When your report criticises your management

When a direct report says your way of working is making their job harder, let them finish. Ask about the exchange that prompted the concern, check that you understood it, and give a clear answer about what you will change. Your next 1:1 should revisit your behaviour as well as their work.

The useful commitment is small enough to observe: something you will do differently, followed by a question about whether it helped.

Hear the concern before explaining your intention

In a public discussion on r/managers, an employee described a manager who became defensive when they suggested improvements to communication and processes. The employee said they had begun limiting their 1:1s to task progress. This is one person's account, with incomplete context, but it identifies a practical risk to examine: what happens after someone questions how you work?

One request in the thread was specific. After a point was missed in a launch proposal, the employee suggested reviewing the document together briefly instead of relying on asynchronous review. They reported that the manager disputed whether the missed point had affected the decision.

You can examine the proposed review process before deciding whether you agree with that assessment. Start with:

• The exchange: Ask which recent moment they want you to understand. If they need time to think, leave room to return to it.
• The effect: Ask what your response made harder for them to do.
• Your understanding: Summarise the concern and invite a correction before offering your explanation.

CCL's active-listening guidance recommends withholding judgment, reflecting and clarifying. Use those practices to understand the request, without turning the conversation into a test of how well your report presents evidence.

Choose a change you can actually test

For the proposal-review request, a practical response would be to agree one upcoming document to review together and decide afterwards whether that format was useful.

Name what you will do, when you will do it, and when you will ask about the effect. Keep the action with yourself if it concerns your behaviour. Giving the employee an action to “communicate better” leaves your part unanswered.

If you cannot make the requested change, explain the actual constraint and say what remains possible. A deadline or decision you must retain can coexist with a different way of explaining priorities. If you need to check something first, commit to returning with an answer at a named meeting.

Bring your commitment into the next conversation

Agree a short recap before saving it. Record the concern and your next action within your organisation's rules for notes and access; retain any disagreement rather than writing agreement into existence.

1on1 provides guided agendas, written session context, tracked actions and recurring follow-up. Use that workflow to keep your commitment available when preparing the next conversation. A completed action records what you did; your report's answer tells you how they experienced it.

At the next 1:1, ask: “Did the change we agreed help? What still made the work difficult?” Accept an answer that differs from your own impression, and decide together whether to keep, adjust or stop the experiment.

Choose one manager-owned change to revisit. If you are exploring a written workflow to carry it between meetings, read about 1on1 with that commitment in mind.

Sources and references

• Working with a defensive manager — public r/managers discussion
• CCL — Active Listening Techniques: Best Practices for Leaders
• 1on1 — guided recurring 1:1s