You already know what needs to be said. You’ve known for weeks. But every time you sit down to have the conversation, you either soften it so much it lands as a compliment, or you avoid it entirely and hope things improve on their own. They don’t. The problem isn’t that you’re bad at feedback. The problem is no one ever gave you a system for it. This page and the episodes linked below will show you exactly how to give feedback that sticks, handle the conversations you’ve been putting off, and build a culture where hard truths are normal, not nuclear.
Why most feedback conversations go sideways
Feedback fails before you even open your mouth. It fails because the conversation is framed as a surprise, delivered in the heat of frustration, or buried under so much positive packaging that the actual message never lands. Your team member walks out thinking everything is fine. You walk out thinking you addressed it. Nobody wins.
The missing piece is almost never courage. It’s structure. Without a repeatable framework for when to say something, how to say it, and what to do after, every feedback conversation gets reinvented from scratch. That’s exhausting. And inconsistent. And it creates a team culture where people guess at expectations instead of knowing them.
The one thing to settle before you start
Before any hard conversation, get clear on one question: what specific behavior do I want to see change, and by when? Not a vague sense that someone’s attitude is off. Not a feeling that things aren’t clicking. A concrete, observable behavior with a clear timeline.
When you can answer that question in one sentence, the conversation becomes infinitely easier. You’re not attacking a person. You’re addressing a gap between what’s expected and what’s happening. That’s a system problem, not a character flaw. Framing it that way changes the entire tone of the room.
Lia’s framework The Sit Down builds on exactly this principle: get specific, stay behavioral, and always tie the conversation back to what success actually looks like for the role.
How to give feedback when you’ve waited too long
Maybe the behavior has been going on for months. Maybe you’ve hinted but never said it directly. Now the gap feels so wide that addressing it feels like dropping a bomb. Here’s the move: name the delay.
Start with something honest, such as, “I should have said this sooner, and that’s on me.” That one sentence disarms defensiveness and puts you both on the same side of the table. Then go right into the specific behavior and what needs to change. No lengthy setup. No rehashing everything that ever went wrong. Just the clear ask, with genuine curiosity about what’s getting in the way.
The longer you wait, the more a missing system is usually to blame. There was no regular check-in where this could have come up naturally. There was no expectation framework set at the start. The New Manager Playbook walks through how to build those structures so feedback becomes a rhythm, not a reckoning.
Addressing performance issues without torpedoing morale
Performance conversations are the ones leaders fear most. And that fear makes them worse. Leaders either over-prepare and come in stiff and formal, or under-prepare and let emotion drive. Both versions leave the team member feeling blindsided or demoralized.
The key is separating the person from the pattern. You’re not telling someone they’re failing. You’re describing a pattern that isn’t working and co-creating a plan to fix it. Ask what obstacles they’re running into. Ask what support would actually help. More often than not, a performance issue traces back to unclear expectations, missing resources, or inadequate onboarding. Fix the system first, then evaluate the person.
Building a team culture where feedback flows both ways
The end goal isn’t getting better at delivering feedback. It’s building a team where feedback is so normal that nobody dreads it. That means asking for it yourself, regularly and specifically. Not “any feedback for me?” but “what’s one thing I could do differently in how I run our team meetings?”
When leaders model asking for feedback, two things happen. First, the team sees that feedback is safe. Second, you actually learn things you wouldn’t have heard otherwise. Pair that with consistent one-on-ones and clear performance expectations, and hard conversations stop being hard. They become just another part of how your team operates.
All episodes on this topic
- 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.’
- Ep 178: How to give feedback that actually works (without your team shutting down). Feedback only works when your team feels safe enough to hear it and accountable enough to act on it. Lia walks through three moves that make feedback land: sharing your own mistakes first, setting crystal-clear expectations before the conversation, and openly holding a high bar while signaling you believe your team can meet it. If you manage anyone and have been softening or avoiding feedback, this episode is the reset you need.
- Ep 169: Why positive feedback is the key to high performance (not just being nice). Positive feedback is not about handing out participation awards. It is specific, actionable recognition tied to real behaviors that makes people want to repeat and own those behaviors. This episode is especially useful for leaders who grew up in a “no news is good news” culture and are unsure how to make recognition feel credible.
- Ep 168: How to handle the worst-case scenarios when giving feedback. Defensive reactions, threats to quit, and “I’m going to HR” are the fears that stop leaders from giving feedback at all, but avoiding feedback costs far more than any of those worst-case outcomes. Lia walks through each scenario and shows exactly how to stay grounded, hold the line, and keep the conversation moving. This episode is for any leader who has been walking on eggshells instead of having the direct conversation their team actually needs.
- Ep 167: What to do before giving feedback (so the conversation actually lands). Before you say a single word of feedback, you need to regulate your own emotions first. Lia walks through why showing up emotionally charged derails even the best-prepared feedback conversation, and how taking inventory of what you are carrying before you speak makes the difference between feedback that sticks and feedback that blows up. This episode is essential for anyone who has ever given feedback and walked away wondering what went wrong.
- Ep 148: How to stop defensive reactions from derailing your feedback conversations. When a team member gets defensive about feedback, the problem is rarely your delivery alone. It is a signal to reset communication norms and make feedback an explicit, agreed-upon part of how your team operates. This episode is most useful for owners and managers who have a casual communication style and now need to introduce more directness without losing trust.
- Ep 140: Your team has feedback for you. Here is how to ask for it.. Asking your team for feedback is just as important as giving it, and most leaders never do it well because they ask yes-or-no questions that put people on the spot. Lia’s fix is to lead with a specific example of something you are working on, frame it as an open invitation (now or later), and keep reopening the door. This episode is especially useful for any leader who wants to build psychological safety and stop getting only indirect feedback like turnover and disengagement.
- Ep 129: How to prevent a tough feedback conversation from going off the rails. Even a well-prepared feedback conversation can spiral, but the right in-the-moment moves keep it from escalating. Lia walks through four concrete techniques: regulating your nervous system before you walk in, refusing to get pulled into a defensive debate, holding space for strong emotions, and calling a timeout when things heat up so your team member can return with a real plan. This episode is essential for any leader who has ever left a feedback conversation feeling like it made things worse instead of better.
- Ep 123: How to receive feedback as a leader without getting defensive. Receiving feedback is harder than giving it, especially when your team members are missing context. Lia walks through a three-part approach: listen with curiosity, digest before responding, and weigh the feedback as one data point among many. This episode is essential for any leader who has invited team feedback but struggles to stay open when it lands.
- Ep 122: How to give feedback your team can actually act on. Feedback lands when it is anchored to a clear expectation, delivered through a specific framework, and closed with a concrete ask. Lia walks through her three-step approach: set the expectation first, use the Situation-Behavior-Impact framework to deliver the message, then make an explicit ask about what you want to see next. This episode is essential for any leader who avoids feedback conversations or finds that their feedback rarely changes behavior.
- Ep 57: The most important question to ask yourself before giving feedback. Before giving feedback, ask yourself whether you have actually set clear expectations about the behavior in question. If the answer is no, start there first. This episode is especially useful for leaders who find feedback conversations turning defensive or feeling like they came out of nowhere.
- Ep 46: How to ask your team for feedback (and actually get useful answers). Asking your team for feedback works when you stop asking vague yes-or-no questions and follow a three-step framework: set the tone, plant a seed, and consider the value. Lia walks through exactly how to scope the conversation so team members feel safe enough to be honest, even about hard things. This episode is especially useful for managers who want feedback to flow both ways but keep getting silence or deflection.
- Ep 30: How to give feedback to your own overbearing manager (a 5-step framework). Giving feedback to someone senior to you is possible when you frame it around their interests, stay proactive, and make a clear ask. Lia walks through her 5-step framework using the Situation-Behavior-Impact method as the backbone. This episode is especially useful for managers caught between an unhappy team and a difficult boss.
- Ep 28: How to give positive feedback that actually motivates your team. Positive feedback works when it is specific, tied to a career goal, and delivered with acknowledgement rather than a generic “good job.” Lia walks through the SBI framework (Situation, Behavior, Impact) and the coaching skill of acknowledgement to make praise land with real impact. This episode is especially useful for leaders who want to reduce team disengagement and rebuild a healthier relationship with feedback overall.
- Ep 20: Three assumptions that make giving feedback harder than it needs to be. Feedback goes sideways not because you lack skill but because you walk in with assumptions already made. Lia breaks down three specific mental traps, generalizing by identity group, projecting your own preferences, and letting one bad experience write the story, and shows what to do instead. This episode is especially useful for managers who feel stuck or anxious before feedback conversations.
- Ep 8: How to support the women on your team and fix the broken rung. The broken rung in the corporate ladder is the single greatest factor holding women back, and managers can start repairing it today with three concrete moves. Lia walks through how to give more actionable feedback, proactively create and amplify opportunities, and close pay gaps before anyone has to negotiate. This episode is especially useful for any people leader who wants to move beyond good intentions and into daily habits that actually change outcomes.
- Ep 6: How to give difficult feedback without freezing up or making it worse. Difficult feedback lands better when you lead with empathy, take responsibility, and spell out a clear path forward. Lia walks through a four-part framework: get your head in the right headspace, make time, match your tone to the weight of the message, and commit to supporting the person in closing the gap. This episode is especially useful for managers who know they need to have the conversation but keep putting it off.
Also relevant
- Ep 236: What to do when an employee tells you they’re thinking of leaving. When a team member gives you advance notice they may leave, the worst move is writing them off. Lia walks through The Sit Down, a re-engagement conversation that keeps great people invested longer, and explains how to handle the raise or promotion ask that sometimes comes with it. This episode is for any owner, founder, or team lead who wants to stop being blindsided by departures.
- Ep 229: What are you willing to tolerate, and what is that actually costing your business?. Your business will only ever rise to the level of what you are willing to tolerate, and every day you let underperformance slide is money leaving your business and goodwill leaving your best people. Lia walks through the exact conversation to have with an underperforming team member: set the expectation, ask if they are in or out, and put the decision back on them. This episode is especially useful for owners and founders who keep avoiding the hard conversation because they are afraid of losing someone or damaging a relationship.
- Ep 228: Why ‘I shouldn’t have to deal with this’ is keeping you stuck as a leader. The ‘I shouldn’t have to’ mindset is one of the most common traps leaders fall into, and it quietly poisons every hard conversation before it even starts. Lia’s reframe is simple: shift from ‘I have to’ to ‘I get to,’ and watch how your team responds differently. This episode is especially useful for business owners and founders who never set out to be people leaders but now find themselves managing a team.
- Ep 224: Why certain team members bug you (and how to actually handle it). When a team member drives you up the wall but is technically doing their job, the problem is rarely performance. Lia breaks down three specific archetypes that trigger leaders, explains what each one is actually signaling, and gives you a concrete strategy for each. This episode is especially useful for owners and founders who keep dreading their own one-on-ones.
- Ep 219: Did you make a bad hire? How to know and what to do next. Most ‘bad hire’ situations are actually bad onboarding or missing feedback situations. Lia walks through a 30/60/90-day check-in framework that helps you assess a new team member clearly, without panic or dragging it out too long. This episode is especially useful for founders and small team leaders who are second-guessing a recent hire.
- Ep 218: How to get out of the friend zone with your team members. Being friendly with your team is great until it erodes accountability and makes hard conversations feel impossible. Lia walks through a three-step reset: name your leadership style out loud, set real boundaries, and commit to having the hard conversations consistently. This episode is especially useful for small-team owners and founders who hired people they already knew personally.
- Ep 217: What are you avoiding right now? The question that unlocks your leadership. The single question that separates high-performing leaders from struggling ones is: what am I avoiding right now? Lia walks through three common avoidances, making a necessary hire, giving hard feedback, and actually doing the leadership fundamentals, and shows how naming each one makes the fix surprisingly straightforward. This episode is most useful for founders, owners, and team leads who feel stuck, behind, or like the same problems keep resurfacing.
- Ep 213: How to handle compensation conversations without overpromising or underpromising. Compensation conversations go wrong when leaders create expectations they cannot sustain or mix pay updates with performance feedback. Lia walks through how to build a sustainable compensation narrative, decouple money talks from feedback conversations, and speak honestly when raises or bonuses are smaller than last year. This episode is most useful for founders, business owners, and team leads who want to leave pay conversations without months of fallout.
- Ep 204: What your team is really asking for when requests feel frustrating or confusing. When a team member’s request feels entitled or annoying, there is almost always a deeper need underneath, usually around recognition, clarity, or belonging. Lia’s move is a two-minute pause to ask what the person actually means before deciding how to respond. This episode is most useful for founders and operators navigating the contradictions of growing a team.
- Ep 189: The hidden cost of using AI as a leadership shortcut. Using AI to replace your leadership presence, whether through AI video clones, copy-pasted team messages, or scripted feedback, erodes team trust and accelerates disengagement. Lia’s framework is simple: use AI to brainstorm and prep, but never let it substitute for the human moments that make you indispensable. This episode is essential for any leader wondering how to stay relevant and keep their team motivated in the age of AI.
- Ep 175: How to manage former peers and friends after a promotion. Managing a former peer or friend is one of the hardest leadership transitions, not because you know them too well, but because that familiarity tempts you to downplay your new role and skip the reset conversation. Lia’s three-step framework: name the change explicitly, set clear expectations tied to that person’s goals, and own your authority without apology. This episode is essential for anyone newly promoted onto a team they were already part of.
- Ep 174: How to Keep Your Best Team Members During Uncertain Times. Losing top performers does not have to catch you off guard. Lia walks through three moves that prevent preventable turnover: reading disengagement signals early, asking persistent open-ended questions, and having honest career conversations before someone has one foot out the door. This episode is essential for any leader who has ever been blindsided by a resignation.
- Ep 161: Why people quit their managers (and three habits that stop the cycle). People leave managers, not jobs, and three specific habits drive most of that turnover: doing instead of delegating, telling instead of asking, and criticizing instead of recognizing. Lia breaks down the flip side of each habit and shows exactly how to make the shift. This episode is essential for any owner or leader who feels stretched thin and wonders why their best people keep walking out the door.
- Ep 156: How people pleasing costs you respect as a manager (and what to do instead). Wanting your team to like you is human, but leaning on it too hard makes hard conversations impossible and quietly erodes your credibility. In The New Manager Playbook, Lia Garvin unpacks the people-pleasing trap and shows how building trust through honest, expectations-driven relationships earns you more genuine respect than being everyone’s friend ever could. This episode is especially useful for new managers who default to being fun and casual and then feel stuck when things need to get serious.
- Ep 132: Three ways to lower the chances your best team members will quit. 42% of employee turnover is preventable, according to Gallup, and the fix starts with proactive conversations, not an open-door policy. Lia walks through three concrete moves: specific recognition, constructive feedback grounded in support, and keeping people challenged. This episode is essential for any owner or team lead who has ever been blindsided by a good employee quietly walking out the door.
- Ep 119: Why saying ‘I need’ is killing your team’s accountability (and what to say instead). When you frame expectations as personal favors (‘I need this by Friday’), your team becomes accountable to you rather than to their job, and accountability falls apart. Lia’s fix is simple: remove ‘I’ and ‘me’ from how you set expectations and replace them with role-based language that connects the task to the job, the deadline, and the team’s results. This episode is especially useful for owners and leaders who keep hitting resistance on recurring tasks like status reports or deadlines.
- Ep 113: How to course correct when a team member is not delivering results. When a team member is not delivering, the first move is not to replace them. Lia walks through a three-step framework: reset expectations, open a dialogue, and check back in before deciding next steps. This episode is especially useful for small business owners and team leads who feel stuck between loyalty to a team member and the need for real results.
- Ep 110: Micromanaging is not about what you say, it is about when you say it. Micromanaging almost never comes from the content of your feedback. It comes from the timing, specifically from course correcting after someone has already gotten started instead of setting expectations upfront. Lia’s fix is a simple reset conversation that plants a new baseline, defines check-in rhythms, and spells out what success looks like before anyone runs with the work. This episode is essential for owners and leaders who avoid giving feedback because they fear coming across as controlling.
- Ep 106: Why liking people is not enough to make you a great manager. Caring about your team is foundational, but it is not sufficient on its own. Lia breaks down the three things you must add to your people skills: clear expectations, regular feedback, and a culture of accountability. This episode is essential for anyone who gets along well with their team but still feels stuck, overwhelmed, or like nothing is quite sticking.
- Ep 96: Is it too late to fix your team? Three strategies to get unstuck. No, it is not too late to fix your team. Lia walks through three concrete moves: resetting expectations, building real accountability mechanisms, and giving feedback that actually lands. This episode is most useful for business owners and team leaders who feel like they have tried everything and are running out of ideas.
- Ep 91: 10 weekly habits that make managing a team dramatically easier. Ten simple weekly actions, the Thriving Team Checklist, can prevent the communication breakdowns that quietly burn managers and teams out. Lia walks through each item, from asking for feedback and delivering specific praise to load-balancing conversations and removing process friction, so work flows with less effort. This episode is most useful for any leader who feels like small things are constantly slipping through the cracks.
- Ep 88: Why your team can’t read your mind (and how clear expectations fix that). Your team is not failing to read your mind, they are failing to receive clear expectations. Lia walks through the real cost of skipping expectation setting, a practical example from a MedSpa client, and why expectations are always step zero before any feedback conversation. This episode is especially useful for owners and managers who keep explaining the same things over and over and wonder why nothing sticks.
- Ep 77: How to handle the stickiest situations as a manager: former friends, delegation, and promotion obsession. Managing a former friend, letting go of work you have always owned, and responding to a team member who asks about promotion every single week are three of the hardest situations managers face. Robyn Rapp and Lia break down each one with concrete reframes, naming-it-first scripts, and expectation-setting tools you can use today. This episode is especially useful for first-time managers, small business owners who have hired people they know personally, and anyone who has been avoiding a hard conversation.
- Ep 71: How to make performance conversations less scary for everyone on your team. Performance reviews feel scary because the system is complicated, expectations are unclear, and feedback only shows up once a year. Lia walks through three moves: incentivize the behavior you actually want, set explicit expectations for what “above and beyond” looks like, and keep the process simple and lightweight. This episode is especially useful for owners, founders, and corporate managers who want to build a performance system people stop dreading.
- Ep 56: How to make your 1:1 meetings actually useful (and stop the status update spiral). Effective 1:1s are not status update sessions. Lia shares a four-part agenda (rapport, wins, where they are stuck, and closing actions) that turns every meeting into a genuine window into how to support your team. This episode is for any manager whose 1:1s feel like a waste of time.
- Ep 51: How to nail the basics of great management: expectations, feedback, and scaling yourself. Great management comes down to two fundamentals: setting crystal-clear expectations and making feedback a two-way street. Lia and Kristen Hartley, Learning and Development leader at Workday, walk through how to check for understanding after setting expectations, how to ask for feedback with a specific and scoped request, and how a coaching approach helps leaders stop being the bottleneck. This episode is especially useful for first-time managers and anyone who suspects they are accidentally micromanaging.
- Ep 47: How to support your neurodivergent team members as a manager. At least one in five people on your team is likely neurodivergent, and most will never disclose it, so the best strategy is to build inclusive practices for everyone. Margaux Joffe, co-founder of the Great ADHD Reset Program, walks through a strength-based approach, clear expectations, and feedback adjustments that remove barriers for neurodivergent employees while making the whole team stronger. This episode is most useful for any manager who wants practical, low-lift ways to build a more accessible and effective team.
- Ep 45: How leading with love builds higher-performing teams. Leading with love is not softness. It is the deliberate practice of putting your team’s humanity first so they feel seen, stay accountable, and perform at their highest level. Chris Hartley, VP of Sales at K. Hovnanian Homes, shares the frameworks he uses, from “heartbeat checks” to “let it go” jars, to build psychological safety that actually moves the sales needle. This episode is essential for any leader who wants practical ways to operationalize empathy without sacrificing standards.
- Ep 39: Venting vs. needing help, unmet expectations, and manager thrash: three real questions answered. When a team member comes to you with a problem, the single most useful thing you can do before taking any action is ask what they actually need from you. Lia walks through three frameworks: distinguishing venting from a real ask for help, resetting expectations before escalating a performance issue, and rebuilding trust after inheriting a team burned by manager turnover. This episode is especially useful for leaders who feel the urge to immediately jump in and solve every problem their team brings them.
- Ep 38: How understanding the Enneagram makes you a more empathetic and effective leader. Most leadership communication fails because we assume everyone is motivated the same way we are. The Enneagram gives leaders a framework for understanding the core motives and fears of each person on their team, so feedback lands, conflict resolves faster, and people actually feel seen. This episode is especially useful for owners and leaders who keep hitting the same communication walls no matter how hard they try.
- Ep 37: How to stop yourself from solving problems for your team. When you jump in and solve problems for your team members, you rob them of the chance to learn, build confidence, and bring their own creative ideas. Instead of offering answers, Lia recommends switching to a coaching posture by asking open-ended questions that keep the problem-solving in your team member’s court. This episode is especially useful for managers who pride themselves on being fixers and want to build a more self-sufficient team.
- Ep 36: What to do when you have an unhappy employee on your team. When a team member is visibly unhappy, you have two paths: fix what is making the role not work for them, or support them in finding their next thing. Lia walks through a coaching-question framework to diagnose which path is right before jumping to conclusions. This episode is especially useful for owners and team leads managing small teams where one disengaged person carries outsized weight.
- Ep 25: How to run better meetings and actually get results. Better meetings start with one thing: clarity on the goal before anyone walks in the room. Megan Karsh, founder of the (em) Collective, shares the GRP framework (Goals, Roles, Process) and a handful of facilitation tools that help managers run tighter meetings, make better decisions, and stop wasting everyone’s time. This episode is especially useful for managers who feel like they are always in meetings but never quite getting to a real outcome.
- Ep 14: How understanding your brain’s thinking style makes you a more influential leader. The key to more effective leadership, stronger feedback conversations, and better team alignment is understanding how each person’s brain processes information, especially under stress. Michelle King, HR executive and leadership coach, walks through the HBDI assessment framework, the four thinking-style quadrants, and the practice of self-mastery that ties it all together. This episode is most useful for leaders who want a concrete tool for building empathy, improving communication across differences, and inspiring discretionary effort from their teams.
- Ep 4: How to effectively manage a former friend (without blowing up the relationship). Managing a former friend works when you have an explicit upfront conversation about how the relationship is changing before anything goes sideways. Lia’s move is to get communication styles, feedback preferences, and hard-conversation norms on the table while tensions are still low. This episode is especially useful for new owners who are hiring a friend or family member, or for anyone who just got promoted above a close colleague.
Want to go deeper?
The New Manager Playbook. Lia’s bestselling guide to leading a team for the first time.
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