Feedback and Coaching 101 for New Leaders

New to coaching your team? Learn what real feedback looks like, how to make it safe, and why clarity beats advice every time.

If you’re not a subscriber, you can still grab DDL’s free guide Leading Better 1:1s. It’s packed with questions, feedback tips, and a simple roadmap for better 1:1s.

✅ Reflective questions (Quiet Leadership style)
✅ Feedback prompts (Radical Candor made practical)
✅ A simple step-by-step conversation roadmap

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Hej! It’s William!

So… You get the promotion. Or maybe someone just says you're the "go-to person" now. And out of nowhere, the new expectation shows up: start coaching your team.

That sounds nice, right? But what does it mean?

Nobody hands you a guide. You don’t get a playbook. Just vague advice like “support their growth” or “give more feedback.” And let’s be honest, most people who say that can’t explain what it looks like in real life either.

So what do you do?

You open your next 1:1 and think, Should I say something? Should I wait?

You try to give helpful feedback, but it comes out either too soft and confusing or too sharp and awkward. Then you replay it in your head for hours, wondering if they misunderstood. Or worse, if they didn’t hear anything at all.

That moment? It’s more common than people admit.

Because coaching is not natural. Giving feedback is uncomfortable. And most of us were never taught how to do either one. We just absorbed whatever version of “leadership” we saw from past managers, hoping to figure it out as we go.

Sometimes that means avoiding the conversation altogether. Sometimes it means talking in circles with vague words like "alignment" or "ownership," hoping the other person decodes your hint.

Here’s the thing. People don’t grow from confusion. And they don’t stay in teams where they feel judged or ignored. They stay in teams where feedback feels normal, honest, and safe.

That’s what this guide is about.

• What Feedback Is (and What It Isn’t)

• Why Feedback Feels Unsafe (Even When You Mean Well)

• How to Give Feedback That Actually Helps

• Coaching Is Not Telling People What To Do

• Building a Feedback Culture (Before Things Break)

• When Feedback Fails and You Feel That Silence

• Before You Coach Someone Else, Coach Yourself First

• Self-Check Before You Give Feedback

• Ten Things You Can Try This Week

We’re going to break this down in plain language. No fancy models. No buzzwords. These are just real practices that help you coach, guide, and give feedback in a way that feels natural. And useful.

Let’s start with the most misunderstood part of all this: what feedback is… and what it isn’t.

Feedback Is Not Advice. And Coaching Is Not a Performance Review.

This is where most new leaders get stuck, I think. They think feedback means giving advice. Or worse, they think it means pointing out everything that went wrong. And coaching? Many assume it’s just another word for performance management with a softer tone.

No wonder people avoid it. But here’s a better way to look at it.

Feedback is information. Coaching is what you do after someone has that information to help them move forward. That’s it.

Feedback says, “Here’s what I saw. Here’s the impact it had.” Coaching asks, “What’s your next move? What would you change?”

You’re not grading people. You’re not judging their personality. You’re offering a mirror, not a hammer.

Kim Scott, in Radical Candor, makes this clear. She talks about two things: care personally and challenge directly. If you only challenge, you’re just being a critic. If you only care, you become overly nice and useless. But when you do both? That’s where real growth starts.

And growth only happens when people feel safe enough to hear the hard stuff. Without getting defensive. Without feeling like they’re being punished. This is what the best teams create, not fear, but clarity.

Let me give you an example… Saying “You’re not communicating well” is not feedback. Saying “In the last planning meeting, I noticed you cut off two teammates. That made it harder to follow the discussion”, that’s feedback. It's concrete. It's recent. And it leaves room for improvement.

Feedback is about helping people to see what they may have missed. And coaching? Coaching is the part where you say, “Want to talk through what you'd try next time?”

One gives awareness. The other builds skill.

So before you coach someone, make sure you’ve given them real feedback. And before you give feedback, pause and ask: Am I trying to help this person grow? Or just trying to get something off my chest?

That one question alone can change your entire approach.

Next, let’s talk about the uncomfortable truth behind feedback: why people usually hear it as a threat, and what to do about that.

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