During my years maturing as a manager I got a lot of advice from mentors and coaches for my own struggle handling hard reports. As I started managing other managers, directors, and VPs, I realize that some of that advice was universal; I ended up giving the same advice multiple times. I will try to cover a few of the following anecdotes (actual content will be tweaked as I build it): - "It is not about you" - Your reports says you are the source of all evil, misjudging their work, being unreasonable. It is more often not about you personally. - "You will have this struggle in any reasonable place" - You are afraid pushing your report on a certain area will make them leave. Here is how you put them in a growth mindset. - "How much can we really help here" - You are struggling with a report that wants to grow technically or as a manager, but has a lot of issues. You want to help them, give them a change leading. Here is how to not over do it. - "Yes, we need to articulate our expectations. Again" - The key for accountability is setting the right expectations, even if you believe they are apparent. It they are apparent since you articulated them in 2018, there is a chance they are only apparent to you.