In my 13 years of experience, I would say it's never worth giving feedback to your manager. Either they are good and it's useless, or they are not and they won't learn from you.
I have come to a simple rule: if the manager is good, there is no problem. If the manager sucks (often that's because they lack experience, but it's all the same), just lie to them in order to preserve yourself. No need to have empathy for them: there is no karma out there. Bad managers usually have no problem climbing the ladder, even if it means making your life miserable. Work for you, not them.
Largely agree, 19 years here. Good managers and bad managers alike have weaknesses that are largely in-built personality traits. Telling them won't change how they've spent decades behaving.
The two worst managers I had clearly had anger management issues and some sort of inferiority complex, theres no feedback to fix that.
Try to stick with good managers as long as you can, especially if their weaknesses that don't bother you too much, understand where it's coming from, and try not to take it personally.
The 3 examples at the top of the article - unclear guidance, unable to set priorities, and not training new hires .. these are good benign issues that I've seen repeatedly from good managers.
You can remind them in a friendly tone why things are happening -(as they raise yet another low importance high urgency task) "if we keep switching to these urgent but less important tasks, the long-term important things (give examples) you are unhappy with the pace of will continue to be slow". The best outcome tends to be a 20% reduction in the undesired behavior, over many months. It doesn't go away or get unlearned.
Closing in on 30 years now.
The trick is to get into a company where the mission is sound, the direction makes sense, and your manager is good (i.e. protects you from above, and makes sure shit gets done in a timely and orderly fashion).
Then, help your manager out. Everyone has their flaws, bad situations etc. Be a true team member and help your manager out on those rare occasions where they really need it.
Agreed! Unfortunately not always easy to end up in such a position, but definitely something to look for!
I disagree. Superiors are people too, and they make mistakes. I've had subordinates give me feedback (which I followed), and I've given feedback to superiors (which they've followed). Both ways were extremely positive experiences and everyone involved was happier for it.
What kind of feedback was it? My guess is that those were pretty minor things that slightly improved your life. But the fact that it worked hints towards the fact that the managers were already competent, so the reports were already in a pretty good situation. No need for the advice of the featured article for that, right?
The most recent instance, a few days ago, my feedback to the CTO was that, while the org restructuring he proposed was a good idea in principle, the way he did it was terrible, and that he ignored and disrespected his highest performers. I said he hogs all the growth for himself and doesn't let any of his reports grow into more responsibilities, and he's showing that he doesn't respect the people who are integral in the company's functioning. I also told him that there are people who do a ton of work to correct others' mistakes and don't get any credit or recognition for it, and he failed to recognize those.
It kind of made him sad, which wasn't great because he's a nice guy and a competent CTO, but his latest move was catastrophic and he needed to hear it.
> No need for the advice of the featured article for that, right?
I mostly agree with the other commenters here, giving feedback upwards is easier and you don't need to sugarcoat it as much, because you can't fire the person above so they aren't going to be insecure about your feedback. Then again, they are people, and giving constructive feedback gently is better than giving it harshly, so I can't say the article is entirely unnecessary. Maybe partly.
> a few days ago, my feedback to the CTO was
Did he completely change course because of your feedback?
It's only been one working day since, but, knowing him and the rest of the senior leadership team, I do expect a large correction.
Right. But you mentioned feedback you gave that was followed. Do you have examples?
I've told the CTO that he needs to push the CEO for some specific things I've needed, that he needs to be more assertive with certain issues, that he shouldn't talk to the teams I'm running because he confuses them, and many other instances like that. He's followed feedback every time I gave it, usually immediately.
I try to do the same when my reports give me feedback, and they've also been satisfied with it. Most recently, I was told I shouldn't abstract things too quickly, which was good advice, and following it has gotten good results.
So bleak. It's fine to protect yourself but your managers are people too. You _can_ build a report with them and be frank with them.
When I manage folks, I much prefer honesty over someone who just bullshits you.
Managers aren't just people, they're people who have your employment in their hands. Reports will act appropriately for that fact.
"Don't bite the hand which feeds you" is a common phrase for what you described.
In my experience (20yr) good managers don't need any feedback. They were good because of clear communication as to what both parties expected of each other. Bad managers rarely listen to feedback and few make changes.
At my current role I'm thankful for the high level of autonomy received and being shielded from anything not relevant to my primary tasks.
I'm constantly asked to do "side quests" for others due to being a subject matter expert in several things (relative to my colleagues).
Every request gets the same answer - if my line manager agrees to it then I shall help - provided it does not get in the way of my primary tasks.
IMHO unless you own the company, your number one customer should always be your line manager.
There is a difference between treating someone as a human and bullshitting your manager though. I’m painfully blunt to the point where the management staff had to spend 3 hours in a crisis meeting discussing whether to fire me an another developer over our opinions given on a department meeting. Which to be fair was the wrong place to throw a couple of managers under the bus for something we’d been telling them for months, but hey. Anyway we didn’t get fired and nothing changed either. I stopped stressing about it after I had spoken my piece though so it worked rather well for me. Less so for the company, but it’s not like the two of us were the only ones management wouldn’t listen to.
So I like it when I can be frank with managers. I think I’m also notoriously hard to manage because one of my character flaws is that I don’t respect authorities. I’m not stupid though. I’ll absolutely bullshit managers in situations where there isn’t really a “win” to be achieved. Obviously this will mainly happen with bad managers, but there will always be great managers who won’t like, understand or have a good connection with you.
I think this is an example of a different issue. It sounds like your managers listened to your feedback often and even let high profile disruptions slide.
In general I think honesty is a good policy and management should be receptive to hearing out problems and possible solutions but that's not the same thing as implementing all feedback.
Maybe you're right or maybe your pet peeve just isn't a priority or can't be done for countless reasons. I'm not saying you did this but something I've seen often is employees confusing being heard with taking the advice.
As professionals I think it's our job to give advice and respect management's decision to take it or not. That's it I also think it's management's job to explain the reasoning.
I mean, this is one example which fits the discussion. Also one that I cherrypicked because I was actually right. I’ve had plenty of managers who were good at listening, however, I think most have been great. I have also worked management a few years myself and taken education in that direction before figuring out it wasn’t for me, so I certainly understand the financial and political parts of management and that you as an employee never have the full picture.
That being said, I have also had managers that I’ve played board games with on our free time who I haven’t actually given my opinion on certain issues with because they weren’t very good at taking that advice. Sometimes I’ve also not done it because I knew managers of my manager wouldn’t take it well if it made I up the chain. I view this more as an issue between me and the organisation I work for. If I’m not invested I’m not going to help it beyond what they pay me to do because it rarely comes back to me in a positive way.
There are many aspect to it. I’ve also had a manager who was a total waste of space as a manager, only caring about the “good story” whether it was true or not to push their own career. Who was also rather cold in regards to management employee duties since they really didn’t like the negative sides of it. Who was then the warmest nicest person in their personal life.
So it’s a very complex situation as you pointed out, but it’s also one where it’s perfectly reasonable to not try to lead upwards if you don’t want the hassle. At least in my opinion.
I feel like you took only half of my point. If the manager is good, then there is no reason to bullshit them. But believing that a bad manager will suddenly become good because you as a report taught them with a few carefully-crafted politically-correct statements sounds extremely naive to me.
Let me give an example: to a good manager, you could say "I'm under a lot of pressure because I have two many urgent things on my plate" and they should try to improve your life by maybe de-prioritizing some of them. In a way you gave feedback "it's not going well for me", but you did not try to guide your manager in their role. So that's not the kind of feedback the featured article talks about.
Now a bad manager will maybe be nice and say "I understand, I really appreciate the late nights and weekends you spend getting closer and closer to a burnout, you are a really valuable employee to me", but that's completely useless. Trying to tell them "you know, in a previous job I had a manager who in these situations would try to de-prioritize stuff so that I could live normally" is completely useless. If they aren't doing it yet, it means that they should not be your manager in the first place. Best case they say "thank you for the feedback, I appreciate that you feel comfortable speaking up" and don't change anything, worst case they get pissed because you "overstepped" (they are the manager, they know they know better, remember?).
There is no world where they say "you're right, I sucked until today, but from tomorrow on I will magically know how to be a good manager".
Crazily oversimplified view of people. Just one thing you’ve missed: in addition to the axis of good/bad there’s an axis of experienced/inexperienced. Managers can be both good and inexperienced, in which case feedback is absolutely necessary to improve their lives and yours.
> Crazily oversimplified view of people.
Then proceeds to add one axis, getting the total up to 2! :-)
> Managers can be both good and inexperienced, in which case feedback is absolutely necessary to improve their lives and yours.
If they are good and inexperienced, I don't think they need to be taught that if they don't set priorities, they should not be disappointed when they realise that... no priorities have been set. So they are still good.
If they are bad "because they are inexperienced", then they are still bad. They should not be a manager. They can acquire experience without being a manager though, e.g. by having a manager in the first place.
People who are busy thriving at work aren't hanging out in this self-pity party thread.
Not sure what you are trying to say here.
I personally have good managers right now, so I don't bullshit them.
I have had mostly bad managers in my career though, and my advice in this situation is: bad managers are adversaries, behave accordingly.
Yes and: Churn moots the entire notion. That whole storming -> forming -> norming -> performing team maturity model stuff. Have a bad boss? No worries; wait 3 months and you'll have a new boss. Thereby resetting the team(s) and relationship(s) back to storming.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Best feedback I've ever gotten was from peers (other bosses). And that was only after years of working together. Sadly, that was a long time ago. I'd kick a puppy to work on a stable, durable team again.
wow that's quite black or white. really good managers should want your feedback. even if there are no obvious problems, groups can always be better. and don't forget sometimes large problems start small.
Yes, that was a blunt way of saying it, I admit it. Now given the number of upvotes, it seems like it resonates.
A more nuanced way of saying this is that if you need to carefully think about how you address your manager, then it hints towards the fact that your manager is not good at being a manager. And in that case there is no way you can teach them if you are their report (if you know better, maybe you should be the manager instead, but it means that you put your manager in a bad position by showing it).
It is also a bit extreme to say that a good manager never needs feedback. What I meant is that they don't need feedback about how they fundamentally behave as a manager. Of course they need to receive information from their reports (be it just "we can't do this because I just proved that it is technically impossible").
The difference is that with a good manager, you won't have to read articles teaching you how to not hurt their pride.
And finally, the problem maybe on the side of the subordinate. But in that case it's not a problem of talking to the hierarchy: if an employee hurts his colleagues because they communication is too harsh, then of course there is something to improve there. But in my experience, employees tend to "blend in": if everybody talks trash of everything, then newcomers will adapt. If everybody is respectful, newcomers will be respectful.