, the skills, the knowledge, all of the things to be successful in the doing of whatever it is. Also, because of the reflection and the feedback, they also are feeling successful in what they’re doing. Back to over time, taking more ownership, being able to see how their contribution into the entire ecosystem really makes a difference in the bigger ecosystem.
Here’s where I think we’ve landed. If we tie everything up with a bow, I think we’ve landed where if you learn nothing else from this episode, lesson number one, feedback is not punishment. Don’t frame it as punishment. That’s part of the what or how question versus the why question. It’s not punishment.
Feedback delivered well builds discernment. It helps people learn how to think like you, why you think the things you think and how you’ve come to those conclusions so that they can be faster, better, more efficient at making decisions much the same way you would. Feedback also makes the accountability sustainable because every time you offer some really nice productive actionable feedback, they get a little bit better and then it becomes easier to hold them accountable. What would you add? What else would you like our listener to go home with?
I think the piece is feedback is both positive and negative. Some people say it has to be balanced. I do not believe it has to be balanced.
You don’t believe in the compliment sandwich?
I do not believe in the compliment sandwich. I do think there has to be elements of both. If done consistently over time, back to consistency again., episode 1 of this 3-part series, if it’s done consistently, it probably will be balanced. There will be times when most of the feedback is positive. There will be times that a lot of the feedback is problem-solving, which will feel more like negative feedback, we’re having challenges here. There’ll be times when there’s some of each. In the end, I really do think it becomes balanced. It’s not about it being balanced every time. Be very aware because our tendency is to forget to do the reflection and the feedback on the positive side.
Actually, what you were just saying, your summary gave me one more question to ask. In this three-part series, we started with consistency first, focus came second, and now feedback comes third. Why do you think that order is so important?
It’s because without consistency, the accountability process doesn’t work at all. It doesn’t matter about the other things. Focus means we’re able to actually know what we’re working on instead of all of the things because there’s always this giant, crazy, huge list. We won’t do well if that’s if we’re trying to focus on all the things all the time. Back to now, we know what we are also giving feedback on.
We don’t have to give feedback on 22 things. We can give feedback on the two most important.
The two most important things. I will say that occasionally the feedback will be something that’s not officially on the accountability list because it’s critical to the overall function of the job. To me, that’s the order. Without consistency, there’s no reason to do it at all. Without focus, it becomes overwhelming very, very quickly and therefore, we lose consistency. The feedback is the piece that is the actual accountability piece. It’s the reflection and the problem-solving.
That actually is the accountability piece. You could do that piece without the other but if it’s not being done consistently, it ends up being very lopsided, which is not useful. It is sporadic. Joe Polish has this saying that he uses, which I think is hysterical. He calls it seagull management. I come over, I poop over everything, I fly over, poop over everything and then I leave. If we aren’t focused and we aren’t doing it consistently, then feedback becomes seagull feedback.
I think that leaves us in a perfect place. That helps anybody reading, whether they discover this episode first or this episode third in the series, understand how they all fit together. What I would say is that the series has also been about the importance of asking good questions. Good questions that are thoughtfully framed.
The power isn’t just in asking questions—it’s in asking the right ones, thoughtfully framed. Share on XIf you are reading and thinking like, “That is an area where I could really use some insight, I could grow in this area,” if you want to sharpen the kinds of questions you ask, whether they’re the questions you ask yourself, the questions you ask your team, I strongly encourage you to subscribe to Gwen’s Really Good Question email.
She sends one powerful question each week. There’s not a bunch of advice in there, it’s not an overwhelming list of things. It’s just one question for you to reflect on. Guess what? The question is not patented. She does not own the question. You could turn around and use that question and ask it of people on your team that week. You could ask it of your supervisor, you could get really good at asking questions simply by collecting the questions that Gwen asks you.
To sign up for that email, go to www.tonyakubo.com/question. You’ll start getting the email on Friday. If you choose to respond, Gwen will respond right back. If you choose not to respond, that’s okay, you won’t hear from us again for another week. We are fine. No harm, no foul. Go to www.tonyakubo.com/question and get signed up now.
Mentioned in This Episode
About Your Hosts
Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.
Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.
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