The Word That Didn’t Exist
After an interactive virtual training that a colleague and I had been facilitating together, we stayed online for a few minutes to debrief. As facilitators often do, we replayed the experience out loud. We talked about what had worked, where participants had seemed most engaged, and what we might do differently the next time we found ourselves in front of a group.
Somewhere in the middle of that conversation, he asked me a question.
“Are you open to some feedback?”
I was.
Then he told me that I had been using a word that doesn’t actually exist.
For years, I had occasionally said unveal.
I had apparently taken reveal and unveil, decided that each was doing only part of the work, and quietly merged them into a new entry in the unofficial Jorge dictionary. The realization stopped me for a moment. How long had I been saying that? Had other people noticed? I have been known to occasionally butcher a phrase or invent a word or two, but this moment stayed with me for reasons that had very little to do with vocabulary.
What stayed with me was how he offered the feedback.
He hadn’t interrupted me during the training. He hadn’t corrected me in front of participants. He hadn’t used the moment to demonstrate that he knew something I didn’t. Instead, he waited until we were reflecting together, and then he asked a simple question: Are you open to some feedback?
I’ve been thinking about that question ever since.
Feedback and advice are often treated as statements rather than conversations. We tell people what we think, what they missed, or what they should do next. Sometimes those observations are accurate. But accuracy alone does not make feedback helpful. Advice offered without relationship can feel intrusive, and truth delivered without care can still wound. Correction can easily become a performance of expertise rather than an act of service.
I’ve come to believe that good feedback is not merely something one person gives and another person receives. At its best, feedback is not a statement delivered from one person to another. It is a dialogue.
I found language for this in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire argued that authentic dialogue requires humility, faith, and love. Those three conditions have stayed with me because they offer a different picture of what feedback and advice might look like when they are offered well.
Humility reminds us that none of us sees the whole picture. No matter how experienced we become, our perspective remains partial. When giving feedback, humility keeps us from confusing our interpretation with the truth itself. It invites us to offer what we notice without assuming that we fully understand another person’s experience.
Faith is the belief that people can grow. It assumes that the person across from us is capable of learning, adapting, and becoming more than they are today. Without faith, feedback can quietly become judgment. Feedback rooted in faith carries a different message. It says, I believe in your capacity to do something meaningful with what I’m sharing.
Looking back, I think I heard that faith in my colleague’s question. Are you open to some feedback? It assumed that I could receive the observation without being diminished by it. It treated me not as a problem to be fixed but as a person capable of reflection and growth.
Love, in Freire’s sense, is not sentimentality. It is a commitment to another person’s flourishing. It is the willingness to engage ourselves in what is good for the other person. Without love, feedback can become a weapon. It can be used to establish superiority, release frustration, or win an argument. With love, feedback becomes an offering. It may still be difficult to hear. It may still challenge us. But it is given in service of another person’s becoming rather than our own need to be right.
Perhaps this is why Freire’s words have stayed with me. I’ve come to see humility, faith, and love as the soil from which dialogue grows. They create the conditions for a different kind of conversation, one rooted not in winning, correcting, or persuading, but in mutual learning.
But soil alone is not enough.
Dialogue also needs inquiry and advocacy. It needs the curiosity to ask genuine questions and the courage to offer what we see. If humility, faith, and love prepare the ground, inquiry and advocacy provide the sunlight and water. Together, they help dialogue grow.
If we remain only in inquiry, we may withhold observations that could genuinely help another person. If we lean only into advocacy, we risk turning conversations into lectures. Healthy dialogue invites us to move between the two. It asks us to listen carefully enough to understand and to speak courageously enough to contribute.
That balance is not always easy. I know it isn’t for me.
Sometimes I hesitate to offer what I see because I worry about imposing. Other times, eager to help, I say too much too quickly. I suspect most of us oscillate between these tendencies depending on the relationship, the circumstances, and our own insecurities. Perhaps this is another reason humility matters so much. It reminds us that dialogue is less about mastering a technique and more about paying attention to the person in front of us.
As I reflect on that conversation, I’m reminded that dialogue is not reserved for classrooms, coaching sessions, or training events. It shows up whenever people come together with a genuine desire to learn from one another.
That afternoon, two facilitators had just finished guiding others through a learning experience. Then, as we debriefed the session together, we found ourselves engaged in one of our own.
None of us graduates from the need for dialogue.
No amount of expertise removes our blind spots. No amount of experience eliminates our need for other people. There are things about ourselves that we simply cannot see alone. Our assumptions become familiar. Our habits become automatic. And every now and then, at least in my case, an invented word moves in and makes itself comfortable.
We often celebrate independence as though wisdom were a solitary achievement. I am no longer convinced that it is. Some of the most important things I have learned about myself have come through conversations with people who cared enough to tell me what I could not yet see on my own. People who approached with humility, who had faith in my capacity to grow, and who acted from a genuine desire for my flourishing.
For the record, I no longer say unveal.
At least, I don’t think I do.
But I remain grateful for the friend and colleague who noticed, cared, and asked before telling me. Because the best feedback does more than correct us. It invites us into dialogue. It reminds us that wisdom is not a solo endeavor and that, through humility, faith, and love, we can help one another see more clearly than we ever could alone.
An Unframed Question:
The next time you offer feedback, what might help it become an act of dialogue rather than a declaration?
What conversations in your life might flourish if they were rooted in humility, faith, and love?
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Occasional reflections on coaching, leadership, growth, and the stories that shape us.
A Different Kind of Conversation
Many of the ideas explored in Unframed Notes emerge from conversations.
As a professional coach, I help people navigate transitions, uncover new perspectives, and move toward what matters most.
