This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
This month in our Executive MBA Leadership and Organizational Behavior class Adam Stoverink, Ph.D., and I welcomed Allie Hazelwood, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Strategy, FP&A, and Global Tech Finance at Walmart, and Jennifer Buchanan, Vice President of Walmart Academy, to talk about how leaders can have effective difficult conversations. Allie has moved across several parts of the business over her career, while Jen has spent hers specializing in training and development, leading Walmart Academy for the past five years as it has grown into the largest private training program in the world, with more than 4 million participants. They each have different paths, but the conversation kept returning to a few key themes centered around how leaders can give feedback effectively, hold people accountable, and maintain trust with their teams. Here were my takeaways:
1. Clarity is kindness
Jen told our students that people often confuse kindness with comfort, softening a message until it loses its usefulness. Clarity, she said, is what kindness requires: naming the issue, being specific about how to fix it, and giving someone a real path forward. Walmart Academy now leans on AI to help associates practice exactly this, letting them rehearse difficult conversations and get feedback on tone and clarity before the real one happens.
2. No one should hear negative feedback for the first time in a performance review
Allie's expectation for herself as a leader is simple: she wants to maintain a two-way conversation with her team on a regular basis. That means having the harder conversation early and often, discussing ambitions, goals, expectations and gaps throughout the year rather than saving it all for a formal performance review. She shared that she prepares for a hard conversation the way you would prepare for any large presentation or conversation, thinking through exactly what needs to be said in a clear and concise manner, role-playing it with someone you trust, and checking in with the other person before things ever reach a boiling point.
3. Accountability and empathy are not in competition
Jen was direct about this: you can hold someone accountable and still have real empathy for them, and the two do not cancel each other out. At Walmart Academy, that shows up as a specific framework for communication: SBI (situation, behavior, and impact). This framework keeps feedback focused on what someone did rather than who they are. Timeliness matters too. Waiting to deliver feedback, she said, is not respectful of the person it concerns. Allie described what the combination looks like in practice: having the conversation only when the other person is ready for it, never in a quick hallway chat, understanding the circumstances they were operating under, and listening closely enough to respond to what they are going through, not just what was said, but what you hear underlying all of that.
4. Beating the truth tax takes real effort, not just an open-door policy
As leaders rise, people become less willing to tell them uncomfortable truths, this is commonly called the truth tax. When asked about how she overcomes that, Allie turned to the importance of psychological safety, building trust within her team, and maintaining truth tellers throughout the organization that you can consistently turn to. She works to build genuine relationships with people throughout the organization who she knows will tell her exactly what is happening, and she stays vulnerable enough herself that her team feels safe doing the same. Jen added a practical warning: don’t block the candor, if your team learns that bad news makes you upset, they will simply stop bringing it to you. Her fix is mechanical as much as emotional, staying close enough to the front line, through listening sessions and store visits, that she hears problems before they have had time to grow into something larger.
5. Feedback is timely. Coaching is forward-looking.
When asked about how you decide when to give feedback versus when to coach your team member, both drew a clean line between the two. They both believe that feedback is focused on the moment, it is specific and immediate. Coaching is about the ultimate outcome and helping someone find their own way to a better answer rather than handing it to them. Allie drew an analogy of a football game to put this in perspective: the ultimate objective is to win the game with your players. During the game, you can give them feedback in the moment on a particular move, but long-term coaching before, during, and after the game gives your players the strategies that they can use to help them achieve the ultimate goal in their own way. You are not on the field playing for them.
None of these five ideas require a special skill. They require choosing to have the conversation now rather than later, and staying in the room once it gets uncomfortable. Allie and Jen built very different careers, yet neither treats feedback as something that happens occasionally. Both treat it as something small and constant, so it never has to arrive all at once.
