Curt Janzenco-founder of the Beyond Group of companies. Active CEO and galvanizer of people

A lot of leaders return feedback unopened

30 Jun 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:00

In this short monologue, Curt Janzen presents Lesson 6 of his leadership series, arguing that the term “feedback” should be replaced with “advice” to promote a forward‑looking mindset. He explains that while feedback on past actions is useful, he primarily seeks advice on how to improve and move the company forward. Janzen describes his practice of actively asking for advice from lead installers, the admin team, operations staff, and mentors, which has generated numerous ideas for company growth. He then criticizes many leaders for receiving feedback or advice but never opening the envelope, emphasizing his commitment not to be that kind of leader.

Chapters

Lesson number 6, feedback is a strategy. I actually want to change that word from feedback to advice. There are times when I really want feedback of things that I've done, but more so than that, I actually want advice on what we could do better and how we can actually improve. And so changing our mindset a little bit into a forward thinking instead of a past thinking is a different mindset for me that I've really been trying to take on the last little while. And so I go up to our lead installers, onto our admin team, to our operations, and I asked them, what advice do you give me so that I can move this company forward? And when I started doing that, both with, you know, my mentors and with our team inside here, it's really opened up a lot of ideas of great things that we can do as a company. The problem with a lot of leaders is they take that advice or feedback envelope and they return it unopened, and I just simply don't want to be that guy.