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
“…you cannot start a feedback conversation if you have not set expectations. Plain and simple feedback has to be grounded in expectations because my friends, without expectations, then what the hell is the feedback about?”
“A lot of times the things that seem super obvious to us weren’t super obvious to our team members, and that creates a huge disconnect.”
“If they don’t know those things, we can’t really course correct until we’ve set that first, because that’s when it feels unfair.”
“…the number one complaint I hear from folks on the receiving end of feedback is that it feels not justified off base or came outta left field.”
Episode highlights
Why feedback blows up before it even starts
Feedback is one of the most fraught topics in the workplace because both sides dread it. The giver is anxious about delivery; the receiver feels blindsided or judged. But the real culprit is usually not the feedback itself. It is the absence of a shared foundation to anchor it to.
The one question that changes everything
Before opening a feedback conversation, ask yourself: does my team member actually know what the expectations were? Not “did I mention it once” or “is it obvious” but do they genuinely know? Lia is direct: way more often than you think, the answer is no. That is not a failure on either side. It is simply a missing step.
Expectations come before feedback, always
Feedback without expectations is just opinion. It slides into bias, personality judgments, and “this is how I would have done it” territory. When you anchor feedback to a specific, previously stated expectation, you shift the conversation from subjective critique to an objective, shared reference point. Both people are talking about the same thing.
Two real examples of what this looks like
Lia walks through two scenarios to make this concrete.
First: a small creative agency where team members deliver work to clients and then wait. The owner expects proactive follow-up, but nobody said so out loud. That expectation has to be named before it can be evaluated.
Second: a corporate team where the manager expects cross-functional relationship building. It feels obvious to her. It is not obvious to her team. Until it is stated, it cannot be coached.
In both cases, the first move is a clear conversation: “Here is what I need from you going forward.” Only after that conversation can feedback be given when the behavior does not show up.
How to apply the Situation Behavior Impact framework once expectations are set
Once the expectation exists, Lia’s go-to tool is the Situation Behavior Impact (SBI) framework. Name the situation, describe the specific behavior, explain the impact. Then close with a direct ask: “Next time, will you do X?” Because the expectation is already on the table, the feedback lands as specific and correctable, not personal. The team member knows exactly what you are referring to and exactly what to do differently.
This also works for positive feedback
Setting expectations is not just for course corrections. When you anchor recognition to the original expectation, praise becomes concrete and reproducible. Instead of a vague “great job,” you can say: the expectation was one sale, you landed twenty, here is exactly what you did that made that happen. That specificity keeps momentum going and shows the person precisely what to repeat.
The defensive reaction is a signal, not a personality problem
When team members push back with “my manager just wants it done their way” or feedback feels like it came out of left field, that reaction is almost always a sign that expectations were never clearly set. Fix the foundation and the defensiveness disappears. You can even use it as an opening: “What did you think the expectations were?” Getting aligned there first brings the walls down before a single piece of feedback is delivered.
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)
A lot of times the things that seem super obvious to us weren’t super obvious to our team members, and that creates a huge disconnect. And again, just like it’s not something wrong with us, it’s not something wrong with our team members either if they don’t really know what we expect, how we wanna see something, what success looks like, when to check in, what communication norms that we have in our mind. If they don’t know those things, we can’t really course correct until we’ve set that first.
Because that’s when it feels unfair. 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. You ever feel like just when you have this old manager thing figured out, something happens and turns everything upside down, this happens to all of us, and that’s why I created the Thriving Team Scorecard. This gives you a list of 20 things you can do this month and every month to be a better manager for your team. It includes things like setting expectations, giving and receiving feedback, recognition. Little reminders are those things that sometimes we forget to do, but when we do them, it is transformational.
The scorecard is that little nudge you need to make sure you are doing all the things you gotta do to get your team firing on all cylinders. Grab it today at liagarvin.com/scorecard. Welcome back to the show. Hope everyone is having a great summer. I just took a week off back with more podcast action. Super excited to be back and I’m most excited because I get to talk again. My favorite topic, feedback. And as I always say, I talk once all the time because it is one of the most challenging topics when it comes to being a manager.
Most challenging topics when it comes to the workplace in general. But I think it’s one of those things that we wrestle with so much as a manager, no matter how long we’ve been doing it, no matter how good we feel in one moment, something can always go awry. And I was also looking at my stats for the podcast since I hit 10,000 downloads. I was super excited about that. Thank you everyone for listening. And as I was looking at, well, what are my top 10 most listened to episodes?
Two of those had to do with feedback, meaning I get to make more of this content because I can see it. Something that you’re really looking for. Like I said, we all struggle with feedback from time to time, whether it’s at work, whether it’s in our own relationships. Man, I know we all struggle with it there sometimes too. And if you wanna get better at feedback, the giving, the receiving, the recognition, the hard conversations, all of it, then we gotta be talking about it.
And I think we have to make it more fun. We have to make it more accessible because that’s how we get our teams to a better place in it. That’s also why I talk about this show, because we gotta demystify it. We gotta talk about what’s hard, why it sucks, and, and just push through it Today. I wanna give you one of my best secrets when it comes to giving feedback, a real quick little hack that will make it so much easier.
For you to ground the conversation in something concrete and set you up for success. You ready? All right. This tip is to remember that you cannot start a feedback conversation if you have not set expectations. Plain and simple feedback has to be grounded in expectations because my friends, without expectations, then what the hell is the feedback about? Right? Literally, if we’re not anchoring to something like expectations, What is the feedback about? That’s where we get into bias.
That’s where we get into personality judgments. That’s where we get into subjectives, well, this is the way I would do it, so you should do it that way. It’s because we’re not anchoring it to clear expectations. So to overcome anxiety around feedback and what to say, first we have to ask ourselves for the is issue in question. Does my team member know what the expectations even were? And I’m gonna tell you a lot of times, way more than you think, the answer’s no.
That they don’t. And this doesn’t mean you’re a bad manager, you did something wrong. It means, Hey, wait a second. Hey, before we talk about what we wanna do differently, let’s get on the same page around what we were supposed to do in the first place. A lot of times the things that seem super obvious to us weren’t super obvious to our team members, and that creates a huge disconnect. And again, just like it’s not something wrong with us, it’s not something wrong with our team members either if they don’t really know what we expect, how we wanna see something, what success looks like, when to check in, what communication norms that we have in our mind.
If they don’t know those things, we can’t really course correct until we’ve set that first, because that’s when it feels unfair. If it was something that you wanted or you thought they should know, or thought they should realize or just do, but they didn’t, this is where the expectation setting comes in. Let’s take an example. Let’s say you run a small business, maybe in a creative agency, and you have team members who interact with clients and you’re feeling like they’re not being that proactive.
When they deliver something new client, they say, here you go, and then they kind of wait for them to send feedback. But what you feel like is obvious and they should be doing, is sending an email to that client a day or two later and saying, Hey, we wanna make sure everything’s good. Do you have any questions? Would you like to run through it? And you are feeling frustrated because there’s not that proactivity. Let’s say in a similar vein, you are working in a big company and you really want your team members to be more proactive with engaging with cross-functional stakeholders, with people from different teams.
It seems so obvious to you. Of course, you need to be building relationships. Of course, you need to be talking to people that you don’t work with every single day. That’s how work gets done. But these things that are, of course, in your mind, again, if they’re not happening with your team members, it means it’s not second nature, and that has to be set as a clear expectation. And this expectation comes before a feedback conversation saying they did something wrong.
So we first want to have a one-on-one or conversation. We say, Hey, I wanna make sure we’re on the same page around client interaction or around cross-functional partner and communication interaction. For these projects to be successful, it’s really important to follow up with people proactively. Next time after we have a deliverable or a big meeting, please reach out to this partner a day or two later just to check in. Okay, now you’ve set that expectation. Then if you don’t see it or it’s not being met, now you apply a feedback framework to talk about it.
And that’s where I love that situation. Behavior impact framework. I know I’ve shared before, this is my go-to, you know, you share a situation after we delivered that client presentation behavior, we went about a week without checking back with that client and they ended up following up with us saying there was an issue and the impact of that. So situation behavior impact was they felt like they didn’t get that great of client experience or customer service.
And they may go with another service in the next time. So this is not a great situation. That’s why we wanna share a very specific expectation. So when we give the feedback and we say, Hey, and remember I had said we wanna follow up with those clients 24 hours later just to make sure that’s why this is an issue because that didn’t happen. And then I love to add to situation behavior impact, and ask next time, will you, you follow that expectation?
Send an email after 24 hours, whatever, call them. And this is where once we have the expectation, it’s really clear that we’re talking about the behavior, not the personality that we’re talking about. A very specific thing, not the person being bad at their job, but this one behavior wasn’t working. If that team member had no idea that they were supposed to follow up with that client, if they thought that was someone else’s role or that wasn’t the way we do things in this company or whatever, then we cannot give feedback on something they had no idea.
This is where you get defensiveness. This is where you get people that are feeling like you’re micromanaging or you just want them to do everything your way. Hear that a lot, right? Oh God, my manager, they just want me to do it Exactly how they would do it. Like why don’t they understand There’s more ways to do it. Well, if you have a real reason, like this is one of our values, this is why we do this, I have found in my 10, 20 years of experience that when we follow it, 24 hours later, it results in this thing happening.
We wanna share that so that the expectation makes sense to them, and then they can follow it anytime. Anytime we’re giving feedback, we wanna ask ourselves that question. Have I set clear expectations about whatever I’m gonna be sharing feedback on? And hopefully it’s yes, and then we anchor the feedback to that. And it makes a really, really helpful opener as well. When we bring that situation behavior impact in, we can start with the expectation and say, Hey, I wanted to share some quick feedback on communication with our stakeholders or our cross-functional partners.
I’m noticing that boom, boom, boom, situation, behavior impact. And because you have that expectation now the person knows you’re talking about that thing. Oh, it’s about communication. It’s about client interactions, it’s about meeting agendas, it’s about whatever. And then we can make it really specific because we’ve anchored it to, here’s the thing, we’re gonna talk about this. It’s not about your personality or everything’s not off the rails. This is the expectation. Here’s where things went a little bit sideways and here’s how we can fix it.
And then you make that clear ask next time, will you? This is where I think if you’re struggling with feedback, how to say it, how to deliver hard message. It makes it so much easier because it doesn’t feel like it’s coming outta left field. You can even get on the same page first. Like were we both clear on the expectations? Is there something I could have done differently to make this more clear? What did you think the expectations were?
You can use some of these open-ended questions to get on the same page and really bring the walls down, bring the defenses down, and then we say, yeah, we weren’t clear. Those new expectations. Here’s what went a little wrong. Let’s do this next time we’re all good, let’s move forward by setting that expectation. You anchor the feedback to something objective, something not personal, something that you can both have a conversation on. This is why feedback has to, has to, has to be grounded expectations.
And the number one complaint I hear from folks on the receiving end of feedback is that it feels not justified off base or came outta left field. And this is how we avoid that completely because it didn’t come outta left field. Cuz you have the expectations in this situation. You could say, well let’s go back to that. Let’s see if it feels like you came on Lake Field. What, what expectations did you think we had for this?
This gets us on the same page. And before we wrap, same goes for positive feedback. What were the expectations? Hey, I thought you were just gonna, you know, land one sale on this thing and you landed 20 that was freaking amazing. You exceeded so much more. I’m so proud of you. These are the things that you did that went way above and beyond. You know, you can use the same set expectations, the anchoring around what the baseline was to talk about how much someone crushed it on a project.
It’s awesome for delivering positive feedback. These were the expectations. Here’s what you did and, and this is why it was so incredible, and I’m so proud of you. I’m so grateful to the work that you did. This shows people how high above the expectations they went, so they can be really excited. They can maintain that level of momentum. They see specifically what they can reproduce for next time. We always want that when it comes to recognition.
It’s a great tool for constructive feedback and a great tool for positive feedback. This is why it’s my number one tip anchor to expectations, and the feedback conversation will go so much better. It’ll be so much more helpful, so much more objective, and it’ll be game changing for how you give feedback. And like I’ve said, this is my favorite, favorite topic to work with teams on. Feedback getting better and getting more comfortable with it. This will be transformational for your team, so please reach out at [email protected] to share more about your team and let’s get you support if this is something you are struggling with.
I’ve got workshops, I’ve got trainings, I do group coaching on feedback, all the good stuff. Do not feel like you have to tackle this alone when feedback feels like we got punched in the gut. Okay. This means we’re doing something wrong and we can make it something that, yes, as cheesy as it sounds, can be a gift. Cannot wait to support your team. 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
What should I do before giving an employee feedback?
Before any feedback conversation, ask yourself one question: does my team member actually know what the expectations were? More often than you think, the answer is no, and that is not a failure on your part or theirs. It just means the expectation was never clearly set. You cannot course correct someone on something they did not know was expected of them. Set the expectation first in a one-on-one, then if the behavior does not change, that is when you bring in a feedback conversation anchored to that specific expectation.
Why does my employee get defensive when I give feedback?
Defensiveness usually shows up when feedback feels like it came out of nowhere. If a team member had no idea they were supposed to do something a certain way, being told they did it wrong feels unfair, and honestly, it is. When feedback is not anchored to a clear, previously set expectation, it can feel like you just want things done your way. Setting the expectation first, before any feedback conversation, removes that personal edge and gives both of you something objective to talk about instead.
How do I give feedback using the situation behavior impact framework?
Start by referencing the expectation you already set, then describe the situation where the behavior happened, the specific behavior itself, and the impact it created. For example: after we delivered that client presentation, the team went a week without following up, and the client ended up reaching out about an issue, which hurt their experience and could cost future business. Close with a clear ask: next time, will you send a check-in email within 24 hours? Tying feedback to a real expectation makes it specific, not personal, and much easier for the other person to act on.
Can the same feedback approach work for positive feedback and recognition too?
Yes, anchoring to expectations works just as well for recognition as it does for constructive feedback. You might say: I thought you would land one sale on this project and you landed 20. That is so far above what we were hoping for, and here is exactly what you did that made it happen. Grounding praise in the original expectation shows the person how high above the bar they went, gives them something specific to repeat, and keeps the momentum going. Recognition lands harder when people can see the contrast between what was expected and what they actually delivered.
What do I say when a team member thinks a feedback conversation is unfair or came out of nowhere?
Go back to the expectation. Ask them: what did you think the expectations were for this? That question opens the door without putting either of you on the defensive. If it turns out the expectation was never clearly communicated, own that, reset the expectation together, address what went sideways, and move forward. If the expectation was set and documented, you can point back to it calmly. Either way, having that anchor makes the conversation feel grounded and fair rather than personal or arbitrary.