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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

#251

Post by bdangubic »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #247
ilitirit wrote: post #156

This title of my article doesn't make much sense to me. Why would you get fired for giving feedback? Is this just a US thing? I give feedback to my superiors all the time, and expect my subordinates to do the same. In fact, as far as my team goes, you're more likely to get into trouble (not fired) if you rarely give feedback.

> Why would you get fired for giving feedback? Is this just a US thing? Possibly: in many places there they have "at will" employment, where they can basically fire you with little to no severance at any time for any reason. There are limits, but compared to most of Europe that's the gist of it. So yeah, you can be fired just because someone doesn't like you. And giving feedback is a good way to not be liked.

every employment should be at will!! is there a constitutional or birthright to employment at XYZ company? these discussion always look at one side, like “employer can’t fire employee X without paying severance and other junk” but if I started a company and said “if you leave the company you have to pay severance back to the company for leaving” everyone would be up in arms about it…

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

#252

Post by est »

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…

Good lord the comments section surely blew up. Can we just give this "fluff-up feedback" job to LLM already?

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

#253

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

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…

>The reason you don't fluff feedback, or any information for that matter to your superiors, is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations.

This is the key assertion underlying your comment, yet you just wave it off by referring to unnamed "[handbooks] on highly effective communication in organizations".

My no-fluff feedback for you: Your comment would've been far stronger if you simply specified these unnamed handbooks, and summarized their argument, as opposed to fulminating + offering a handwavey argument-from-authority.

(Curious to see how you'll take this no-fluff feedback. Let's see if you're management material by your own standards.)

EDIT -- here is a LinkedIn post by a lady who wrote a book on workplace communication called Radical Candor. Her post recommends plenty of fluff for the boss, and to be frank, I think she makes some pretty good points: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kimm4_how-can-you-practice-sa...

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

#254

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #253
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…

>The reason you don't fluff feedback, or any information for that matter to your superiors, is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations. This is the key assertion underlying your comment, yet you just wave it off by referring to unnamed "[handbooks] on highly effective communication in organizations". My no-fluff feedback for you: Your comment would've been far stronger…

I was curious, so I used Perplexity.AI as a quick sanity check for lijok's comment. Here's the result:

https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-are-some-handbooks-on-...

None of the books identified by Perplexity.AI appear to endorse lijok's claim. Of course, it could be a confabulation -- this is just a quick sanity check, to see if the claim is as manifestly true as lijok seems to think.

(Putting this in a separate comment so people can downvote separately if they want. If people don't like this sort of AI sanity check on HN, that's fine. Thought it was worth trying as an experiment, though.)

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

#255

Post by la64710 »

And then from her other article :

Give enough context to avoid back-and-forth follow ups. Don’t be coy when you can be direct. Don’t speak in stream of consciousness. Assume your manager is task switching or checking your Slack message between meetings—make it super easy for them to catch up on context and dive into what you want to discuss.

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

#256

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

steveBK123 wrote: post #63
csa wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve seen many teams in different companies led by Americans where simply pointing out that a plan will fail in a public forum is tantamount to spitting in their face. I’ve been put into the “practitioner of the dark arts” bucket twice when I predicted with detail and accuracy why certain large projects would fail. The folks in charge were offended when I presented my analysis, and they were just afraid of me after…

I've found these situations to be no-win. When I had reasonable certainty of my next gig being lined up, I even put the question to leaders. "If I tell you why this project is destined to failure now in Q1 vs being quiet and playing along til end of year, will I be rewarded or punished any differently then?". The response was 100% nervous laughter. It turned out both layers of management above me were also well aware…

> The response was 100% nervous laughter. It turned out both layers of management above me were also well aware the marching order they were passing along were going to end badly, and had already lined up their internal transfers, which happened within days of my departure as well.

If one has not read The Gervais Principle, it’s highly recommended.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

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

#257

Post by dingnuts »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #254
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The reason you don't fluff feedback, or any information for that matter to your superiors, is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations. This is the key assertion underlying your comment, yet you just wave it off by referring to unnamed "[handbooks] on highly effective communication in organizations". My no-fluff feedback for you: Your comment would've been far stronger…

I was curious, so I used Perplexity.AI as a quick sanity check for lijok's comment. Here's the result: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-are-some-handbooks-on-... None of the books identified by Perplexity.AI appear to endorse lijok's claim. Of course, it could be a confabulation -- this is just a quick sanity check, to see if the claim is as manifestly true as lijok seems to think. (Putting this in a separate co…

more like an insanity check. Did you ask the AI multiple times? usually if I ask a yes or no question and simply repeat the prompt a few times the model will tell me yes, no, and maybe, for any question.

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

#258

Post by steveBK123 »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #256
steveBK123 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found these situations to be no-win. When I had reasonable certainty of my next gig being lined up, I even put the question to leaders. "If I tell you why this project is destined to failure now in Q1 vs being quiet and playing along til end of year, will I be rewarded or punished any differently then?". The response was 100% nervous laughter. It turned out both layers of management above me were also well aware…

> The response was 100% nervous laughter. It turned out both layers of management above me were also well aware the marching order they were passing along were going to end badly, and had already lined up their internal transfers, which happened within days of my departure as well. If one has not read The Gervais Principle, it’s highly recommended. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Yes it’s quite explanatory

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

#260

Post by interludead »

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…

If you find yourself needing to tiptoe around a leader's ego too often, it might signal deeper systemic issues
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