Manager learnings, part 1

I’ve always had an irrational and unhealthy fear of being fired. Part of this is due to my upbringing, and it’s compounded by my sensitivity to criticism. One of my first learnings as a manager, though, is that no manager wants to fire their employee. As a manager, you cannot be successful if your team is not successful, so it’s in your best interest to make your employees the best they can be. Of course there are always going to be bad managers who don’t do this for a variety of reasons, but I’d say that the vast majority of managers want their employees to do well.

Despite irrationally feeling like I may be fired at any time for most of my early career, I usually didn’t have any issues giving direct feedback to my managers whenever I felt it was warranted. Feedback can take many forms, but my feedback was typically something along the lines of, “Hey, I didn’t feel great about the way you did that…can you try this next time?”

Apparently, though, not everybody is like me, and I learned recently that “it’s normal” to not give feedback to authority figures, presumably because there could be negative consequences. I guess that makes sense, but it runs counter to my life philosophy of trying to be as honest with people as possible. As a manager, I always appreciate direct feedback because I want the opportunity to cater my management style to my team so they can be successful.

Of course, use discretion in the type of feedback you provide, and also know that your manager may not agree with everything you say, but I generally believe it’s better to get things out in the open than to let it fester and create a negative environment for those around you.

As always, feel free to let me know if anybody has any feedback for this post. 🙂

Caption: Here I am attempting to give feedback to a millennial / gen z friend who’s always on their phone.