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How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

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Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#101

Post by Kamq »

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #43
lijok wrote: post #6

Astonishing. 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…

I agree with you that's how it should be, but experience tells me that everyone is insecure and it's hardly correlated with position and job security. People lower down the chain are insecure because they could legitimately be let go at any time for any reason. People higher up the chain are insecure because any loss of face is debilitating. Especially having failings pointed out by someone "below" them.

> People higher up the chain are insecure because any loss of face is debilitating.

You don't do it in public. There's no face to lose in private (you're a subordinate, face is only lost among peers and superiors).

It is, however, not really a good idea to be 100% blunt out of the gate. There's a dance to it. But in public, I'm there to make my manager look good, and in private I'll tell them exactly what I think. Once they're confident I'm there to be at their back, it's never gone wrong, even in highly disfunctional orgs (I'm a consultant and get brought in to play "doctor" with hopeless projects a lot).

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#102

Post by devjab »

jayd16 wrote: post #89
palata wrote: post #42

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 th…

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.

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.

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#103

Post by lisper »

lpapez wrote: post #31
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the profile, when somebody talks to me like that I immediately cringe in my head and lose all respect for the person. Probably a matter of culture too.

Same here - whenever I see someone trying to get around giving honest feedback, and trying to frame it as "humble curiosity" instead, I immediately assume they read some "leadership" articles and are trying to apply it because they are second guessing themselves. I believe it depends a lot on the culture, but I am much more used to either keeping my mouth shut (when there is nothing on the line) or being blunt (when…

The problem with being more assertive is that there is always the possibility that you are wrong and the person you are "correcting" is right. Opening with an assertion makes it hard to save face in that case.

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#104

Post by lisper »

lupire wrote: post #97
lisper wrote: post #2

Another tactic I like to use is a riff on the authors suggestion #3: “Is there a reason you did (or did not do) X?” This works because it’s framed as accepting the decision and being genuinely curious about the rationale. Often the answer is: no, I never really gave it any thought. Other times there turns out to be a good reason that didn’t occur to me and it turns into a learning experience for me. Another tactic th…

Your manager often admits they do bad things for no reason?

It's more like, "No, I didn't have any particular reason for doing it this way, if you have a better idea, go for it."

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#105

Post by harimau777 »

Rygian wrote: post #23
fny wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re ignoring the “without getting fired” part. The implication is that you’re in a situation where management is stubborn or even hostile to feedback. Most organizations don’t practice “highly effective communication”. It’s often a nightmare riddled with politics and ego.

> I think you’re ignoring the “without getting fired” part. The "start polishing your resume" bit was quite explicit.

Unless you are the .1% of developer (and probably with a heaping helping of luck) you aren't going to end up working someplace that isn't terminally dysfunctional no matter how much you polish your resume.

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#106

Post by Muromec »

fny wrote: post #21
lijok wrote: post #6

Astonishing. 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…

I think you’re ignoring the “without getting fired” part. The implication is that you’re in a situation where management is stubborn or even hostile to feedback. Most organizations don’t practice “highly effective communication”. It’s often a nightmare riddled with politics and ego.

I would say ego problem comes with a title.

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#107

Post by YZF »

inopinatus wrote: post #90
NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that's how it should be, but experience tells me that everyone is insecure and it's hardly correlated with position and job security. People lower down the chain are insecure because they could legitimately be let go at any time for any reason. People higher up the chain are insecure because any loss of face is debilitating. Especially having failings pointed out by someone "below" them.

I don't know what godawful chain you are hitched to but I hope you can find a way off it. High-performance managers realise they are there to enable the talent. You're Brian Epstein, not John Lennon. The job is to create the conditions for folks at the pointy end to be wildly successful. One of the most defining characteristics of this attitude is the maxim "hire people smarter than yourself", a very fine sentiment w…

I agree with you in principle that's the correct attitude. However I don't think the comparison to the music industry is necessarily correct.

A lot of managers in tech got there because they are technically strong. We can argue about whether that's correct or not but I think that's typically the case. People who perform well as engineers are the ones who are given leadership opportunities. People who do not are not.

So first challenge is given you were maybe one of the smarter hires, of some smart people that tried to hire people smarter than themselves (let's assume), how do you hire people smarter than yourself? at scale?

Where we end up typically in successful tech companies is with some degree of a mix of trying to make "folks at the pointy end successful" and some degree of "telling the folks at the pointy end what to do". Usually managers and directors are very strong technically and quite sharp, though more distant from the actual work because they don't do it any more. The precise mix depends on culture and circumstances but it's almost never this ideal environment of servant leaders surrounded by immense talent and just facilitating that talent doing great things.

I've been in places that are very close to the "good" end of this spectrum and there's still going to be some pause in giving feedback to leadership that they've done something wrong. Maybe you have a great relationship with your lieutenants where they can be openly critical of you and you reinforce that. I think that's highly unusual in a social environment. It's a lot more likely there are certain things they won't share with you because they estimate the damage to the relationship is larger than the utility of being open.

EDIT: I misread your statement about hiring people smarter than yourself, so I think we agree there. The problem is still that if you're the smartest person there's a bit of tension between that and creating conditions for the people under you to be successful. Btw, I still think you should try and hire people smarter than yourself ;) it's just hard to impossible to scale that - as you point out.

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#108

Post by cgio »

lijok wrote: post #6

Astonishing. 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…

As a senior leader myself, that was my initial reaction. Then, I thought about myself and cohort and I would say, unfortunately, the advice in the article is required. There are challenges in feedback in both directions. E.g.the people who are best at receiving it are the ones who usually don't, either because they are strong in many other things than the feedback domain, or because they seem so self confident that people are intimidated. On the other hand, people who are not good at receiving feedback are also the ones who would be vindictive and their reactions may poison feedback as a practice. And also people may switch from one category to the other transiently, because of other pressures etc. In summary, in my own practice, while I am opinionated, I have never given negative feedback either to managers or subordinates. Not that they were all perfect, but I found it is usually up to me to work with the people and their strengths and weaknesses and by focusing on strengths I have not corrected any weakness, but have often made them irrelevant to me. Some may say this is a weakness for a leader, and I would agree but still focus on my other strengths.

Edit: an additional consideration as I am digesting my response. People are more open to discussing how to improve a process or a system rather than a person or even more so themselves. Feedback is sometimes personal, that's why things like post mortems, process reviews etc. can work miracles when we manage to keep them about the process or framework rather than the people who are assigned to them.

An additional slightly cynical point on feedback received as a subordinate (no matter how high up you most probably report to someone unless you are at the top). If someone gives you feedback about what you should do to get promoted/a raise etc , you are 90% not going to get those even if you heed to the feedback. These things happen for things you do, and the broader perception of yourself not on the basis of a checklist, and if they use a checklist against you, they don't really care about You. If someone mentors you, you will get it. Learn to read the difference between the two.

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#109

Post by swisniewski »

lijok wrote: post #6

Astonishing. 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…

I think you may be making assumption: that the feedback you are trying to give is clear, articulate, and constructive. When speaking to someone significantly more senior than you it’s entire possible that your feedback may not be.

And that is really the point of the post. Here is advice on how to make sure your point is clear, articulate, and constructive.

As someone becomes more senior 2 things happen:

1. They acquire more authority 2. They have more demands on their time.

In these situations, you need to work to make sure you are communicating what you intended to communicate. That requires effort.

I wouldn’t view this advice as “how to deal with fragile egos”, but instead would view it as “how to make sure you are not misunderstood when having critical conversations with high stakes”.

In that regard it is good advice.

Re: How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired

#110

Post by inopinatus »

YZF wrote: post #107
inopinatus wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what godawful chain you are hitched to but I hope you can find a way off it. High-performance managers realise they are there to enable the talent. You're Brian Epstein, not John Lennon. The job is to create the conditions for folks at the pointy end to be wildly successful. One of the most defining characteristics of this attitude is the maxim "hire people smarter than yourself", a very fine sentiment w…

I agree with you in principle that's the correct attitude. However I don't think the comparison to the music industry is necessarily correct. A lot of managers in tech got there because they are technically strong. We can argue about whether that's correct or not but I think that's typically the case. People who perform well as engineers are the ones who are given leadership opportunities. People who do not are not.…

I don't want to rebut anything you say, but I will add one observation.

> I think that's highly unusual in a social environment

Agreed, but in my experience of startups particularly, this becomes more commonplace with older founders. It can also form the basis of an high-performance enclave within otherwise ossified large companies/institutions; these tend to get dragged down by the mediocrity police after a few years, but in the meantime you can get some good stuff done.

Whether the music industry analogy is valid may be debatable, but I've had the privilege of seeing it first-hand, music was/is the family business, I grew up knocking around recording studios. So this mindset is engraved on my expectations of all talent-based professions, and I try to remember it whenever I fail to be humble.

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