Most performance problems are not about a bad hire. They are about a feedback vacuum where expectations were never clearly set. Lia walks through a simple framework: set explicit expectations, give specific constructive feedback, and only then decide whether someone can turn it around. This episode is essential for any owner or leader who has ever thought ‘they should just know this.’
This episode is part of the Feedback & Hard Conversations series. Browse all episodes →
Mic drop moments
“…when we make feedback at Two-Way Street, when we say to our team members continually, I want to hear from you. Your opinion is important to me. I wanna be improving.”
“…we wanna plant a seed, give a little bit of a hook for them to grasp onto to, right, what are we talking about here? What’s the realm of the feedback? What’s the zone?”
“…by demystifying feedback, by continually asking for it and showing, Hey, feedback’s not that scary, it’s not that bad. It makes it a lot easier for you to give feedback to your team members.”
Episode highlights
Why vague feedback questions backfire
Most managers ask one of two questions: “Do you have feedback for me?” or “What feedback do you have for me?” The first is a yes-or-no trap that puts the team member on the spot. The second throws open Pandora’s box. A team member could be thinking about pay, hours, or job scope, none of which is what you were going for. Neither question sets anyone up to give you something useful.
Feedback as a two-way street builds real trust
When you consistently signal that you want to hear from your team, you build psychological safety. That safety fuels motivation, engagement, and productivity. The problem is not that managers do not believe in two-way feedback. It is that the way they ask for it kills the conversation before it starts.
Step 1: Set the tone
Before you ask anything, name what you are doing. Say something like: “It is really important to me to hear from you. I want to keep improving.” This tells the team member that feedback is not coming out of nowhere, it is something you actively value. You are not waiting for a semi-annual review to find out how you are doing. You are inviting the conversation.
Step 2: Plant a seed
This is the move that changes everything. Instead of leaving the feedback scope wide open, bring bait. Name something specific you have been working on and ask for observations about that thing. Lia shares a real example: a manager who knew she was getting too far into the weeds asked her team member to flag it if she started overstepping. When it happened, the team member could point to it directly because the invitation was already there. The feedback felt safe to give because the manager had already named it as a growth area. The same strategy works when asking your own leader for feedback: “I have been working on public speaking. Can you keep an eye on my next presentation and tell me how it landed?”
Step 3: Consider the value
When someone actually gives you feedback, the worst thing you can do is get defensive or immediately interrogate them for more examples. Even if the feedback feels off base, even if there is a lot more context they do not have, the move is simple: thank them, say you will think about it, and ask if you can come back to them. That pause matters. It gives you time to reflect before reacting.
Lia walks through a scenario where a manager is being told she is micromanaging, but the real issue is that the team member is not meeting expectations. Taking the feedback in instead of defending creates the opening for a bigger, more useful conversation about expectations. You would never get there if you had not asked in the first place.
Why this makes giving feedback easier too
When you normalize asking for feedback, you demystify the whole process. Team members stop seeing feedback as something scary that only travels one direction. That shift makes it significantly easier for you to give them feedback when they need it, because the culture around feedback has already been established as safe, normal, and mutual.
Related episodes in this cluster
- Ep 226: How to give feedback without it turning into a laundry list. When you have a lot of corrective feedback to give, rattling it off item by item erodes trust and trains your team to do the bare minimum. Lia’s fix is to categorize feedback into themes, connect each theme to a clear company why, and balance corrections with specific, concrete recognition. This episode is especially useful for small business owners and team leads who feel buried in constant corrections.
- Ep 214: How to give feedback after you’ve waited too long. It is never too late to give feedback, and avoiding it only makes the problem worse for your team. Lia walks through how to own the delay, contextualize the conversation, and deliver the message in a way that reduces defensiveness and rebuilds trust. Most useful for founders, owners, and team leads who have been carrying unspoken feedback and need a practical script to finally move it forward.
- Ep 212: Why avoiding tough feedback is the most expensive mistake you can make as a leader. Avoiding difficult feedback does not protect your team member, it leaves them in the dark and lets problems quietly damage everyone around them. Lia breaks down the most common pitfalls leaders fall into with hard feedback and makes the case that one uncomfortable conversation is always cheaper than the resentment and performance damage that builds when you stay silent. This episode is especially useful for founders, owners, and team leads who know they should say something but keep finding reasons to wait.
- Ep 194: Your team member isn’t performing. Have you actually given them feedback?. Most performance problems are not about a bad hire. They are about a feedback vacuum where expectations were never clearly set. Lia walks through a simple framework: set explicit expectations, give specific constructive feedback, and only then decide whether someone can turn it around. This episode is essential for any owner or leader who has ever thought ‘they should just know this.’
Want to go deeper?
The New Manager Playbook. Lia’s bestselling guide to leading a team for the first time.
Full transcript (click to expand)
When we make feedback at Two-Way Street, when we say to our team members, continually, I want to hear from you. Your opinion is important to me. I wanna be improving. When we express that, now we start to build trust. We build that psychological safety and that fuels motivation, better engagement, better productivity, all the good things. Welcome to the Managing Made Simple podcast. Where I bring a decade of experience working in some of the most influential companies in tech to help you navigate the ins and outs of being a people manager from conflicts to feedback to delegating and more, we will leave no stone unturned when it comes to what makes us love managing, kind of hate it and everything in between.
Doesn’t matter if you’re a new manager looking for some tips. Or a seasoned manager looking up their game. Everyone is welcome to hang out with Managing Made Simple. Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go, let’s go. Welcome back to the show and because it is literally item number three on my Thriving Team Scorecard. If you don’t have the scorecard yet, head to liagarvin.com/scorecard to download a copy. Today we are gonna talk about how to ask a team member for feedback.
Because when we talk about feedback, we always say it has to be a two-way street. As a manager, you don’t just give your team members feedback and think like, okay, like, I’m the boss. I, I, what I say goes, no, we have to have feedback. Be a two-way street because there are things, and I’m gonna not, you may not like this, you may not agree, but there are things that you could be doing better or differently for how you show up for your team.
And when we make feedback at Two-Way Street, when we say to our team members continually, I want to hear from you. Your opinion is important to me. I wanna be improving. When we express that, now we start to build trust. We build that psychological safety and that fuels motivation, better engagement, better productivity, all the good things. So we gotta ask for feedback. Now, ironically, I have found that most of us are really bad at asking for feedback.
It doesn’t matter if you’re an IC or a manager here in this situation, a lot of us ask a general question, do you have feedback for me? Can we start with a yes or no? And that puts the one on the spot, like, uh, no, I guess not. Or, yes, I do dot, dot dot. Now there’s gonna be a bomb dropping. Okay? So this question in and of itself, not not how we wanna start the conversation.
Next. I think sometimes people say, well, what feedback do you have for me? And literally open Pandora’s box of what’s anything you can think of under the sun that you wanna make a comment or judgment about. And that puts people off as well. Like that’s, that’s doesn’t feel like I know what zone we’re talking about here. If you say that as a manager to your team member, what feedback do you have? For me, they might be thinking, I wish we had different hours for work that I wish I could get paid more.
I would love to have a different job description. Right. We don’t wanna leave it so wide open cuz who knows what we’re gonna get. Instead of, do you have feedback for me? Or What feedback do you have for me? We wanna follow this three step process. First, we wanna set the tone. Okay? We wanna say, Hey, I’d love to get some feedback. It’s really important to me to get feedback from the team. It’s really important to me to hear from you, and by setting the tone, instead of just waiting, like having feedback come to you because it’s in your semi-annual evaluation, and that’s where you get feedback.
No, we wanna be setting the tone with our team members saying, I believe in feedback, I value it. I am here. I wanna improve. So that’s step number one. Super easy. Set the tone. Now, step number two is to plant a seed. And this is one of the strategies I share the most for asking for feedback is you wanna bring some bait, you wanna plant a seed, you wanna say, Hey, here’s something I’ve been working on.
Okay, can you gimme feedback about that? Because now you’ve scoped it down to a place where someone can really react to it. So for example, I had a manager who felt like, you know, I’m, I’m getting in the weeds too much. I recognize it. I’ve been told I’m a little bit of a micromanager and I really wanna be conscious of that. And so she came to me and she said, you know, she first, she set the tone.
She said, I really want feedback. And then she planted that seed and said, Hey, if you’re seeing that I’m too much in the weeds, can you please say something? Because I don’t mean to be, and I really want feedback about that. Now this made it really clear that, okay, I can definitely give feedback about that. She’s aware of it. It’s not like I’m gonna be bringing stuff up. Said that she’s never thought about before and it made it a lot easier when something happened and I did feel like, yeah, she is a little bit overstepping, I could say, Hey, You know, I know that this is something you were working on and you asked me to flag it, so this feels like one of those situations when I could really take the lead here and you could take a step back, because she set the tone and planted that seed.
This made it easier for me to give feedback as that team member to my manager. So I love this strategy and, and also I share it with ics. You know, when you are asking your own manager for feedback, planning a seed saying, Hey, I’ve been working on the specific skill. Maybe it’s like public speaking or something. Can you keep an eye on the next presentation? I’d love feedback on how it went. Now, you know, to give feedback about that specific thing.
Number three. Okay, we want feedback to be a two-way street. Well, okay, we gotta make it safe. So we wanna consider the value. Step three is take it in, consider the value of that piece of feedback in all of my trainings and work with managers around feedback, one of the biggest fears is someone being defensive, someone jumping in and starting to interrogate you, saying like, when did that happen? I want more examples and, and all this stuff.
So when someone on your team gives you feedback. Just want to consider the value, thank them. Think about it and avoid defensiveness, even if it’s frustrating, even if it feels off base. I think in this situation, an example of considering the value, like let’s say a team member gave you a piece of feedback that you know, okay, let’s say that you’re, you’re micromanaging, you’re in too much of the weeds, and the truth is you feel like that team member’s not really meeting expectations, and that’s why you’ve been in the weeds.
Now, this could strike some defensiveness because there’s a lot more to the story here. I was still in this same situation considering the value as saying, thank you for sharing that. That’s something that I’ll really think about and reflect on, and I’d love to come back to you to talk about how I can show up better for you. This does not mean you have to change everything you’re doing, and this doesn’t mean you got defensive, but see, by considering the value, it gives you a moment to think about it and, and reflect on, huh, what do I wanna do differently?
Now, in the example I just talked about, if, if there was actually a bigger issue on expectations, It’s a perfect conversation starter because you can go back to that team member and say, Hey, you know, I know you shared that feedback that it feels like I’m too much in the weeds. Actually. I was realizing what I need to do is set a little bit clearer of expectations here so you know how to run with something, and then I’ll feel more comfortable taking a step back.
But you see, you would never have even gotten to this point if you hadn’t asked them for feedback. So it is still really important, even if you don’t agree with the feedback, even if you feel like it’s kind of off base. So those are the three steps to asking your team members for feedback. We wanna set the tone two-way street. I want the feedback. Number two, we wanna plant a seed, give a little bit of a hook for them to grasp onto to, right, what are we talking about here?
What’s the realm of the feedback? What’s the zone? And then step three, consider the value. And it’s as easy as that, and that’s why it’s such a critical piece on this Thriving Team Scorecard, because if we are not continually asking our team members for feedback, then we’re not making it safe to have feedback. We’re not giving them moments to share what could be better, how we could show it better for them. And by demystifying feedback, by continually asking for it and showing, Hey, feedback’s not that scary, it’s not that bad.
It makes it a lot easier for you to give feedback to your team members. Okay, so if you haven’t gotten that scorecard yet, this is a list of 20 things that you can do this month and every month to show up better for your team. It includes things like asking for feedback, giving difficult feedback, giving positive feedback, having a goal setting conversation, all of these critical moments that help you better support your team. Grab that list, 20 items, liagarvin.com/scorecard.
See you next time. That’s all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple Podcast where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive. I always love to hear from you, so please reach out at liagarvin.com or message me on LinkedIn. See you next time.
Questions this episode answers
How do I ask my team for feedback without getting a useless one-word answer?
Avoid opening with 'Do you have feedback for me?' because it's a yes or no question that puts people on the spot. Instead, follow three steps: set the tone by telling your team that feedback matters to you and you actively want to improve, plant a seed by bringing up something specific you've been working on so they know exactly what zone to respond to, and then take in whatever they share without getting defensive. Scoping the conversation down gives people something concrete to react to.
What does 'planting a seed' mean when asking for feedback?
Planting a seed means giving your team member a specific hook before asking for feedback. Instead of opening Pandora's box with 'What feedback do you have for me?', you name something you're already working on. For example, if you know you tend to micromanage, you might say, 'I've been working on staying out of the weeds. If you notice me overstepping, please flag it.' This makes it safe and clear for the other person to respond, because they're not bringing up something you've never considered before.
How should a leader respond when a team member gives feedback they disagree with?
Don't get defensive, even if the feedback feels off base or incomplete. Lia calls this 'considering the value.' A simple response like 'Thank you for sharing that, I'll think about it and come back to you' buys you time to reflect without shutting the conversation down. You don't have to act on every piece of feedback, but staying calm keeps the door open. That same feedback can even become a useful entry point to a bigger conversation, like clarifying expectations, that you'd never have reached if you'd gotten defensive.
Why does asking your team for feedback make it easier to give them feedback?
When you regularly ask your team for feedback and receive it openly, you normalize feedback as a safe, two-way exchange rather than something that only flows down from a leader. That psychological safety makes your team members more willing to hear feedback from you as well. Lia puts it directly: by demystifying feedback and showing that it's not scary, you make it easier for everyone to give and receive it. The more you model openness, the more trust and engagement you build across the whole team.
How often should a leader ask their team for feedback?
Don't wait for a semi-annual review to find out how you're doing. Lia's point is that feedback needs to be a continuous two-way street, not a scheduled event. Regularly telling your team 'I want to hear from you, your opinion matters, I'm working to improve' is what builds the psychological safety that drives engagement and productivity. Making it a consistent habit, rather than a one-time or twice-a-year moment, signals that feedback is always welcome and keeps small issues from building into bigger ones.