How new leaders can give feedback without breaking trust

The failure point isn’t always what gets said in a feedback conversation. It’s what was never agreed on before the conversation started.

New leaders—especially in early-stage startups or fast-moving teams—often think feedback is just about communication. But what actually breaks isn’t the tone. It’s the system underneath. The expectations weren’t aligned. The roles weren’t clear. The trust wasn’t designed. So the feedback lands like a surprise, a scolding, or worse—an erosion of morale disguised as a “growth opportunity.”

This is the invisible fragility in most feedback systems: we think we’re improving someone’s performance when in reality, we’re revealing a lack of design. Here’s how to build feedback systems that hold, using four foundational strategies tailored to new managers and growing teams.

1. Feedback Is Not an Event. It’s a System of Expectations

The most common mistake new leaders make is treating feedback as a reaction to behavior instead of a reinforcement of shared standards.

This usually looks like:

• Giving praise only when results are visible, but not when behaviors align with values
• Waiting until there’s a problem to explain what “good” actually looks like
• Delivering feedback only in 1:1s instead of embedding it across handoffs, projects, and rituals

This pattern creates organizational whiplash. The team isn’t working toward a known bar—they’re just trying not to be caught doing something wrong. And that’s not alignment. That’s anxiety.

Instead, feedback should exist as a loop that mirrors your work cycle:
Expectation → Observation → Alignment → Reinforcement

Before giving feedback, ask yourself:

• “Was the expectation for success ever stated clearly?”
• “Does the person know what I would consider ‘done well’ in this context?”
• “Have we reflected on past work together with shared reference points?”

If not, feedback won’t land as coaching. It’ll land as correction. And trust will erode—even if your tone is kind.

2. Separate Role From Identity—Out Loud and In Practice

In small teams or early-stage companies, people don’t just do work. They become their work. That’s where the second breakdown appears. When feedback is given without separating the role from the person, it feels like a judgment. It hits the identity layer: “I’m not good enough.” “I’m being singled out.”

Clarisse teaches new managers to narrate this separation explicitly.

Try this:

“This isn’t about your value as a teammate. This is about the role needing a different ownership pattern for us to hit the milestone.”

By doing this, you decenter the person’s ego from the issue—and recentre the conversation on system clarity. You’re not asking them to be someone else. You’re asking the team to fix how this role operates in relation to others.

You don’t need perfect language. You just need the courage to say what most managers avoid:

“You’re not the problem. The way we’ve structured your ownership might be.”

Once that’s said, co-design becomes possible. Feedback becomes a system upgrade—not a personal confrontation.

3. Use the Rule of Three: What, Why, What Now

When feedback lacks structure, people either defend or disengage. That’s why new leaders need to learn the Rule of Three—a simple format that grounds every feedback moment in clarity, fairness, and shared responsibility.

1. What happened – Keep it factual. Describe the observable behavior or situation.
2. Why it matters – Describe the impact: on the team, timeline, customer, or morale.
3. What now – Co-create a shift: behavior change, role reset, process adjustment.

Example:

“The updated deck was sent 2 hours before the call, which meant we had no time for alignment. That created confusion during the client meeting. Going forward, can we agree on a 24-hour handoff window for major client deliverables?”

Notice the tone. There’s no accusation. No generic phrases like “you’re not proactive.” Just system feedback. The message is: “Let’s design this to work better next time.” This structure doesn’t just make feedback land better. It makes it more teachable. If your team adopts it as a norm, anyone can give feedback—not just leaders. That’s how feedback systems scale: when they’re not personality-driven, but structurally repeatable.

4. Schedule Feedback. Don’t Just Feel It

Unstructured feedback has a bias problem. When you give feedback only when you feel it, here’s what tends to happen:

• The people who work closest to you get more feedback—both good and bad.
• The more independent contributors get less attention—and eventually feel neglected.
• Feedback happens reactively, often when emotions are high or pressure is mounting.

What does that create? An uneven feedback culture, driven by proximity and volatility—not fairness or clarity. Clarisse recommends scheduled feedback cadences, especially for new leaders learning the rhythm of management.

Try this:

• A 15-minute feedback loop every Friday with each direct report
• Retrospective rituals every two weeks that include both peer and manager feedback
• A team-level “clarity audit” every sprint: “Where did handoffs or expectations break?”

These moments should be structured and safe, not spontaneous or emotional. That way, feedback becomes normal—not nerve-wracking. And over time, the team learns that feedback is just part of how you work. Not a warning. Not a punishment. Not a personal attack. Just part of the system.

When feedback breaks, it doesn’t just hurt feelings. It fractures systems.

You’ll see it in:

• Rising ambiguity: “Who owns this?” becomes a common refrain.
• Quiet quitting: team members disengage from unclear roles.
• Performance lag: deadlines slip, but no one knows who’s accountable.
• Culture erosion: feedback avoidance becomes a norm, and resentment builds.

But when feedback works—really works—your team gains three superpowers:

1. Speed of alignment: Less time lost clarifying expectations midstream.
2. Resilience under stress: Tensions don’t break relationships—they build better systems.
3. Trust in leadership: People believe that feedback isn’t arbitrary. It’s a tool for clarity.

If you're a new leader or founder stepping into your first management role, start here:

1. Set a Feedback Contract
Introduce your team to your feedback values: clarity, fairness, and design over drama. Tell them how you’ll give feedback—and ask how they prefer to receive it.

2. Embed Feedback Into Workflow
Use rituals: retrospectives, pre-mortems, mid-project syncs. Don’t wait for performance reviews.

3. Audit for Silence
Track who’s getting regular feedback—and who isn’t. Silence isn’t safety. It’s usually neglect.

4. Make Feedback Observable, Not Personal
Always ask: “Am I describing behavior, or making a judgment?”

5. Close Feedback Loops
Always circle back. Did the shift happen? If not, was the feedback too vague, too late, or misaligned with reality?

Reflective question:

Clarisse often ends workshops with this quiet prompt: “In your current team, who gets the clearest signals from you—and who gets the fog?” Feedback is one of the most powerful ways we show people they matter. And lack of feedback is one of the subtlest ways we tell them they don’t. If you want your team to feel trusted, respected, and activated, start by making your feedback system visible.

Trust doesn’t begin with a pep talk. It begins with structural clarity.

Early teams don’t struggle with feedback because people are immature. They struggle because the system hasn’t been designed. At the pre-seed or early growth stage, teams often conflate communication with culture. They assume feedback will “just happen”—because the team is small, and people are nice.

But niceness isn’t clarity. And friendliness doesn’t equal fairness. As teams scale beyond five people, feedback avoidance becomes costly. Lack of clarity becomes misalignment. And misalignment becomes attrition. The solution isn’t more feedback training. It’s system design. And that starts with the leader.

If you’re a new leader fumbling through feedback, you’re not failing. You’re just navigating a system that was never made visible to you. Now you get to build it—for yourself, for your team, and for the people who will one day lead others because you showed them how. Design feedback like you design your product: with care, iteration, and clarity.

And remember: if your feedback depends on your presence, it’s not a system. It’s a dependency. Build better than that.