Help newly promoted managers move from reluctant feedback-givers to confident coaches.
Audience
Recently promoted individual contributors stepping into their first people-leadership role.
Level
Professional
Format
Half-day workshop (live, in-person or virtual)
Duration
4 hours
Learning objectives
What learners will be able to do.
01Distinguish between coaching, corrective, and recognition feedback and choose the right mode for the moment.
02Apply the Situation–Behavior–Impact (SBI) model to deliver clear, specific feedback without making it personal.
03Run a complete feedback conversation — from opening to commitment — in under ten minutes.
04Anticipate and de-escalate the three most common reactions: defensiveness, deflection, and shutdown.
05Build a lightweight, repeatable feedback cadence for one-on-ones that scales as the team grows.
Course outline
How it's structured.
01Module 1 — Why managers avoid feedback (and the real cost of doing so)
02Module 2 — The SBI model and why specificity changes everything
03Module 3 — Running the conversation: opening, exchange, commitment
04Module 4 — Handling the hard moments: defensiveness, deflection, shutdown
05Module 5 — From one-off to system: building a weekly feedback cadence
One lesson, in detail
A peek inside Module 1.
Module 1
Module 1 — Why managers avoid feedback
Surfaces the avoidance patterns most first-time managers fall into, and reframes feedback as a kindness rather than a confrontation.
Almost every first-time manager arrives at the same private moment: a teammate is doing something that needs to stop, and the manager knows it, and the conversation that would address it has been postponed for two weeks. Three avoidance patterns explain almost all of this — the 'maybe it'll fix itself' bet, the 'I don't want to be the bad guy' identity protection, and the 'I'll bring it up at the review' procrastination. Each one feels like restraint in the moment and reveals itself, weeks later, as neglect. This module reframes the choice. Withholding feedback is not kindness; it is a private tax the manager charges the teammate, paid in confusion and a lower ceiling on their growth. Once managers see that, the cost of the awkward conversation drops below the cost of the comfortable silence.
In-class activity
Pair exercise: each participant names one piece of feedback they have been postponing for more than two weeks, identifies which avoidance pattern they fell into, and writes a single-sentence version of what needs to be said.
And 4 more in the full package
The rest of the curriculum.
02
Module 2 — The SBI model and why specificity changes everything
Teaches Situation–Behavior–Impact as the workhorse structure for feedback that lands without becoming personal.
03
Module 3 — Running the conversation: opening, exchange, commitment
Walks through the full arc of a ten-minute feedback conversation, with a script for the opening and a structure for the close.
04
Module 4 — Handling the hard moments
Builds responses to the three reactions that derail first-time managers: defensiveness, deflection, and shutdown.
05
Module 5 — From one-off to system: building a weekly cadence
Converts the skill from a high-stakes event into a low-stakes habit by designing a feedback cadence inside the one-on-one.
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