Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How To Improve At Work When You're Not Getting Feedback?
An anonymous reader writes: Too many managers avoid giving any kind of feedback, regardless of whether it's positive or negative. If you work for a boss who doesn't provide feedback, it's easy to feel rudderless. It can be especially disorienting if you're new in the role, new to the company, or a recent graduate new to the workforce. In the absence of specific guidance, is there any way to know what the average boss would want you to work on? What would you advise someone who works in IT, engineering, coding, designing or any similar industry?
No feedback means you are awesome and there is no room for improvement. If people have a problem with you it's just that -- their problem. If you are the problem they'll tell you in a clear. actionable and constructive way.
Oddly enough, the stuff I get the most praise for is stuff that I simply started doing because it filled a void that I felt was present. Full disclosure: I have a cool boss.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If your boss isn't communicating with you, try to communicate with him/her as to what you need and why. Be respectful and open, but direct; you're trying to improve your working relationship. If that doesn't work, move to a department that has a more communicative manager, and failing that, just bail as gracefully as posible. That workplace isn't going to be a good place for you to work in the long run, and life's too short if you have any other choice.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
The only stupid question is the one you don't ask.
Most of the time, your manager was somebody like you--a coder, or a techie, or an engineering grad--that is, somebody good at what he does, just not at managing people. He happened to be very good, and got a promotion, so suddenly he is in charge of people and code. So now he has to play HR and even give performance reviews and stuff like feedback, etc
It is a fairly common scenario.
I once had a sociopath co-worker who broadcast criticism of my work to everybody and their dog. If I did the same back, he had a fit.
Table-ized A.I.
You need to be proactive. Straight up ask your boss for feedback and guidance.
If he's still unresponsive, then he's not doing his job and you need to talk to either *his* boss or HR.
Serious this is an Ask Slashdot? Failing that figure it out yourself. If you can't tell if you're doing a good job at your job, you should probably find one where you can.
Build your capacity preparing for the next job. This could also be called "setting goals."
Od course, if you're in the Dunning-Kruger regime, a self-evaluation may fail.
1) git gud
2) ?
3) profit
Dude your an adult now, do your fucking job.
I get feedback from Slashdot. For example, as an IT Support contractor who makes $50K+ in Silicon Valley, the feedback I got is: I don't make enough money to afford the American Dream, I'm a moocher because I work in government IT, I'm not a real IT person since didn't graduate from a CS program with $100K in student loans, I'm fat, ugly and retarded, and, worse, I'm not even ashamed of being fat..
Let Pence do the job, he'd be less embarrassing.
Your manager many be busy and just doesn't have the time? Maybe the manager is hands off and trusts you to fill your own voids? (very possible if you are a knowledge worker) Just because they are your boss doesn't mean you have to reduce everything that could be possibly interpreted as something negative to be just that (although in a lot of situations you would be right in doing so). If you care to check, you will find that the world doesn't revolve around you and that managers are people at the end of the day, they are not omniscient. On the other end of the scale, constant feedback can be a symptom of micro managing...be careful what you wish for.
This is my sig, there are many like it but this one is mine
No one job is an island. If your boss isn't giving you feedback then use that to your advantage. Figure out what it is that you like to do and make the roadmap to fit your aspirations. Where do you want to be and where do you want to go?
Working hard for something we don't care about is called stress; working hard for something we love is called passion. - Simon Sinek
More over -> Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you’ll be stuck with whoever’s left. - Simon Sinek.
Your boss is the problem not you.
In my experience (both personal and looking at other people), there are three reasons why a manager/supervisor won't provide feedback:
1. They are incompetent.
2. They don't want you/don't know what to do with you and just wish you would go away.
3. They are psychopaths and don't want there to be a papertrail showing that you a) succeeded without/despite them or b) failed because they don't know what they are doing (see point 1.).
Sorry for being so harsh but I've had 1. & 3. as managers and seen lots of people with 2.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The hard thing is to actually get from your boss why he is not communicating with you. All these answer of just quit and get another job seems like the easy way out. What if you like your job? But If you actually sit down with your boss and get a full picture of the situation you might be able to get a better idea what's going on and find a solution. Could be a million things, maybe he/she is too busy, stressed with his own problems, fed up and trying to get another job, partner left them, lost a loved one. Who knows, only way is to sit down, talk with them and try to get a straight answer or figure it out by reading their reactions/moods. From my experience, remember you work with these people never make the mistake of thinking they are your friends. Because you might end up in a situation where they start abusing that "friend" relationship. But you also don't want to seem like a dick since you have to see them at least 40 hours a week and its better to get along and have a good working relationship and environment.
Throughout my career, the productivity and quality of my work has been strangely irrelevant.
But let me tell you, if I forget to fill out my timecard, all hell breaks loose.
Good feedback is great when it is given, but don't wait for it. You should always be trying to improve your current skills and obtaining new skills. (bow-staff skills, nun-chuck skills...) This doesn't have to be done in the work environment, you can (and should) be learning things on your own. There are a myriad supply of books and websites available. Don't forget about co-workers. They have a wealth of knowledge. Some of them are even excited to share that knowledge. There is no need to wait for someone to give you feedback.
I do fabrication drawings for corporate theater, and more, sets.
So I do a drawing and when I get done, I'm then given direction other than what I drew.
I once worked with a Project Manager that would intentionally produce work order for the shop that had errors. He told me it gets the shop to think.
Moral of the story, if you are not getting feedback Do it wrong and you'll get feedback.
Then you'll be wishing you had the guy who didn't give you feedback. I really don't know what to say about not knowing what to do. It may be a good opportunity to look for things to do on your own. Be warned that sometimes when you open your mouth on this kind of thing, it can backfire on your spectacularly. Your manager may decide that you're "special" and suddenly be all over your workplace all the time because they conclude that you can't work otherwise. Your manager may decide that if you don't know what to work on, maybe they don't really need you at all. You could be perceived as a troublemaker. I'm sure there are some other bad scenarios that could happen besides those.
Manager feedback can be hit or miss. My current manager is pretty good to give useful feedback. I had a manager once when working for the US government who didn't and all she did was give the highest ratings in the office to her friends in the office. Everybody else fought over the scraps as we had an employee evaluation that was point limited for the office, so if 2 people get the highest possible rating, everybody else gets closer to average. If you need priorities then asking a manager "Should I work on A or B now?" is fine. Asking a manager for feedback who isn't giving it to you is risky as I said earlier.
You should always be looking at ways to improve what you are doing without feedback. A good boss helping you along is a nice luxury but I think the expectation for most senior folks is that they do this for themselves.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I'm going to suggest something crazy. Maybe ask your boss for feedback?
If you are getting no feedback and it has always been this way, you probably have a substandard manager. In fairness its hard to be a good manager and give quality attention to each employee on a regular basis (even with regimented performance reviews), generally managers who just get by will only prod you when they really need something and are themselves getting prodded. So, you have a lousy manager, now what? If i were you i would talk as much as possible to my peers about what they do, their career path, and pick one as a "mentor" who you can bounce ideas off of and generally use like a real manager. You will benefit more this way vs just quitting (the option if your peers are lousy or just as new/rudderless.)
If you used to get feedback but generally it has decreased/stopped, you should be worried. Managers do this when they feel that their normal feedback is unheeded or otherwise ineffective and its often a sign of a manager who has "given up" on you so you should think long about how you reacted to the feedback and what your plans are to either get back on track with your manager, or move to a different position/company where you will have better success.
The external links in the summary are not really labeled correctly. The title of the second linked article is "How to Improve at Work When You’re Not Getting Feedback" - which more closely matches the text of the first link.
Whereas the title of the first linked article is "Why Do So Many Managers Avoid Giving Praise?"
And that's something I see in my current job: we have to have all our submissions to the code base ("pull requests") approved by our team leader. And inevitably he'll (take a ridiculously long time to) go through and identify a few trivial things we did "wrong". He'll require us to make a one letter change to a (relatively long) variable name. Or add an extra sentence to a minor comment in the code.
You can influence people's behavior with either carrots or sticks. And, basically, for every code submission we (wait a long time to) get the stick. So subconsciously it's a quite demotivating. It would be a lot easier to feel motivated to get things done if their was a carrot at the end of each code submission.
There've been studies that people in happy marriages say 5 positive things for everything negative thing. Maybe it's just the culture in the particular company I work at. But it seems that a lot of the tools for collaborative software development (code review tools, etc.) are more focused on sticks than on carrots. So I have to wonder if some of these tools are ignoring an important part of human psychology.
Sitting down once a year with your boss to discuss your work, your goals, and even your future is a good idea. 1 hour meeting tops.
But if you don't know whether you are doing a good job or not, then you are out of touch with what is going on around you.
Casually drop a reference to this song by Joan Armitrading: When I Get It Right (the mtv version) / alternate with lyrics.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
You need to be working on what your boss wants you to be working on. That is the point of being an employee.
If your boss is not giving you anything to work on, why are you going to work? What are you doing with your days?
If you have down time and want a side project, ask your boss what else you can be working on. If they do not have anything for you to do, then find something and ask them if they think it would be valuable to the company for you to work on it.
>>This seems like the kind of topic that has been popping up here more recently. It is like someone in management decided we, "We need an opinion question to keep the few people left on the site engaged." This one just seems particularly bad.
and either automate them or hand them off to junior employees. Use that to free up time in your day for more technical/valuable/interesting projects. When those projects are done hand them off or automate them and move on to the next project. Meanwhile watch out for other teams trying to hand simple/repetitive work to your team :). There's no better way to lose your job to an outsourcer than to take on simple, repetitive work.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
In IT jobs you are basically junior, [no designation], then senior at "something". Sometimes years, decades after that you might be a lead in your role, if the wind favors you (e.g. C++ Lead). Lead is basically the guy between management and the lower ranks of a particular team - someone being introduced to the management BS that still has a soft touch for instilling the BS on the team. Then maybe manager in-between, but eventually you get another a horizontally displaced title, such as "Build Master", "Systems architect", "IT Manager", "QA Supervisor", "Product Lead" (not your normal lead), or even "Client Relationships" - yes, eventually you can get to stop coding when you move up and sideways of the corporate structure.
The thing is: there is nothing else other than static or weather-prone progress. You go through the 3 junior/standard/senior stages automatically with time, but not fixed time since the company might simply not be in the mood to improve low-rank salaries. More commonly in our industry, you also do this with a job hop. The same can be said for the other steps, just a lot harder. The hopping part becomes essential for the last vertical jumps, unless you're really good on your craft or really lucky. But you either are good, or you find you are good because you never tried; you don't really progress in something you have done for 2-3 years or so - there is no technology that allows for such mastering, that is for fields such as medicine, philosophy and metaphysics. In IT you learn new stuff, you don't complement the old one.
In IT, learning is not progress: learning is learning (think of it like filling up memory with a different dataset - it's more data, for a different purpose) - every year that passes you gain experience but not real ability - so unless you're gonna be doing the 2 things at once, you're only just changing what you do with something you're more novice at - you don't really get to be your old you and the new one doing the crafts you know and the crafts you just learned.
So all in all, the only feedback you need is the one that tells you "I'm learning, thus I'm improving, and eventually I can force myself to a better position wherever I'm at or at a new employer". Better here is you either liking it more or making more money - just that.
With this set, if you still crave for feedback, you're really craving for praise more than guidance, and even the guidance you get is one that better suits others' needs and not yours - all you need is to learn the role you want to have, and eventually MAKE someone give that role to you. If you wanna ask for feedback, ask for new responsibilities and you'll get everything you asked and then some.
And yes, if you're negged, it's gonna suck. But that's life.
If needed, insist. Unless you can read thoughts, there is no other way. If that still fails, look for another job.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
they are probably assembling a case to fire you. get a lawyer.
In case the manager/head of group is not giving you feedback then
a) ask for it.
b) if there is no managing visible search for a new employer. Unorganized companies can harm your carrier and may break down.
I've read articles in the recent past detailing the "generational divide" in bigger workplaces where you have the Millenials, the Xers and the baby boomers all sharing the same environment. The articles I've read seem to indicate that Millenials need much more constant feedback than previous generations. I wonder if that's part of it, and whether older managers are having trouble keeping up with the new pace.
The workplace I'm at currently skews older, but we do have some new grads coming in every couple of years. Since we're all older types who've been around the black a few times, the traditional management "tricks" that work on younger people tend to be less accepted. But, since Google and GE have switched to continuous feedback now, we're doing it too. It used to be one performance conversation a year plus one mid-year checkup...now the dream is that both the employee and manager keep a running journal in their HR files about performance, etc. The reality is that we're so short-staffed that none of it gets done anymore.
No feedback at all for any generation is bad though. There are so many companies where the only hope of advancement is the management track, and so there are a lot of ill-suited managers. Often, you end up being the best at doing the actual work in your department, then you're taken out of it into a completely different world. Some people get the hang of it, and others just freeze - I've worked for both, and I've frozen when promoted.
This is one of those "the world revolves around ME" problems. First thing I think, reading the question, is "What is this guy's actual problem?" The slashdot post mentions 3 DIFFERENT scenarioes: new to industry, new to company, and new to position (obviously not mutually exclusive). But the ways to address them are different, it would be silly to expect otherwise. The OP also mentions "feel[ing] rudderless". Wow. That means you don't know what to do with your time. Wow. That's a major problem and if you're reading this instead of talking to your boss, then you've already dug yourself a hole. Rule #1: When you find that you've dug yourself into a hole, first thing to do is STOP DIGGING! They say that the "purpose" of life is to structure time. Well, sure. If you've got time on your hands then you certainly should have PRODUCTIVE ways to fill it. Although "productive" means many different things. Hitting on co-workers, stealing office supplies, gossiping, long walks around the office, there are all sorts of non- and semi-productive things to do. No one lives without feedback, especially not in an office. Peers provide it, subordinates, superiors, suppliers, customers, competitors, they ALL can be sources of it. One thing about this post cries out to me:"Victim here!". That's the lack of sac the OP shows in indicating that he expects the world to come to him. No. You SEEK OUT feedback. Doing so explicitly and baldly is generally a recipe for failure. (Only bosses are "supposed" to offer it, and few do so willingly or honestly). So, if your "non-verbal communication skills" aren't well tuned, work on them. Observe others, network. Volunteer. Ask questions, learn. Be aware that in ANY social situation where there are more than 2 people, politics exists (by definition). So, there ARE office politics. (meaning you can't "just ask" questions randomly, they should be designed for the person, place and time). Self-improvement is a life-long endeavor. We all have strengths and weaknesses. Is it better to work on our strengths or our weaknesses? Yes. Both. Your goal should be to bring your weakest areas up to "average" and your strongest up to "outstanding". If you're new to the industry, then peers make your most important sources of information. Trade groups, and trade publications also can help. If you're new to the company (and somewhat clueless, based on this post), then you need to be aware of corporate culture. Observation is key here. Secretaries (administrative assistants, receptionists) can also be useful guides. If you're new to the position, then there are two possibilities: your job is a cog in the machine, you must comply with expectations, output will generally be measured quantitatively, often by metrics (lines per day, mile posts reached, etc.) Your job consists of a "chinese menu" of choices. You need to select the combination of pieces which are the "best fit" for your personality and skill set. Exploration of options requires you to lift your head up and look out from your cubicle. This requires some understanding of your department's and your company's work flow. I've already mentioned networking. It's important. Some argue that learning how to do your boss's job is the path to success, others just the opposite: that making yourself indispensable by shoring up your boss's weaknesses is key. I think it's both. You not only need to do substantive tasks, you need to do visible ones as well. (We're all salesmen and women: at the very least we all need to sell ourselves, blah, blah, blah) Generally, entry level jobs, (the ones with a lot of thumbsucking, where there is often so much whining about "feedback") are the best defined ones in the company. Anyone who really "feels rudderless" there, is just not trying very hard, imho. These entry level jobs will not, in general help you learn the skills you need to advance your career (after all, you're just a cog in their machine, and cogs are interchangeable, cheap, and designed for one purpose, and one purpose only). Get that graduate degree, join that standards gr
If you are getting no feedback that means you absolute rein to do what you want how you want. You will know when things are going poorly when HR calls. Otherwise full speed ahead. The work you should be doing, especially as a low level manager is making your manager and those above you look bad so you can take their job.
Rather than ask your manager about your performance, ask your manager about his (or her) goals. Make sure you understand the scope of your role if achieving these goals is a combined effort. Then, try to make the goals happen. If it's possible, make it really easy for management to learn (perhaps without talking to you) the specifics about how you plan to spend your time in the future. That way, you can understand not being redirected as approval. The information about where your efforts are succeeding or falling short may be equally as available to you as to your manager, so unless you really have difficulty evaluating it, you many not need managerial input. In my experience, employers really like it if you're the person they don't have to think about.
"In the absence of specific guidance, is there any way to know what the average boss would want you to work on?"
Take a look at what you think your company needs, and in particular focus on areas where productivity can be enhanced with the least effort. Then, do the opposite.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The thing I hate - as a Gen X'er (if we're gonna use marketing demographics) - is my only feedback is at my annual review. And even then it's half-assed because I have to fill out this form to explain what I have done in the past year - and it sucks if you don't keep a journal.
Then after all that you are told that you get the "standard" cost of living raise because you didn't do X, Y and Z.
Was I ever informed that I needed to do X,Y, and Z?! Nope. I just had to take the initiative.
So, I think I learned! I then take the initiative in the next review cycle. I am told that other folks were assigned those projects or some other reason.
See, in corporate (Fortune 500) America, we are set up to sort of fail. That gives them an excuse not pay us what we are worth - but they sure as hell have no problem billing us out at a higher rate!
The fact is that feedback is a one way street. It's just a way to knock us down to suit their purposes.
While I get the occasional "great job" from management at my job, that kind of feedback is largely meaningless. In order to give good feedback, you have to actually be *knowledgeable* in the field in question. In the case of programming, you actually have to review the code and understand it, including design and testing patterns, etc. In my company, that has never happened. No one ever looks at the code I produce, and there are only two other people who could even make sense of it. I think this is a huge problem.
The check is all the feedback I need
Not every manager is a "good" manager. My present manager, for example, is obviously inexperienced, having bullshitted his way through the interview (he's good at that). In cases like these, attempts to work with them are almost always met with some resistance; more out of their own insecurity. I've seen people placed in positions like this that have absolutely NO business there, yet they get hired.
Trying to "manage up" can also have mixed results.
A good manager has decent people skills and thinks in terms of their subordinates perspectives as well as departmental goals. No feedback is never a good idea from a manager.
Another factor I find really odd in this design is when performance reviews come along. Reviews are always a top-down process, but you never see a manager (especially a new one) getting performance feedback from his subordinates. Now imagine...
So basically I agree with what many people here have said. But when you get stuck with an inexperienced manager, you have your work cut out for you -- and if you happen to have one of these who is insecure, be cautious of retaliatory behavior.
Virtual metrology of human sentiment in the professional organizational fog of war.
It sounds like a PhD thesis.
How do you indirectly measure your boss ... ... ...
when your peers are sometimes out to get you
when your leadership is sometimes out to get you
and your organization is sometimes out to get you?
Hints:
- Everyone has a personal style and a style of character. If you can figure out what those two are, then it gives strong context to interpret both verbal and nonverbal communication from them.
- Who a person is, sadly enough, is often conditioned by who they are around. This is especially true in an organization. Do you need examples? Someone who is terrified of the boss may speak truth in private, and not say it in a forum where the boss is present. Someone who is trying to stage you to fall will speak lies in private, then speak both truth and lies in the boss-forum.
- HR is a decent barometer. If I articulate their "tells" here, they will change. They will telegraph the state of the business in several distinct ways. Look for them, and learn them.
- Compare your level of effort, volume and value of results to your peers. It is hard to be objective here, so be always learning what value is, and how the organization measures it.
- Volume of communication can be an indicator. If there is a sudden jump either up or down in volume of communications, it can mean something significant. You can sabotage yourself by trying to be on every email, or none of them. Being organic and letting the startup define a baseline level is not a bad way to go.
- Read "the goal" by Goldratt, and be able to understand the value flow within the company. Look at your "distance from center of the flow" and it also is context. If your group is "far from center" then there are a crap-ton of unwritten rules and a crap-ton of politics.
- Cultivate organizational "bellwethers" outside your group, and outside your profession. Make sure you have friends in the janitorial staff, on the production floor, and who work in both business and engineering groups. Talk with them and listen to them. They are a chorus of voices that can tell you things the CEO is too disconnected and too arrogant to know, but should know.
- I have made "helping others" part of my norm. It is game theory, and character at the same time. If I am always returning value and I am always helping others to return value, then the others find helping me or working with me to be profitable. In seasons of storms they come to me early and first. I make sure that at those moments I give them umbrellas and such. This is both "pro-team" and working with vision to tomorrows storms.
- Eat in the cafe. There is more your mind will hear when it is not hearing than you know. The sound there can tell you about the health of the system. Listen. I don't mean to any one or few people. I mean listen to the ensemble. Hear without hearing. Hear the ocean, by not hearing the wave.
-EngrStudent
You know how well you work, when you work best, and if it takes you an hour and 3 coffees to get going in the morning. If you fuck up you can be pretty sure your boss is going to let you know.
Evaluate and improve yourself, this isn't school, you don't need to be handed a grade every 10 minutes.
Fascinating. I'm the person most harsh towards you and you didn't mention a SINGLE piece of feedback I've ever given you.
You are not the victim. You threaten to shoot people who debate better than you. When this is pointed out, you are still not the victim.
Lying when you post does not make you the victim when people point it out. It makes you the asshole.
You give a tirade of insults that I haven't seen people give you, though I don't look for your posts so maybe it happens, and you leave off that people hate you because you lie, act like a victim when you do lie, and post some crap web site explaining how you have always been picked on as justification for threatening to shoot people.
No one is being mean to you cause you are fat, make too little, work for the government, or so on. They are mean to you because you lie and then threaten them and act like you are prosecuted when it is pointed out. They aren't even good lies, every one of them can be found out in under 10 seconds of research. They don't like you because you are a STUPID DNC shill that doesn't get the talking points from the DNC and when you attempt to make your own you flounder horribly. Hillary lost and no matter how many times you pretend people called you fat, it isn't going to change.
"Improve" in the sense of working for an employer means better meeting the employer's expectations. If the employer is not providing expectations or feedback, you are trying to be clairvoyant which is not possible. One of my parents was like this. They would expect me to do things a certain way or at certain times but never inform me of that except by severely punishing me for not reading their minds. That's a toxic situation.
My advice, unless your employer doesn't question your performance and you can do whatever you like, leave. During the exit interview tell HR this is the main reason you are leaving. Hopefully they will take the feedback to heart but often employers don't because they are more often than not egotistical and believe they are infallible not open to criticism.
Just so you know, there is a cognitive bias whereby people think that everyone thinks the same and therefore they ought to arrive at the same conclusions, you know the "right" and "only" ones because you know there is a right way and everything is the wrong way (black and white thinking). They can't compute why someone wouldn't arrive at the "right way" independently other than there is something wrong with you and you are defective in some way. These people have the emotional intelligence skills of a rock and you don't want to work for them or be in any kind of dealing with them. They will make you miserable.
We'll make great pets
Keep learning everything you possibly can. Start with the skills you use most at work and start improving them. As you do this try and be self aware about where your own faults are. Keep making a fool of yourself in meetings? Maybe your communication skills should be worked on next. In the absence of feedback remember this: if you were doing an absolutely horrible job there would have been feedback. You can also talk to your co-workers and see if they have suggestions for you.
I have personally fielded this question from my team. On that occasion, I reminded them that when I say, "great job", I mean it, and when I say, "You missed this one, lets try $colleague's idea this time." I am not just being a persnickety asshole boss, I am providing feedback, and directing a project.
(I think) At least half the problem today is that the younger generation no longer hears the real praise from their superiors for what it is, because they've spent their lives hearing these things for simply meeting the standard. I don't pass out high fives at the water cooler for showing up to work on time, but I do pass-out pitchers of beer and pizza when we complete a project within spec and on-time.
When you're late on your side of the hardware, and the whole team is off grumbling between themselves while doing make-work for other departments, I'm going to point out a few things you may want to do differently next time. I'm going to remind you that this is not the way we roll around here. And I'm going to ask you if you think somebody else would have been a better fit for your responsibilities. Again this is not me being a dick boss, it's feedback, and guidance.
If I see a problem with the way things are being done, the way you carry yourself, or the way resources are being applied, it's my job to fix it. Part of that job is making those responsible aware of the problem, as well as solicit solutions from them and avoid these problems on future projects. On Thursday, when I *ask* you to change the shirt you've been wearing since Monday, I am not *coming down on you*, or *being a dick boss*, but providing clear direction. If you're so dense you have to ask me why, (this has happened) I'm going to tell you the odor is distracting, and the catchup stain on the collar is annoying as hell. This is the feedback that is remembered. THIS is what he will tell his spouse tonight over dinner, and this is what he is going to remember when review time comes around.
Unfortunately, "Team, we did it again, $client loves our work, and word is they are already bidding our next project. Wonderful work guys, keep this shit up. Anybody wanna join me after work this Friday at $pizzajoint? My treat...." Is considered standard for every project. It aint, It's positive feedback, as well as opportunity to debrief, and decompress, as well as for one on one time with me, over a beer, as friends and colleagues; instead of boss and subordinate.
My boss is counting on me to both guide the teams project to completion, and keep my guys happy. I try to do both. If I don't, he's gonna ask me why not, and provide a few suggestions himself (misguided as they may be) That does not mean I'm on the hook to present a gold medal for meeting the standard, high school was a long time ago.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
I'm thinking of getting into the hammering & nailing industry instead. :-P
because I am not going to do it for you.
how to do improv at work. That would have been a much more interesting question.
I'd suggest asking to schedule a regular one on one meeting with your supervisor, once or twice a month. Bring a list of items and ask directly for feedback. Make sure you set ground rules that you agree to LISTEN and accept the feedback, even if you disagree with it. Perception is reality, understand their IMPRESSION cannot be wrong, but that you may be able to change their view with facts. Stop waiting for your supervisor to do something and be proactive.