by Kimberly Lee, author of “Building a Coaching Culture: The Ripple Effect”
I watched two talented people lose their careers to the same root cause. Not poor performance. Not a bad attitude. Not the wrong skills. Their manager was conflict-averse and simply could not bring himself to deliver constructive feedback, and neither of them ever saw what was coming.
The first one started on the same day I did. We built our teams side by side, grew together, and were part of a strong, cohesive unit. When new executive leadership arrived and shifted priorities, there were performance concerns, not about his capabilities, but about where he was focusing his energy. Nobody told him. No feedback, no course correction, no chance to adjust. His role was changed in a way he never saw coming, and he ultimately left the organization. I had a conversation with him after it all fell apart. He was blindsided. He had no idea there was a problem. It didn’t have to happen that way. What I find most telling is what came next: he landed well, built something new, and eventually recruited me to join him at his next company. The respect between us never wavered, because I had always been straight with him, even when his own manager wasn’t.
The second was someone I had hired and watched grow from a direct report into a team leader. He loved his work and was genuinely good at it. Early on, we had been told to build the MVP and fine-tune later — speed over perfection. He operated that way because that’s what the culture asked for. When the expectations shifted, no one told him. He was moved to a role that was never a good fit, and the impact on him was real, not just professionally, but psychologically.
When a role opened back up on my team, I reached out. He agreed to come back, but only if he reported directly to me. He told me he always knew my feedback came from a genuine desire to see him grow, and that I knew how to talk to him. He came back, did great work, and when I eventually left, he followed me to my next company.
Two people. Same manager. Same missing ingredient. The difference between one whose career was derailed without warning and one who followed me to my next job was not talent, not effort, not fit. It was feedback — consistent, honest, and delivered from a place of genuine investment.
Misaligned Management
Quiet quitting gets blamed on lazy employees or entitled generations. After more than two decades in HR leadership, I’m here to tell you: that’s almost never the real story. People don’t disengage from their work. They disengage from their managers. And the managers most responsible for that disengagement are often not the harsh ones — they’re the ones who say nothing at all.
Here are five coaching behaviors that change that:
1. Give Feedback Before It Becomes a Crisis.
The most damaging feedback isn’t harsh feedback. It’s withheld feedback. When managers avoid difficult conversations because they’re uncomfortable, because they don’t want conflict, because they’re hoping the issue resolves itself, they rob their people of the one thing that could actually help them: information. People cannot course correct on a problem they don’t know exists. I start from the belief that people genuinely want to do well, they just don’t always know where they’re missing the mark. As leaders, our job is to make sure our teams have everything they need to succeed. That includes feedback — whether it’s positive, developmental, or both. If you genuinely believe in someone’s potential, you tell them the truth.
2. Listen to Understand, Not to Respond.
Most managers listen long enough to formulate their next point. Coaching requires something harder: listening to actually understand what’s going on for the person in front of you. When we listen that way, we catch subtle cues — the hesitation, the change in tone, the thing they almost said — and can ask more meaningful questions. It also builds trust. And here’s what managers often miss: listening isn’t just good for your employee. You walk away with your own actionable information, what’s blocking someone, what they need, where the team dynamic is fraying before it becomes a problem. Ask more questions. Talk less. The answers will tell you everything.
3. Make Psychological Safety Real, Not a Poster on the Wall.
Psychological safety is one of the most overused phrases in leadership and one of the least understood in practice. It doesn’t mean everyone feels good all the time. It means people believe they can raise a concern, admit a mistake, or try something new without it being held against them.
None of us have it all dialed in — especially now. In an era of AI and rapid change, the managers who encourage people to try new things and embrace “fail fast” thinking are where real creativity lives. If your employees are afraid to try because they fear being diminished for the attempt, they will do exactly what is asked and never challenge what is possible.
I know this firsthand. Right after ChatGPT became publicly available in 2023, I was invited to participate in a company initiative to explore AI integration across departments. I pitched the idea of a bot to help employees get answers to the standard HR questions we fielded constantly. My boss chuckled, and then, not in a private conversation, but in a team staff meeting, told me that wasn’t a project we would be pursuing and that they didn’t see the value.
I still think it was a good idea. In fact, I went ahead and built it and several others. The lesson wasn’t that my idea was wrong, it’s that environments where ideas get laughed out of the room don’t just lose that one idea. They lose the next ten. Teams with real psychological safety don’t just perform better. They stay. And they keep bringing their best ideas to work.
4. Ask About Growth, Not Just Output.
The standard 1:1 agenda is a progress report. The coaching 1:1 is a connection. And I don’t mean the generic “how was your weekend?” opener that employees see right through. I mean being specific. Did they mention a trip, a big family event, or did their plan literally involve a nap? Remember it. Ask about it.
I have an employee right now whose child has some disabilities, and it has been weighing on her. So, I ask about the new school. I ask how she is coping. I’ve shared some of my own experiences so she knows I understand. That’s not a distraction from work, that’s how you create the safety where someone can bring their whole self to a conversation.
Once that foundation is there, the rest follows. Ask what they want to work on. Encourage them to explore and learn. Strategize with them, don’t just take the status update and end the meeting. Employees who feel their growth matters to their manager are not quietly quitting. They’re the ones staying late because they want to.
5. Empower People to Own Their Work.
I’ve seen what happens when a manager requires sign-off on every communication before it goes out. On the surface, it looks like quality control. Underneath, it communicates something corrosive: I don’t trust your judgment. And once people internalize that message, they stop exercising their judgment. They do the minimum. They stop caring about the outcome because the outcome was never really theirs to own.
Empowerment isn’t a management style preference, it’s a prerequisite for engagement. Give people real ownership, hold them accountable for it, and watch what happens.
One Manager Can Change an Entire Team
Here’s what I know after watching this play out across dozens of organizations: disengagement is not a workforce problem. It’s a leadership problem. And it’s a solvable one. When one manager starts leading differently, giving honest feedback, asking better questions, creating real safety, investing in growth, the effect doesn’t stay contained to their team. Their direct reports start treating their own people differently. The culture shifts. Not because of a company-wide initiative, but because one person decided to show up as a coach instead of a task manager. That’s the ripple. And it starts with your next conversation.
Think about someone on your team right now who has gone quiet. Not checked out — just quieter than they used to be. When did you last give them specific feedback? When did you last ask them what they actually want from their career? When did you last make them feel like their growth was your problem to care about too?
You don’t need a new program. You need that conversation. Have it this week.
Kimberly Lee, SPHR, is an HR executive, leadership coach, and founder of Lotic Systems and MyTalentAdvantage. She has spent more than two decades leading HR transformation across global organizations. She is the author of “Building a Coaching Culture: The Ripple Effect” (Business Expert Press, 2026) and the creator of RippleIQ, an AI-powered coaching platform for leaders. Learn more at loticsystems.com and mytalentadvantage.com.
