Feedback

Telling someone specifically what you observed and what effect it had, close to when it happened.

Example

'In that call you answered before the customer finished — we lost the objection they were raising.'

Vague, delayed or annual feedback is useless. Specific and soon is kind, even when it is uncomfortable.

1:1 — A recurring private conversation between a manager and a person who reports to them.
Management — Getting work done through other people — setting expectations, removing obstacles, giving feedback and holding accountability.
Performance management — The ongoing process of setting expectations, giving feedback and addressing whether someone is meeting the standard of their role.

Isolation, and delivering bad news — Founding is structurally lonely, and telling people bad news early is a skill that protects the company as much as it protects you. (12 min)
Running a fair hiring process — Same questions, work samples over CVs, and a decision made against the definition rather than against a feeling. (12 min)
Onboarding someone properly — The first two weeks decide whether a good hire becomes a good employee. Most startups improvise this and lose months. (10 min)
Setting expectations — Most performance problems are expectation problems. People rarely fail at a job they clearly understood. (10 min)
Running 1:1s — Their meeting, not your status update. The moment it becomes a progress report it stops surfacing anything useful. (10 min)
Giving feedback — Specific, soon, and about the effect. Vague or delayed feedback is unkind, whatever it feels like at the time. (10 min)