
Tell HN: Give the “why” behind your feedback, else you'll warp team's behavior - siddharthdeswal
There was a time when I was constantly given feedback to the tune of &quot;this isn&#x27;t good enough, change it to [manager&#x27;s opinion]&quot;. I&#x27;ve worked in tech marketing, where this is extremely common.<p>I&#x27;d ask why, but often the reason wasn&#x27;t well articulated, or it wasn&#x27;t articulated &quot;customer-first&quot;. This in turn led me to change my behavior so that I was doing things to get my manager&#x27;s approval, and not because I wanted to communicate clearly&#x2F;better with our customers.<p>That was incredibly frustrating... the realization that you&#x27;re doing something so that the manager approves of it, or lets it go live. And I never knew if I was right or wrong, it would all depend on the manager&#x27;s opinion at the time of reckoning. I suspect the larger impact of this seeping into a company&#x27;s culture can be catastrophic, since many teams&#x27; north-star becomes &quot;what will he&#x2F;she think?&quot;, versus doing better for their customers.<p>After I started managing people, I made the same mistake. But at least I can recognize it now, and make an honest attempt to explain the &quot;why&quot; behind any feedback I&#x27;m giving.<p>If I can&#x27;t give a &quot;why&quot; for a subjective opinion or feedback, then I think harder about it, and try to understand why I &quot;feel&quot; that ways. I think this helps those reporting to me grow, and gets them to think about how the customer will perceive our marketing communication.<p>So yeah, if you&#x27;re managing people, please give the &quot;why&quot;.<p>Edit: grammar.
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growmeifyoucan
I love the fact that this hits the heart of the feedback problem in today's
super dynamic teams, who relentlessly focus on speed of execution. While that
is not a problem in itself, it does sometimes lead to adjacent issues like
absence of actionable feedback loops for team members, that'd help the
organization much better in the long run.

