Giving Feedback as a New Manager: What Works and What Backfires
Few things expose a new manager faster than the moment they have to give difficult feedback. You can be brilliant at the work itself, beloved by your former peers, and genuinely well-intentioned, and still find that the first time you have to tell someone their performance is falling short, your stomach drops and your carefully rehearsed words come out wrong. Feedback is the skill that separates managers who develop their people from managers who merely supervise them, and almost nobody arrives in the role already good at it.
The anxiety is real and it is nearly universal. Researchers at Zenger Folkman have heard managers describe it plainly: not sleeping the night before, sweating hands, wanting to get it over quickly. In one self-assessment of 7,808 people,21 percent admitted they avoid giving negative feedback altogether. If you have felt that dread, you are in ordinary company. The question is what to do about it.
Why feedback matters more than new managers realize
Feedback is one of the highest-leverage things a manager does. Gallup research found that managers trained to give meaningful, strengths-based feedback report up to 22 percent higher engagement, their teams see up to 18 percent higher engagement and more than 12 percent greater productivity, and turnover drops by as much as 28 percent.
Thosenumbers come from Gallup's work on manager development, and they are worth pausing on, because they reframe what feedback actually is. It is not a soft skill tucked at the edge of the job, and it is not an administrative task attached to review season. It is one of the few levers a front-line manager can pull that measurably moves engagement, output, and retention at the same time.
The demand side is just as clear. When Zenger Folkman asked over 2,500 employees what would most help their careers,72 percent said their performance would improve if their managers provided corrective feedback. And when a separate group of more than 9,500 people were asked what would help them improve,82 percent pointed to being given specific, constructive suggestions.
Sit with the gap those two findings create. Your people want this from you. Most managers are too uncomfortable to provide it. That gap is the opportunity, and closing it is largely a matter of a few learnable habits.
What makes feedback backfire
Feedback backfires when it is vague, when it is saved up for the annual review, when it is delivered as a one-directional verdict, and when it is unrelentingly corrective without any positive foundation. Each of these is a common instinct for new managers, and each one predictably reduces the odds that the feedback lands.
Before talking about what works, it helps to be honest about what does not, because new managers tend to fall into the same few traps.
The first is vagueness dressed up as kindness. "You're doing great, keep it up" feels generous, but it gives the person nothing to act on, and "I need you to be more proactive" sounds like direction while offering none. Research consistently lists relevance, accuracy, timeliness, specificity, and clarity as the elements that make feedback useful, and missing any one of them drops the impact. Vague feedback is not kind. It is just comfortable for the person giving it.
The second trap is saving it all for the review. New managers often assume feedback belongs in the formal performance review, and so they store up months of observations for one high-stakes conversation. By then the moment to address anything has long passed, and the recipient is left feeling ambushed by issues they could have fixed in real time. In Beyond the Courtroom, the chapter on performance reviews makes the case that a review should hold no surprises. If something in that conversation is news to the person sitting across from you, the feedback system has already failed.
The third trap is making it one-directional. The phrase that frames the relevant chapter of Beyond the Courtroom, that feedback is a two-way street, captures something new managers routinely miss. Feedback delivered as a verdict from on high invites defensiveness. Feedback offered as the start of a conversation, where you genuinely want to understand the other person's view and are open to learning something yourself, invites growth. The difference is enormous, and it is mostly a matter of posture.
The fourth trap is the one that surprises people most: giving only corrective feedback. Zenger Folkman found thatmore managers avoid giving positive feedback (37 percent) than avoid giving negative feedback (21 percent), apparently because many believe correcting mistakes is what the job is. The effectiveness data does not support that belief. Managers who leaned toward corrective feedback while avoiding positive feedback were rated around the36th percentile in leadership effectiveness, while those who led with positive feedback landed near the 53rd, and those who offered both were rated similarly high. Correction without a positive foundation does not read as rigor. It reads as disapproval, and people stop hearing it.
What actually works
Effective feedback is frequent and low-stakes rather than rare and heavy, specific about behavior and its impact rather than about character, anchored in strengths while still addressing growth honestly, and applied consistently across the team.
The good news is that good feedback is not a gift some people are born with. It is a set of practices anyone can build.
Make it frequent and low-stakes. The single most effective change a new manager can make is to give feedback often and in small doses rather than rarely and in large ones. When feedback is a normal, ongoing part of how you work together, each individual instance carries far less charge. Frequent feedback also keeps small issues small, long before they grow into the kind of problem that requires a difficult sit-down. We explored how to turn these moments into momentum in our piece onclosing the loop and turning feedback into actionable growth.
Be specific about behavior and impact. The most useful feedback connects a specific thing the person did to the specific effect it had. "When you reorganized the client summary by priority instead of by date, it made the partner's prep much faster" tells someone exactly what to keep doing. The same structure works for corrective feedback. Describe the behavior, describe the impact, and leave the person's character out of it entirely. This is also what makes feedback feel fair rather than personal, which is what determines whether someone can actually hear it.
Anchor in strengths, but do not hide behind them. The data on strengths-based feedback is compelling, and there is good reason to lead from what someone does well. But strengths-based does not mean conflict-avoidant. The goal is to help people see themselves clearly, which includes the things they need to work on. A manager who only ever praises is as unhelpful, in the long run, as one who only ever criticizes. The research points toward a ratio rather than a choice: enough positive feedback to establish that you see the person accurately, which then makes corrective feedback usable rather than threatening.
Make it fair and consistent. The chapter in Beyond the Courtroom on equitable feedback addresses something that quietly undermines a great deal of well-meaning management: the same behavior often draws different responses depending on who exhibits it. New managers are not immune to this, and the antidote is intentionality. Hold a consistent standard, examine your own patterns, and make sure your feedback is shaped by what people do rather than by who they are.
Say why you are giving it. One small habit changes how feedback lands more than almost anything else: name your intention out loud. "I am telling you this because I think you could be running this account within a year" turns the same words from criticism into investment. People do not just hear content. They hear motive, and if you do not supply it, they will guess, usually uncharitably.
Building the habit early
If you are early in your management journey, the most valuable thing you can do is start now, while your habits are still forming. Managers who wait until they feel fully confident to start giving feedback tend to wait a very long time, and their teams pay for the delay. Feedback is a muscle, and like any muscle it strengthens with use and atrophies with avoidance.
This is exactly the kind of foundational leadership skill that front-line managers benefit from developing deliberately rather than learning through painful trial and error. Programs likeMaking an Impact exist to give newer leaders a structured way to build these capabilities early, when they matter most.
The first ninety days set the tone for the kind of manager you will become, a theme we explored in our piece onwhat nobody tells you about the first ninety days. Feedback is where that tone gets set most clearly. Get into the habit of giving it well, and you will be building the trust that every other part of leadership depends on.
Start before you feel ready
Nobody feels ready to give hard feedback. The managers who become good at it are simply the ones who started anyway, got it a little wrong, and kept going. Your team does not need you to be perfect at this. They need you to be honest, specific, and consistent, and those are things you can choose today.
If you are building a bench of new managers and want them to develop this skill on purpose rather than by accident,let's talk about what that could look like. You can explore ourleadership coaching work, or find the fuller treatment of feedback, performance, and the human side of leading professionals inBeyond the Courtroom by Natalie Loeb and David Sarnoff.
Key Takeaways
Feedback is among the highest-leverage things a manager does, with measurable effects on engagement, productivity, and turnover, yet roughly a fifth of managers avoid giving corrective feedback at all.
Employees want it. Around 72 percent say corrective feedback would improve their performance, and 82 percent point to specific, constructive suggestions as what would most help them improve.
Feedback backfires when it is vague, saved for the annual review, delivered as a verdict, or unrelentingly corrective. Managers who only correct rate near the 36th percentile in effectiveness.
Effective feedback is frequent and low-stakes, specific about behavior and impact, anchored in strengths without avoiding hard truths, applied fairly, and delivered with your intention stated out loud.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should a new manager give feedback?
Frequently and in small doses. Regular, low-stakes feedback keeps small issues from growing and makes each instance feel normal rather than high-stakes. Saving feedback for formal reviews tends to make it land as a surprise, which undermines its usefulness.
What is the best way to structure feedback?
Describe the specific behavior, describe its impact, and keep the person's character out of it. "When you did X, it had Y effect" works for both positive and corrective feedback because it is concrete and actionable without being personal.
Should feedback focus on strengths or weaknesses?
Both, with strengths as the anchor. Research shows managers who give only corrective feedback rate well below those who lead with positive feedback, but effective feedback still addresses areas for growth honestly. The goal is to help people see themselves clearly, not simply to praise them.
How can new managers get better at giving feedback?
Start practicing early rather than waiting to feel confident, since feedback is a skill built through use. Structured leadership development and coaching help newer managers build the habit deliberately instead of learning through trial and error.
Follow Taris G. Mullins on LinkedIn for more insights on front-line leadership, employee wellness, culture consulting, and team development.