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I'm always curious when comment responders glom on to the least important part of a comment and dissect it to no end. I took "is described in basically every handbook on highly effective communication in organizations." as essentially "the standard for communication in effective organizations is to be direct and to the point." It did not warrant a "SOURCES??!!" response IMO because it wasn't saying anything that was uniquely attributable.

The claim didn't ring true to me, based on what I've read about the topic in the past, or based on my personal thoughts and experiences. So I wanted a source. It should be easy to provide a source, if sources are as plentiful as lijok says.

>the standard for communication in effective organizations is to be direct and to the point.

Sounds very nice, but empirically humans often struggle with frank feedback. I think that goes for both subordinates and superiors, for different reasons.

I would argue it can be worthwhile to spend an additional 25% time to make it clear that it's nothing personal, to avoid risking a deterioration of your relationship.

Obviously, it's good to have friendly relations with your coworkers, including your boss.

If you have a high-trust relationship with your boss where there's no risk of deterioration, and you know your boss likes it when you speak your mind -- more power to you. Be direct and to the point.

I agree, I think there was a Buddhist analysis of conversation, right speech, which I find useful as a guide to giving and receiving information: Is it well intentioned? Is it kind? Is it timely? Is it beneficial? Is it true?

I suppose that if you can craft feedback with this criteria in mind it’ll have a high chance of going over well.

> 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.

I know.

That post you linked to is great. I especially found insightful the part where she said "If your boss says no, let it drop and polish up your résumé! "

Are you replying to your superior? He didn't say always no fluff, just that as a superior you should be able to handle it. That actually is the key assertion, the power imbalance direction.

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.)

Did you read the result you linked?

> Several handbooks on highly effective communication in organizations are:

1. “Winning” by Jack Welch and Suzy Welch, which emphasizes clear communication, open dialogue, and transparency in organizational success.

2. “Fierce Conversations” by Susan Scott, focusing on transforming everyday conversations at work to achieve success.

3. “Radical Candor” by Kim Scott, which promotes empathetic yet direct communication in professional settings.

In your reading of those titles and summaries, do they seem likely to recommend communicating layers of fluff to executives?

Scroll down to the 2nd question: "What advice do these books offer to a subordinate who wants to give feedback to their manager? What's their reasoning for the advice?"

LLM(and LLM+) afaik, even Perplexity, do not do textual analysis. They do not “know” what is in the book, they will only try to predict how someone else would answer your question based on data in the training set. If there are not many similar questions asked and answered accurately, the results will be poor.

Ah, Jack Welch is the top source in 2024… hm

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.

Here's a link the AI cited, a LinkedIn post by the author of the book Radical Candor

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kimm4_how-can-you-practice-sa...

>How can you practice safe Radical Candor with your boss?

>...

>Start by asking for feedback before you give it. You want to make sure you understand the you're boss's perspective before you start dishing out praise or criticism.

>...

>Tell your boss what you appreciate about them. This is not "kissing up." It's praise, which is an even more important part of Radical Candor than criticism.

>...

>Say something like, “Would it be helpful if I told you what I thought of X?”

>...

>If your boss says yes, start with something pretty small and benign and gauge how they react...