Two paths, one standard. Path One: a complaint, issue, or mistake involving your own employee. Path Two: a problem that crosses department lines, manager to manager. Pick a path below — skip the middle steps in either one and you spend leadership capital you can't get back.
Someone tells you what one of your people did wrong. Here's how to find out what actually happened before you decide anything.
The scenario: someone brings you a complaint, a flagged issue, or a mistake involving a person on your team. You have their version — one perspective, told with their framing, likely missing context. What you do next determines whether your employee walks away feeling supported or sentenced.
You accept the complaint at face value and coach your employee on "what they could've done better." You've formed a verdict from one witness. If the story was incomplete — and it almost always is — your employee just got reprimanded for a version of events that isn't fully true. Result: frustration, resentment, disengagement, and an employee who learns you won't have their back.
You receive the complaint, thank the person, and commit to nothing. Then you go get your employee's side with genuine curiosity. Only after hearing both perspectives do you form an opinion and decide whether coaching is needed. Result: your employee feels heard, any coaching lands as fair, and your credibility grows on both sides.
The truth almost always lives somewhere in the middle. This sequence is how you find it without burning trust on either side.
Listen fully to the complaint. Take it seriously — it took something for them to bring it to you. But do not agree, apologize on your employee's behalf, or promise a specific outcome. Acknowledging is not agreeing.
Resist the urge to fix it in the next hour. Ask yourself: What do I actually know versus what was I told? What context is missing? Is there a pattern here, or is this the first time I've heard anything like this about this person?
This is the step that gets skipped. Approach your employee with curiosity, not a verdict. Open-ended, neutral, no accusation embedded in the question. Your job in this conversation is to listen, not to correct.
With both perspectives, you can finally judge. Where do the stories overlap? Where do they diverge? Was there a real miss on your employee's part, a misunderstanding, a process gap, or a complaint that doesn't hold up? Often the answer is "some of each."
If coaching is warranted, it now lands as fair — because your employee knows you heard them first. If it isn't, close the loop with the complainant professionally, and let your employee know you looked into it and they're in the clear. Either way, follow up with the original complainant so they know it was taken seriously.
The first sentence of the employee conversation sets the frame for everything after it. If the question contains the verdict, you're not investigating — you're sentencing.
Psychiatrist Stephen Karpman mapped how conflict pulls people into three roles: Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim. When a complaint lands, everyone gets an invitation onto the triangle — including you. Click each corner to see how it plays out, then toggle to see the way off.
Here's the trap the triangle predicts: if the approach to addressing a mistake is too aggressive — from the complainant toward your employee, or from you toward your employee — the aggression becomes the new problem. The original issue never gets solved, because everyone is now litigating tone instead of substance.
This cuts both ways. If your employee responded aggressively to being confronted, that's a real coaching topic — and it doesn't erase whatever legitimate point they may have had underneath. Separate the two in your assessment: address the substance and the delivery as distinct issues, in that order.
Three decision points from a realistic scenario. Choose how you'd respond — every choice gets feedback.
Before any coaching conversation that started with a complaint, every one of these should be true. Tap each to confirm.
Done with Path One?
A mistake happens or a process gets skipped in another department, and it comes up between managers — either they bring it to you, or you're the one taking it to them. Same standard, different mechanics.
The most common version: a mistake happens or a process gets skipped, another department notices — either their manager sees it or their employee reports it up — and that manager comes to you. Get this straight first: manager-to-manager is the correct route. Another department's manager should never coach or correct your employee directly. The problem is never the channel. It's what travels down it: a conclusion instead of an observation.
A process miss feels open-and-shut because there's an artifact: the doc, the ticket, the skipped step. That certainty is a trap. The what is usually verifiable before anyone talks to anyone. The why — the entire coaching question — is invisible from outside the department. Four common whys, and only one is about the employee:
Neither the noticing manager nor you can tell which one it is from the outside. That's why the investigation happens after the relay — on the receiving manager's side, with their own employee.
You or your employee noticed a mistake by someone on another team.
Another manager arrives with a problem involving your employee.
Close both loops. Whichever side of the relay you're on, the transaction ends with a follow-up: the sender learns it was looked into; the receiver reports back what they found — including, when it's true, that their own department contributed. That last part is what keeps two departments from becoming two camps.
Two decision points — one from each side of the relay. Choose how you'd respond; every choice gets feedback.
Before relaying a problem to another manager, or acting on one relayed to you, every one of these should be true. Tap each to confirm.
Want to revisit the employee-side framework?