Five with Fry

“You need more executive presence.”

Okay. What does that actually mean?

A lot of workplace feedback sounds specific until you’re the person who has to do something with it. Be more strategic. Be less emotional. Be a better team player. Those may describe someone’s impression of you, but they don’t tell you what happened or what needs to change.

And that matters, because people make real decisions based on this stuff. Promotions. Raises. Performance reviews. Whether someone is supposedly “ready” for the next opportunity.

In this episode of Five with Fry, I’m talking about the difference between describing a person and naming a behavior — and why managers need to know that difference before they call something feedback.

You thought you were doing fine. Your manager had mentioned a few things during the year, but nothing sounded that serious. Then your performance review lands, and suddenly those same issues are being described as a pattern.

So…when did this become a problem?

This week, we’re talking about what happens when the feedback an employee heard all year does not match what eventually shows up in writing. Because there’s a big difference between “just stay on top of those deadlines” and “I’m concerned this is becoming a performance issue.”

If an employee is learning how serious something was for the first time during their review, that’s a problem. A performance review should reflect conversations you’ve already had, not reveal what you really meant months later.

You can say “thank you for the feedback,” leave the meeting, and still have no idea what your boss actually meant. Was that a small thing they want you to work on? A bigger performance concern? Something that could affect the promotion you’ve been talking about?

This week, we’re looking at feedback from the employee side of the conversation and what happens when you don’t have enough information to know what to do with what you just heard. Asking for clarity doesn’t make you defensive. Sometimes you need the example. You need to know how serious it is. You need to know what your manager expects to see change.

And before you leave the room, make sure you and your manager actually heard the same conversation. Because “thank you for the feedback” might end the meeting, but it doesn’t mean you understood it.

You can leave a feedback conversation thinking, “I was very clear,” while the other person leaves wondering, “Am I in trouble?”

That gap matters.

Managers often have information employees don’t: how serious an issue is, whether it’s affecting future opportunities, whether this is coaching or something more formal, and what needs to happen next. When that context stays in the manager’s head, employees are left trying to read tone, decode language, and figure out what you really meant.

Jen looks at feedback from the supervisor side and asks a simple question: Did the person actually leave knowing where they stand?

Because clarity isn’t cruelty. And confusion isn’t kindness.

The feedback sandwich sounds polite. It can also make it nearly impossible to tell what the actual feedback was.

We pile on praise, reassurance, explanations, and “this really isn’t a big deal” until the thing the person actually needs to hear gets buried somewhere in the middle. Then we leave the conversation thinking we gave clear feedback and wonder why nothing changes.

But feedback at work is rarely just about the words. It’s about power, timing, trust, defensiveness, interpretation — and sometimes our own need to make an uncomfortable conversation feel more comfortable.

This week, we’re talking about why clarity matters more than cushioning, why waiting 30 minutes to say the hard thing can make the conversation worse, and what someone actually needs to know when you’re asking them to change. Because clarity isn’t cruelty, and confusion isn’t kindness.

Most of us organize our adult lives around never being bad at something in public. Our kids do it every week.

They miss the serve with the gym watching. They get subbed out in front of their friends. They get corrected out loud and have to walk back on and try the thing they just failed at. That's not the downside of youth sports. It's the lesson, and it's teaching itself at an age when most adults would rather do anything else.

I close the season by naming what's underneath all of it: working with a teammate you can't stand, taking feedback without falling apart, working hard and not getting what you wanted. And I'm honest about what the adults do to that, how easily the money we put in turns into a return we start watching for, and a return we're watching for turns into blame our kids learn to copy.

If you've felt that pull, this one's for you. My book Before You Blame the Coach is available now.

There's a version of the young coach in your kid's gym that you've already written off. You clocked the age, the thin résumé, the decision you'd never have made, and you decided. Before a single practice, sometimes.

I coached club at 21. I got handed a team I was never supposed to run, didn't know brackets, missed things a seasoned coach never would. The only reason I lasted long enough to coach a Division I national championship is that the parents on that first team gave me room to be bad before I got good.

So this episode is about the double standard nobody says out loud: we hand our own kids grace for every misread and missed rep, and we hand the young coach a verdict. One bad call becomes a group-chat pile-on. And it works. Good coaches leave, because DoorDash pays the same with none of the weekends and none of the personal attacks.

I'm not telling you to ignore harm. I'm telling you there's a line between a coach who's learning and a coach who's hurting your kid, and most of what sets us off lives nowhere near it.

Your kid says they're done, and they say it without drama. No meltdown, no blowup, just a decision. They walk away lighter. And you're the one left standing there running the numbers on everything you put in.

I've watched this from the coach side for years, and the part that surprises parents most isn't losing the games. It's losing the people. Somewhere in there, your kid's team became your team. Those parents on the sideline became the friends who carried you through the hard stuff. When your kid walks away, you lose that too, and nobody tells you to expect the grief that comes with it.

So this episode is about what's actually happening in you in that moment, and why the grief is real but it's yours to hold, not your child's to manage. I get into the first thing to say when they tell you (it's shorter than you'd guess), and why it matters so much that they were honest with you instead of just quietly checking out.

If your athlete has said it, or you can feel it coming, this one's for you.

https://jenfrytalksyouthsports.com/book

Your kid comes off the court and says the coach is picking on them again. Always calling them out, never the other kids. And before they've finished the sentence, you're already halfway to a decision about what you're going to do about it.

I get why. You hear the hurt in their voice, and you want to protect them. But most of the time, that thing your kid is calling out isn't being singled out. It's being coached. And the two feel identical from the passenger seat if nobody's ever taught your kid the difference.

In this episode, I talk about what actually happens when a coach keeps correcting your athlete, why the kid getting less feedback usually isn't the one doing better, and the reflex I watched parents fall into for fifteen years on the bench side — treating a correction like something's gone wrong instead of something's being built. I also get into the harder line: when tough feedback gets called abuse, and why blurring that costs your kid something later.

Before You Blame the Coach is out now. If this one lands, share it with a sport parent who needs it.

https://jenfrytalksyouthsports.com/book

Your kid gets benched. Your chest goes tight. And somewhere between the sideline and the parking lot, a message starts writing itself in your head — the one that has to be sent.

This is the episode where the book is finally out, and it's the exact moment I built the book for. Because I've watched this play out from the other side of the bench for fifteen years: a parent who loves their kid, who's running on a partial story and a spike of emotion, deciding right then that the coach needs to hear it — or worse, that the internet does.

I get into why that moment is where supportive parenting either holds or comes apart. Missing context. A kid who told you eighty percent of the conversation. The screenshot that outlives the apology. And the thing nobody wants to sit with — that what you do while you're hot doesn't stay with you. It follows your athlete into rooms you'll never be in.

Before You Blame the Coach is out now. This one's about the pause that protects everybody, especially the kid you're trying to defend.

https://jenfrytalksyouthsports.com/book