TL;DR: Most new managers were promoted for individual performance, then struggle to hold others to account. The common mistakes: waiting for underperformance to fix itself, giving feedback without written expectations, failing to log the pattern, softening conversations until the person misses how serious things are, and waiting too long to end a role that isn’t working. Once you’ve been clear and given a real chance to change, the kind thing is to act.
AI disclosure: The ideas, arguments, and examples in this post are my own. I gave Claude my raw notes and asked it to help draft them into a post, then substantially rewrote and edited the result myself, with Claude assisting on a final copyedit pass.
Most people become managers because they performed well as individuals. They met deadlines, had strong attention to detail, and followed through on commitments. Then they start managing people who don’t always do those things, and they have no idea what to do.
This post is about that gap. I’ve been on both sides of it: as a new manager making these mistakes myself and, more recently, coaching others through them. Here are the mistakes I see most often.
1. Waiting for underperformance to resolve itself
When someone on your team misses a deadline or produces sloppy work, the tempting response is to assume they’ll figure it out and fix it soon. You tell yourself they’re still learning, or this is a one-off. Often, they don’t figure it out because no one has clearly told them their work isn’t good enough.
The discomfort here is real. Especially if you like the person, if things have generally been going well, and if you’ve never had to say “this doesn’t meet my expectations” to anyone before.
But waiting is not neutral. Every week you don’t name the problem, you’re signalling that the current standard is acceptable.
My advice: as soon as possible, diagnose the problem first and find out exactly why this is happening, then prepare for a conversation where you deliver direct but fair feedback. It doesn’t have to be a long conversation; a few short sentences are enough. It feels hard the first time, but it gets easier with practice.
2. Giving feedback without anchoring it in anything
Once you do raise an issue, the most common mistake is making it feel subjective. “I feel like you could be more on top of things” is easy to dismiss. “Your job description says X, and this is the third time it hasn’t happened” is not.
This is why written expectations matter. Without an up-to-date job description, clear role responsibilities, and documented cultural norms, you’re giving feedback in a vacuum. The person has nothing to anchor it to, and you have nothing to stand on if they push back.
At Hive, we have quarterly check-ins that assess their work against defined criteria, including conscientiousness and follow-through. That structure grounds a conversation about their work in facts instead of personal judgment. We also aim to update job descriptions regularly, though that’s harder in a generalist AI-first team where responsibilities shift quickly.
I have made this mistake myself and found that it was difficult to keep people accountable. A good solution is to set up a recurring task to review job descriptions and ensure your expectations and cultural norms are explicitly stated in writing.
3. Giving comments instead of a verdict
A manager I coach once told me about a monthly report from one of his people that was noticeably weaker than the previous one. “I don’t understand it,” he said to me. “The last one was excellent, and this one slipped, and I can’t work out why.”
“Did you tell them the quality dropped and asked why?”
“No.”
“Then how would they know?”
He had given feedback, in a sense. He’d left detailed comments on the draft, suggested changes, passed on specific fixes. But line-level comments belong to a different category from evaluation, which is your overall judgment of whether the work met the bar. A report can receive thirty comments and still walk away not knowing whether you thought the work was good. Worse, they can infer the wrong thing: more comments might mean you engaged more deeply, or it might mean the work slipped. Without the verdict, they’re guessing.
The two types also do different jobs. Comments improve this piece of work. Evaluation tells the person where they stand, helps you both investigate the cause and fix the issue.
When the quality of someone’s work changes, in either direction, say so explicitly and label it as your overall read: “This report was excellent, no major notes” or “This one wasn’t at the level of your last, and I want to understand what’s going on.”
I have a separate blog coming out soon about feedback, so watch this space!
4. Not naming how serious the situation is
This is the one I see most often, and it causes the most damage.
A new manager sees someone who’s doing many things well but consistently dropping the ball on something important. They think: they’re good overall, so I shouldn’t overreact. So they keep having soft, encouraging conversations that never land with the weight they need to.
The problem is that small, persistent failures in critical systems are serious. They affect the team, the work, and the colleagues who are likely compensating. If you never say “this specific thing is important enough that if it continues, we will end your contract,” you’re not giving the person a real chance to change course.
If you let people go seemingly out of nowhere, your team is likely to find it destabilising. Firing people without warning can erode team trust and damage morale. The last time I let someone go, my team asked me: “Did this person have a fair warning and a chance to improve?” It’s not just because they want to be fair; they are also wondering whether this could happen to them at some point, what they can expect from you and whether they can trust you to treat them fairly going forward.
Saying that clearly and early is hard. But it’s fairer than letting someone drift toward termination without ever understanding how close they were.
5. Not logging the pattern
Accountability conversations only work if you track them. If you’ve told someone three times that they keep missing a responsibility and it’s still happening, that documented pattern is what allows you to escalate. Without it, every conversation resets the clock.
Logging is also useful for you. It forces you to notice whether anything has changed and gives you an opportunity to communicate your observations to the report. It protects you from smoothing over repeated issues because each instance feels small on its own.
In the past, I have faced a particularly challenging version of this situation. I gave feedback to the report; they improved for a while, but then started making the same mistake again, and so on. What made it particularly hard was that I saw that the person could improve, but those improvements just didn’t last, and that was the problem. Because I didn’t log it, it was much harder to say “I am bringing this up for the third time, and this means that you haven’t demonstrated your ability to do this part of the role consistently”.
Log these instances somewhere both you and your report can access, so they can see clearly where they are or aren’t meeting expectations. A simple shared spreadsheet is a good place to start.
6. Waiting too long to end it
This is uncomfortable to write, but it’s probably the biggest mistake I see (and have made myself).
When someone isn’t meeting expectations, and that isn’t changing, most new managers keep hoping. One more conversation, one more quarter, one more approach. All that time, the team is watching. They can see when someone isn’t pulling their weight, and they notice how management responds.
Some new managers say: “I’ve told this person to improve multiple times and nothing has changed, so I’m unsure what to do next.” As a manager, you have the power to end their contract or amend their role, and new managers hesitate to use it. Do check what a fair process looks like where the person is employed, since employment law varies by country and the steps in this post (written expectations, documented feedback, clear warnings) are usually part of it.
There’s also this: the person who isn’t performing is usually not happy. They often know something is wrong, even if nobody has named it. Letting things drag on delays the difficulty and extends everyone’s frustration in the meantime.
The resource I’d point to is The Management Center’s book Managing to Change the World, which has practical writing on the exact steps to take. But the core principle is simple: if you’ve been clear about expectations, documented the gaps, and given the person a real opportunity to change, and nothing has shifted, the kind thing is to act.
A note on small teams
All of this is harder in a small organisation. When everyone is a friend, when the culture is warm, when people care deeply about the mission, holding someone to account can feel like a betrayal of the relationship.
But the relationship is also what’s at stake if you don’t. Teams with unaddressed underperformance develop resentment, inequity, and quiet cynicism. The trust erodes either way. Better for it to erode because you handled something clearly than because you didn’t.
In fact, your team will trust you more if they can expect that you will raise issues quickly, because they will know that they have heard a true version of what you think of their work.
Managing well when everything is going well is easy. The real skill is what you do when it isn’t.
Hi, I’m Sofia Balderson. I lead Hive, a global community for people working to end factory farming. I started Notes from the Margin to share the messier, more personal reflections that don’t fit in formal updates. If you care about leading, belonging, or building something that matters (especially from the edges), you might enjoy sticking around.
I also offer executive coaching sessions for leaders and founders of small teams - feel free to check out and book here.
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Hi Sofia, I really found this insightful. Thanks for sharing authentically. Is it OK to tag you if I share it on LinkedIn? have a good day!