They say
“You only ever tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
Your response
“You may be right that I haven’t said enough about what is going well. I need to correct that. We still need to discuss the concern that brought us here.”
First, check this
Have you regularly named specific work this employee does well, or do you speak to them mainly when something is wrong?
Why this works
The employee may be accurately describing the manager’s feedback pattern. Owning that possibility does not cancel the current concern. It tells the employee that good work should be recognized specifically and that corrective feedback still matters. This page concerns the balance and frequency of feedback over time; the next page concerns whether a particular message sounded like a judgment of the person.
Don’t say
“That’s because there isn’t much positive to say.”