Don't add your 2 cents

I think the article/blog post is missing a key point in that the employee came to the manager asking what he thought.

This is a critical role that the manager plays that the article decides to come up with a unreferenced social psychology manipulation solution when there is a greater problem at hand.... the employee is nervous about shipping the product and wants approval.

The reason why this is because a great manager is supposed to protect and shield employees from the outside so that they can feel at ease with making decisions and working with out fear of making some mistake that costs there job (unlike the article I can site like 5 or so Harvard Business Review articles written by experts that show this is often the reason why employees come to ask questions like that.. yes I'm being snide but I think "What got you here want get you there" is basically on overrated Dale Carnegie rewritten).

Not getting any input sends a message of "I don't really care about your work". And if you really wanted to coach and you really believe this arm chair psychology then why not send a link of the article to the employee asking the advice and say "I would like to give some input but I want to assure you that I think you own this project... etc etc...".

Education is a powerful thing... manipulation is not.

I think the employee-boss relationship is a factor as well. Generally speaking, superiors should be able to make constructive criticisms to their subordinates without it impacting morale in a negative manner. That makes criticism a two way street.

Bosses must make sure that they're not all critic with no praise. No one wants to be critiqued all the time without kudos for the good portions and hard work. Tone, body languages, and timing all play into how an effective leader communicates positively or negatively to a team member.

On the flip side, staff need to be able to separate their personal worth from the work that they do. This can be especially tough in some fields and with some personality types such as art, design, and programming. When your work is highly subjective, when you're starting your career, or when their are a million methods to achieve the same goal (with some methods being better without obvious reason as to why), it can feel like critiques are attacking the person instead improving the work.

An anecdote from my personal life: I worked as a paralegal for a while. I started off mediocre at the job, but after a management change, my new boss had manuals that gave standardized instructions on how to do nearly everything. That's when I started to excel. There were many specific times when I would give my boss documents, but he never let them slide. Ever. He would say, "The language and structure of this document is perfect, but you know I can't let anything slide without having something to change." He'd mark something subjective such as substituting a synonym with the same meaning and tone or moving a sentence that didn't affect the language of the paragraph. It never bothered me, but I can see how that would definitely grate on others. In spite of this, he was always full of praise with nothing but positive remarks.

agree. It's not that good of an article. What if the product really does need improvement. Kinda amazed this even got so many votes.

Sometimes you're right. Do you think you're right all the time? Do you think the more senior guy should know when it is one situation (when the more senior guy knows) and when it is the other, where the more junior and more involved guy knows?

You're making a black and white rule. The black and white rule I'm advocating is that the boss should know when it's black (intercede) and when it's white (let their good v. subjectively interpreted better decision stand).

Of course, the counter-argument is that it's better to let the junior person make their own mistake and learn from them. And it is! Some/most of the time. But some some of the mistakes might cost too much and need to be avoided.

If you think my mentality is Dilbertesque, go ask your supervisor what kind of decisions they wouldn't let you make.

If someone has gotten to be "the big boss at work" (per TFA) and hasn't learned this lesson yet, then there's a whole bunch of issues they'll need to sort out (unfortunately, that's not an uncommon scenario)

But for new managers I find it's quite a common issue. They think that being in charge means that they need to throw in "2 cents" on everything even if they're not really contributing anything of value. Though it's often not intentional, there's something in their mind that makes them think that if their team gets something done without their involvement, then that makes them redundant

For people new to those roles, it's helpful to stop and ask yourself questions like:

- "I just gave this 1 minutes thought and 30 seconds of feedback, do I want this person to go off and do a few hours more work based on that off-the-cuff remark?"

- "Am I throwing another opinion into the mix, or am I telling my team what I want from them. Have I set up the team dynamics in way that allows everyone to know the difference between those?"

- "What action do I expect to come from this, and who benefits from that?"