The manager who walks into a review with just a number is going to get a counter, a complaint, or both.
A 5% raise is a number. A career conversation is a negotiation. You’re not running a payroll meeting — you’re running a deal where the other side stays or leaves based on how the next thirty minutes go.
Three moves before you sit down.
Step 1: Lead with Total Comp, Not the Number
The biggest mistake managers make is opening with the percentage.
“Hey, I’m giving you a 5% raise.”
What does the employee do now? They look at the 5%. The whole rest of the package — the PTO they’ve taken, the training you’ve funded, the equity, the benefits, the flexibility — vanishes. You’ve just anchored the entire conversation on a single line item, and you’ve anchored it on the smallest line item.
The move is total comp.
“Here’s where you sit on the full package. Base. Bonus. PTO. Training we funded. Medical contribution. Here’s the increase across the package.”
This is Move 8 — Close the Deal, and the discipline inside it is ATM: Always Track Margin. Track the gives. Track the gets. The package you’ve built for an employee is bigger than they realize, because employees count base and not benefits. Show them the whole thing.
Step 2: Share the Range
Most managers refuse to share the salary range for the role. The reasoning sounds prudent: if I tell them the top of the range, they’ll demand it.
Newsflash. They already know.
Glassdoor knows. Levels.fyi knows. AI tools know. The friend at the competitor knows. The range is in the public domain, and pretending otherwise is the fastest way to make a senior employee feel managed instead of led.
The move is to put it on the table:
“For this role at your level, the range is $X to $Y. You’re sitting here. Top of band requires these two things. Let’s talk about what gets you there.”
That single move shifts you from gatekeeper to coach. You haven’t given anything up — the range is what it is. You’ve shown the employee where they stand and what the path looks like. They walk out knowing where they sit and what the next move is.
Step 3: Don’t Kick the Can
Here’s the one that ruins teams.
The employee asks about a promotion. You don’t have headcount. The cycle isn’t right. Whatever the reason — the easy move is next cycle. Kick the can. Buy time.
Six months later, you’re the manager who keeps saying next cycle. Two cycles later, your senior people are interviewing.
I took over a team once where the prior leader had been kicking the can for three years. By the time I got there, every person on the team expected a promotion. Most of them weren’t ready. The previous leader had created the expectation by deferring instead of leveling. The cleanup cost a year.
Don’t defer. Level.
If they’re not ready, tell them what ready looks like. Concrete metrics. Concrete timeline. Concrete coaching. Here are the three things you need to demonstrate over the next two cycles. Here’s how I’ll measure them. Here’s what I’ll do to support you.
That’s not a no. That’s a path. Employees don’t quit over no. They quit over next cycle.
The Mirror Move
Notice what just happened.
Wednesday’s post — Three Offers, One Outcome — was the employee’s MESO move: walk in with three packages, let the other side pick.
The manager’s side is the mirror.
You can run a MESO too. Option A: 5% + extra PTO + flexible Fridays. Option B: 7% + new training budget. Option C: 4% + accelerated promotion timeline. All three fit the budget. All three develop the employee. Let them pick the package that matches what they’re optimizing for — and you’ll learn what they’re really optimizing for, which is the most valuable piece of information a manager can have.
"The best managers don’t decide the package alone. They build three packages and let the employee reveal what they value."
The Bottom Line
Three steps. Lead with total comp. Share the range. Don’t kick the can.
That’s Move 8 — Close the Deal. The deal isn’t just whether they accept the raise. It’s whether they show up Monday energized or already on LinkedIn.