Operations & PEOPLE // Premium Promise
AVOID THE CONVERSATION YOU CANT GIVING FEEDBACK WITHOUT LOSING CLARITY By Danny Gruening
I t would be amazing if every employee performed every task perfectly. But that’s not the reality anyone lives in. Managers have to give constructive feedback when employees make mistakes or fall below standards. It’s part of the job, and it’s how performance improves over time. That doesn’t make the conversation any easier. For many managers and owners, giving feedback can be daunting. How do you start? How direct should you be? How do you make sure the employee hears the problem without feeling personally attacked? That discomfort often pushes managers toward one of two extremes. Neither works very well. WHEN FEEDBACK MISSES THE MARK On one side is sugarcoating . The manager doesn’t want to be mean, and they genuinely care about the employee, so they dance around the issue. The conversation may sound supportive, but the message gets lost. When it’s over, the employee may have no idea that something needs to be corrected. And so the problem continues. On the other side is the overly blunt approach. The manager wants to be crystal clear, so they come into the conversation with some thunder. They give a direct order about exactly what needs to change. The message is clear, but the employee feels attacked because the conversation lacks empathy. Now the employee may spend future
shifts worried about making another mistake instead of focusing on doing the job well. The goal is the middle: delivering a clear enough message that the employee understands the problem, but constructive enough to improve what happens next. WAITING HAS A COST There’s another approach I hear about often in leadership training, and that’s doing nothing. Managers wait, delay, and procrastinate hoping the problem will somehow solve itself. I’ve even had managers tell me they hope the employee will simply quit. It’s more common than you might think. If the mistake-prone employee leaves on their own, the manager avoids the uncomfortable conversation altogether. The trouble is that the problem rarely stays contained to that one employee. When someone repeatedly misses standards and receives no feedback, coworkers notice. They may have to redo the work, cover the gap, or deal with the customer consequences. Over time, silence from the manager can send a message to the rest of the staff that the standard isn’t really the standard after all. Even if the employee eventually quits, the team has already lived with the problem. Avoiding one uncomfortable conversation can create a much bigger management issue.
IBI magazine // November 2026 22
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