What an awful title and premise. Senior leaders who can't take feedback without firing you should be fired immediately.
Br, CTO
How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired
211–220 of 346 posts
Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired
#212It’s also important to note that scrum masters, product owners and business analysts, despite what the company org chart may lead you to believe, belong to middle management and need to be treated accordingly.
Scrum masters are particularly dangerous because they are highly skilled at blending in by speaking and acting like developers. That’s why they are so popular to spend project money on despite their apparent uselessness.
Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired
#213The moment I'm in a position where I can't say - politely of course, like I do to any other person at work - that I think the direction they are taking is wrong, is the moment I'll start searching for another job.
Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s even more important to give it bluntly if the feedback is irrelevant. That way you’ve wasted less time. Me: “we aren’t giving enough guidance to new hires” Leader: “it’s not a priority for us since we are freezing hiring” Perfectly good interaction, where you didn’t waste time sneakily phrasing things you think you know better than the leader. And you learned some valuable info about the org priorities as a resu…
If the feedback is irrelevant, you'll waste the least amount of time by not giving it at all. (I think that's slightly different from your scenario though, where you don't actually know if it's irrelevant.)
And how would you know if it is irrelevant? See prior comment.
Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired
#215Astonishing. Completely backwards. This article describes how to give feedback to your subordinates, not to your superiors. If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone and will sink whatever function they have oversight of. If you find yourself working under such people, don't bother giving feedback, start poli…
You are not entirely wrong, but I think you're underestimating the value of respecting human emotion. If people are leaving the team or it is missing deadlines, angering customers, making more work for other teams etc., your manager doesn't need your blunt feedback about performance and sustainability.
Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired
#216Astonishing. Completely backwards. This article describes how to give feedback to your subordinates, not to your superiors. If your superiors are unable to process no-fluff information, regardless of whether it's feedback or updates, they have no business lording over anyone and will sink whatever function they have oversight of. If you find yourself working under such people, don't bother giving feedback, start poli…
My limited corporate experience is that you fluff feedback to the less effective leaders so that you can still influence them. The more effective leaders you talk to them directly and team up with them to accomplish great things together. It is a matter of different strategies.
Less effective leaders are like GPT.
You need to be both careful and creative with your prompt in order to get them to produce the result you want. :)
Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired
#217One important option seem to be entirely missing here: Start. A. Union.
It seems the real problem here is the power difference between people, combined with the powerful side not having a thick enough skin… or lacking the actual competence that we ought to expect of their position.
A competent leader will not be offended or feel threatened by a piece of feedback, however negative: either the feedback is crap and they'll calmly say "nope, trust me I know what I'm doing here", or the feedback has enough truth in it for them to say "oops, I'll do better next time", and then proceed to actually do better.
An incompetent leader however likely know they're incompetent, and they're less likely to meaningfully judge feedback. They're more likely to look for social validation, and more importantly secure their position. Any negative feedback threatens that position, and when that feedback comes from below, the solution is obvious: slap the peasant down, perhaps even fire them.
Often there's little you can do around those people. For instance, I once applied for a contracting gig that would involve cryptographic work. I was rejected because I was "more competent than the project lead". My guess is the hiring manager there knew that if they brought in someone more competent than the project lead, things would go bad. Quite the indictment of the project lead if you ask me.
My best project lead on the other hand had no problem being a worse programmer than the people under him (the tech lead for sure, and I probably). He worked on the parts he could, trusted us to do our thing, and I trusted him with telling me the priorities. Best gig of my entire career.
Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired
#218One important option seem to be entirely missing here: Start. A. Union. It seems the real problem here is the power difference between people, combined with the powerful side not having a thick enough skin… or lacking the actual competence that we ought to expect of their position. A competent leader will not be offended or feel threatened by a piece of feedback, however negative: either the feedback is crap and they…
>A competent leader will not be offended or feel threatened by a piece of feedback
Replace 'competent' with 'perfect'. Most people are very easily offended or threatened by negative feedback. One can argue that they shouldn't be, ideally, but I don't think you can really say that anyone who's not maximally receptive to negative feedback is incompetent.
Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired
#219[deleted]
Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired
#220Captain Miller: "I don't gripe to you, Reiben. I'm a captain. There's a chain of command. Gripes go up, not down. Always up. You gripe to me, I gripe to my superior officer, so on, so on, and so on. I don't gripe to you. I don't gripe in front of you. You should know that as a Ranger." Private Reiben: "I'm sorry, sir, but uh... let's say you weren't a captain, or maybe I was a major. What would you say then?" Captain…
I don’t get it. He said gripe to his superior but he is basically kissing ass?
It's best understood in the context of the story. I highly recommend the movie.
He's being sarcastic about his approval of the mission they're on, but is making the point of not overtly complaining to his unit.