They say
“You changed what you wanted halfway through.”
Your response
“Let’s identify what changed and when. If I changed the requirement, I should also have reset the deadline and how the work would be judged. We need to agree on those now.”
First, check this
Did you change the scope, priority, deadline, or success criteria without explicitly resetting what the employee was responsible for?
Why this works
The employee may be naming a genuine management failure, or they may be treating a clarification as a new requirement. Establishing the sequence makes that distinction possible. If the manager changed the work, the employee should not be judged as though the original agreement still applied. If the requirement did not change, both people can identify where their understanding diverged and make the expectation explicit.
Don’t say
“Things change—you need to be more adaptable.”