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Power dynamics are definitely there, and they can sneak up on you. Injecting jokes can definitely break the tension, but I have also had it backfire on me a bit.

In my first time leading a team, a few months in one of the people on my team who I had known personally from before pulled me aside and basically said "listen, I know you, and I know that you are a sarcastic person and can understand it. But everyone else kind of thinks you're an asshole". Still very thankful that they pointed that one out to me.

Your employees have also been trained by other managers to explicitly not be honest and speak their mind to their managers.

"You're being disrespectful."

"The team's productivity and morale is more important than you."

>but the difficult part about that is no one will take you at your word when you say that

The majority of us understand we're not fully rational and treading ground as if that's the case, is exactly how one ruins their chances. There's a far lower risk in faking things than there is trying to be honest and hoping the opposite party is not affected by negativity, both consciously and subconsciously.

The number of superiors who say similar and do get affected subconsciously far outnumber those who aren't affected. Most of us are playing a game of Poker, not a game of DnD.

> You would think that you can just tell you reports "hey you can be honest with me and speak your mind", but the difficult part about that is no one will take you at your word when you say that.

Of course not, because of the SNAFU Principle: "True communication is possible only between equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors pleasant lies than for telling the truth."

If I'm working for you, you are not my equal. You might be my superior in the organizational sense, because you have the power to demand I be fired if I push you hard enough. You are also my inferior in that you can't meet your KPIs without my cooperation. Under no circumstances will I tell you the plain, unvarnished truth. It isn't what you want to hear, especially if you've got senior managers or clients breathing down your neck. Shit doesn't just roll downhill in the Army.

You don't want to hear that it is flat-out impossible to come to me on Friday afternoon with a feature request that must be in production by the following Monday. Instead, I'd tell you that it can be done, but I'll expect time and a half for all of the overtime I'll be working that weekend, and it will probably be buggy because the requirements were scribbled on a fucking bar napkin and I probably won't have time to test it properly. You won't like that either, but at least you'll have the basis for a rough cost-benefit analysis you can present to your bosses to ask them, "How badly do you want this done in the current timeframe?"

I think you meant roll uphill?

This is anecdotal; but being genuine is a great pathway to open dialogue. Cut out the formalities and speak openly about your goals as their manager to create an environment where everyone works cohesively. A previous manager was successful in creating this environment and I was never more motivated in my life than working under him.

> I'm a new SWE Manager and I've been thinking alot about power dynamics since I got promoted. You would think that you can just tell you reports "hey you can be honest with me and speak your mind", but the difficult part about that is no one will take you at your word when you say that.

I've also become a manager in recent months, and have had to think a lot about this. The approach I've mostly gone with is to try to be vulnerable and open about my own issues of the sort that I would want my reports to share. In the hope that they will reciprocate. It's hard to tell for sure, but that seems to have worked reasonably well.

> "hey you can be honest with me and speak your mind", but the difficult part about that is no one will take you at your word when you say that.

I'd just caution you that... If you wanna bark up that tree you better be prepared to hear what they have to say. It might not be something you actually want to hear. And you're both going to have to deal with the fallout.

I think this is the real difficulty. Most people don't handle negative feedback all that well, and that's pretty much all people are going to come to you with.