What to Do When Your New Manager Gives You Almost No Feedback

Silence from a new boss usually points to a missing routine or a crowded calendar rather than a verdict on your work — here is how to find out which.

By Tobias Amarinde · Oct 05, 2026 · 8 min read

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A manager who says almost nothing in your first weeks isn't necessarily unhappy with you. More often the working relationship hasn't been set up yet: no recurring check-in, no agreed definition of "good", no shared list of what you own. The fix is usually a small, specific request you make yourself, within a week of noticing the gap.

Below: why the silence happens, a response you can run inside seven days, and wording you can say out loud without it sounding rehearsed.

Understanding the Situation

Most feedback silence in a new job is structural. A manager with twelve direct reports and their own delivery work will default to talking only to whoever has a problem that day. In matrix setups — common in agencies, consultancies and large engineering teams — the person who actually sees your output is a project lead, while your official manager sees a name on a staffing sheet. On hybrid or distributed teams, nobody overhears your calls, and in shift-based work your supervisor may simply not be on the floor when you are.

Timing matters too. Plenty of employers only schedule feedback around formal review cycles, which leaves a new hire in month two sitting between them. SHRM recommends specific one-on-one conversations at 30, 60 and 90 days precisely to catch communication gaps early (SHRM, undated), but whether your employer actually runs those depends on the company — some US employers tie them to a 90-day probationary review, others have nothing until an annual cycle. Gallup's work on effective managers describes regular check-ins, weekly or daily depending on the job, plus formal progress discussions twice a year (Gallup, undated).

And your manager may be new at managing. Harvard Business Review describes two common first-time-manager mistakes: giving feedback before any trust exists, and avoiding or delaying it until something has gone wrong (Harvard Business Review, 2023-09). Silence can mean your manager is waiting until they have something big enough to justify the conversation. That is worth interrupting: employees who say they got meaningful feedback from their manager in the past week are far more likely to be fully engaged (Gallup, 2022-01), and engagement is highest among people who meet their manager at least weekly, though only a minority do (Gallup, 2016-06-02). Early communication gaps also have a cost — SHRM Foundation onboarding guidance cites research that half of senior outside hires fail within 18 months (SHRM Foundation, undated).

Step-by-Step Response

Day 1 of noticing: write down what you want judged. List the three to five things you have finished in the past fortnight and, next to each, the one question you can't answer yourself — right level of detail? right person copied? fast enough? You are not asking for feedback in general; you are asking about these five items.
Day 1-2: request a standing slot, not a one-off chat. Send a short message: "Can I take 20 minutes with you every Thursday for my first three months? I'll bring what I've finished and anything I'm unsure about." A recurring slot removes the need to ask again every week, which is the part most new hires quietly drop.
Day 2-3: ask one narrow question about one named piece of work. In writing, so your manager can answer in ten seconds: "On the client summary I sent Monday — would you have cut it to one page, or was that length right?" Yes/no and either/or questions get replies from managers who never write paragraphs.
Within the first week: get the definition of "good" out of their head and into writing. Ask: "At 90 days, what would make you say this hire worked out?" Then send back what you heard in five bullets and ask them to correct it. Many people who avoid giving feedback will happily correct a written claim.
Within 10 days: widen your sources. Identify the two or three colleagues whose work your output feeds into — the project lead, the editor, the person who presents your numbers to clients. Ask each: "What do you end up fixing in what I send you?" That is the most reliable feedback available to you in month one, because they see the output daily.
By day 30: keep a running agenda in one shared document. Not a productivity system — one page your manager can open before the check-in, with three headings: finished, stuck, needs a decision from you. It turns a vague catch-up into a ten-minute working session and gives you a dated record of what was agreed.
By day 60: escalate quietly if nothing has changed. If three specific requests have produced nothing usable, raise it at a skip-level conversation or with your HR contact as a process question, not a complaint: "I want to make sure I'm calibrated before my 90-day point. What's the normal way people get a read on how they're doing here?" Whether skip-levels are routine or unusual varies a lot by employer and by country, so check what is normal on your team before booking one.

What to Say

Asking for a standing check-in

You
"I'd like 20 minutes with you every Thursday for my first three months — I'll show you what I've finished and you tell me what to change. Does 3pm work?"

Likely response
"Sure, though I'll probably have to move it some weeks."

You
"No problem. If a week gets eaten, I'll send you three bullets Thursday morning and you can just reply to those."

When the answer is "you're doing great"

You
"Good to hear. On the vendor summary from Monday — if you'd written it yourself, what would you have done differently?"

Likely response
"Honestly, it was fine."

You
"Then can I check one thing. Was the detail useful, or do you mostly want the recommendation up top and the rest in an appendix?"

When you need the definition of "good"

You
"At 90 days, what would make you say hiring me worked out?"

Likely response
"Just keep doing what you're doing."

You
"I'll write down what I think the three priorities are and send them over tonight. If any of them are wrong, tell me — I'd rather find out now than in March."

Frequently asked questions

What if I ask three times and still get nothing by day 60?

Stop asking the same way and change what you ask for. Bring a written self-assessment — three things you think are going well, two you think are weak — and ask your manager to mark anything they disagree with. If that still produces nothing by day 90, treat your colleagues' reactions and your own delivery record as your feedback source, and raise calibration as a question at your skip-level or with HR.

What if the first real feedback arrives in a formal review and it's negative?

Ask for examples with dates, and ask when each problem was first noticed. Then ask one forward-looking question: "What would the next 30 days need to look like for this to be resolved?" Get the answer in writing in a follow-up email the same day. If a formal performance plan is mentioned, read your employer's handbook on how that process works, because the steps and timelines differ by employer and by state.

My manager is in another country or on a different shift. Does that change things?

Yes — you need asynchronous feedback rather than meetings. Send a short end-of-week note with two questions that can be answered with a sentence each, and name the deadline: "If I don't hear back by Tuesday I'll go with option A." Also agree with your manager which local colleague can approve routine work, so you are not waiting a day for every decision.

Should I go to HR about this?

HR is useful here as a source of information about normal practice — whether your employer runs 30/60/90 check-ins, what the probationary review covers, who your skip-level is. Frame it that way rather than as a complaint about your manager. SHRM recommends 30-, 60- and 90-day conversations to catch gaps like this early (SHRM, undated), so asking whether yours exist is a fair question.

What if the check-ins start and then quietly stop after a month?

That is common when a manager's workload spikes, and it is easier to restart than to start. Within one week of the second cancellation, send the agenda anyway with a line like: "Skipping is fine — here are the two things I need a decision on." If three in a row are cancelled, ask for a shorter slot: ten minutes beats a 30-minute meeting that never happens.

Sources

Gallup — How Effective Feedback Fuels Performance (2022-01)
Gallup — Managers: Millennials Want Feedback, but Won't Ask for It (2016-06-02)
SHRM — Effective Onboarding Should Last for Months
SHRM Foundation — Onboarding New Employees: Maximizing Success (Effective Practice Guidelines Series)
Gallup — Obsolete Annual Reviews: Gallup's Advice
Harvard Business Review — Mistakes First-Time Managers Make When Giving Feedback (2023-09)

Written by

Tobias Amarinde

Tobias writes about résumés, interviews, and the small rituals of applying for work. He's interested in the gap between what hiring advice says and what actually happens in a real interview room. He prefers specific, testable advice over motivational platitudes.