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.
When I manage folks, I much prefer honesty over someone who just bullshits you.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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".
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.