# Workplace Surgery: New Manager Avoids Negative Feedback

- **Episode:** [170](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/170.md) (2025-02-11)
- **Type:** workplace-surgery
- **Tags:** feedback, new-manager, management
- **Time:** 28:11–34:21 (start 1691s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/170?t=1691](https://truthliesandwork.com/170?t=1691)

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[28:11] Al Elliott: Absolutely. Okay. So the second question I've got here is, new manager hates giving negative feedback to their team. I became a manager for the first time a few months ago, and it was always my dream to be the world's best boss. I've had some pretty crappy bosses in my time and also in this company. Understandably, they didn't want me to read their name out or the company. However, one aspect I'm struggling with as a new manager is giving feedback when it's not positive. I keep sugarcoating everything because I want to be liked, but I know I'm not helping my team as they keep doing the things the wrong way and I have to stay behind after they've gone and redo the work the right way. How do I get better at having difficult conversations like this?
[28:51] Leanne Elliott: Training, really. Investing in your own learning and development is going to help you have those more difficult communications. Basically just advancing your communication skills and, and, and how you approach it. By the sounds of it though, the nuance in your question around that you're having to redo the work, It sounds like actually it's more of a process-driven thing than a performance-driven thing, and that's often much easier to deal with because it's more practical. And I think for what I would say in that situation, it's worked for me in the past, is to maybe sit down, whatever you think is best, either one-to-one or with the team as a group, and just say something like, I think there's been a bit of confusion around this process. I'd just like to go through it with everybody just so we all know we're on the same page to, to get it done right first time. And I think typically people are, they'll be a bit like, oh, eye-rolly at processes because anything around paperwork or admin or compliance is a bit frustrating, isn't it? Equally, it's one of those things that people aren't really going to take personally if they've just got a process wrong. So I think it sounds more like in this scenario, you've actually got a fairly simple way of managing this conversation in a very transactional, practical, practical way. In terms of having more difficult conversations, this is really something you're going to have to work on as a manager because you're not there to be their best friend. You're not there to to kind of do their work for them. You're there to guide them and help them be the best that they can possibly be. I think often a really nice starting point is to understand what the individual's motivations are, aspirations are, career goals are, what they see their strengths are. Something you do typically in an annual review, which isn't really always drilling down into their current performance. It's also looking at the bigger picture of where they want to go, and with that, they're going to identify their own weaknesses or their own areas for improvement. For example, if you're working with an employee and they say, yeah, my attention to detail isn't very good, I need to work on that, particularly when it comes to the administration part of my job. Then if you're finding that this is what's impacting the process, you can say to them, Leanne, I know we've talked about this. I know you've identified it yourself that attention to detail is really tricky. So with that in mind, do you mind if I just kind of bring you things where I think maybe you have had that oversight? They'll be like, of course, that's absolutely fine. Then you've got that permission. You bring it to them and say, look, this needs to be doing blah blah blah blah blah. So the point being that you've you've identified those weaknesses or areas for improvement in consultation with the employees. Ask permission ahead of time to point out any things that that could be useful feedback in terms of them improving those skills, or indeed you should be giving feedback when they've absolutely nailed something. So if they've had a really detailed presentation to do and they've got it 100%. right, you equally want to be praising them as much as you're taking them feedback. Um, and I think if you get into that pattern over time, you'll start to build more trust, you'll start to build, um, more of a relationship with this person where you can start to be a little bit more direct. But I think in the early days, it's— that's a good approach to do, is in consultation, um, and with their permission, um, if it is more of a performance-based issue
[31:59] Al Elliott: I think that's a really— I really like this idea of just saying, look, I know you all know when knowing in the back of your head that 70% of people don't know. That's a really nice way of just not having to pull someone out individually. Let me ask you a question then about this, because there's a guy called Derek Sivers, um, who started CD Baby. He's written a great book called Anything You Want, I think it's called. Um, I must have read it about 5 times. It's a phenomenal book. And one of the things he did, because he's very much introverted, he says, I don't want to be a manager, I don't want to be a boss. One of the things he did was whenever someone asked a question, he stopped the entire room and said, right, okay, I'm going to answer this. Someone write it down. I'm going to answer this now so that we all know. And then that person writes it down and adds it to a little sort of internal wiki. That seemed really disruptive, but it seemed to work for him. I mean, is that a decent strategy?
[32:47] Leanne Elliott: Yeah, I think if there's multiple things that aren't happening process-wise, or people are getting wrong, or indeed you're in that part of of startup or scale-up where processes are still being developed, um, then yeah, I think that's a useful way of, of doing it. Obviously, it's going to depend on the situation and the nuance of it, whether you want to stop in that exact moment, um, or whether it be that as a manager you make a note of it and you add that to the, to the internal whatever, um, you know, once a week or something. Um, but yeah, it's finding those little, little hacks, isn't it? Again, I think with something like that though, it's worth kind of saying to the team, how should we handle this? If a new process comes up, or if we want to agree a way of doing something, what's the best way for us to agree that together so we're all on the same page, everyone gets the communication at the same time, we all know how to do it right? I think there's always general principles with these things, but ultimately, if you take that to your team and ask their opinion, then they'll probably, one, be a bit more— they'll buy into it a bit more because they're being consulted of that change and of that process. But also, if there is an obvious reason where that would be really impractical, that maybe you haven't thought of from an operational perspective, asking your more frontline employees is useful because they might go, actually, that wouldn't work because of X, Y, and Z, but we could do A, B, C
[34:04] Al Elliott: Lovely. I don't want to do you out of a job, but it seems that— it seems like really the principle is to ask people what— ask people what they think, listen, and then take on board the stuff which is good. I mean, almost everything you say is just consultation
[34:18] Leanne Elliott: Yeah, exactly. Shh!