Why do I avoid giving feedback at work?

You hold back feedback from others partly to keep an unspoken truce — if you never give it, maybe none comes back to you. The quiet result is a team or relationship where honesty disappears in both directions. It is a clever bargain, but it is a losing one, because it trades growth for a kind of mutual blindness. The deal feels safe, but look at what it actually buys. No one tells you how to get better, so you stop improving. You tell no one how to get better, so they stall too. The peace you are protecting is really just a shared agreement to stay stuck. And underneath it is a fear that you could not survive hearing the truth about yourself — a fear that shrinks as soon as you test it. So break the truce from your side first. Give one piece of honest, kind feedback to someone who would genuinely benefit. And then invite it back — ask one person plainly what you could do better, and just listen. Honesty is a door that opens both ways. Someone has to walk through first, and you are the one who sees the door.