People lower down the chain are insecure because they could legitimately be let go at any time for any reason.
People higher up the chain are insecure because any loss of face is debilitating. Especially having failings pointed out by someone "below" them.
You don't do it in public. There's no face to lose in private (you're a subordinate, face is only lost among peers and superiors).
It is, however, not really a good idea to be 100% blunt out of the gate. There's a dance to it. But in public, I'm there to make my manager look good, and in private I'll tell them exactly what I think. Once they're confident I'm there to be at their back, it's never gone wrong, even in highly disfunctional orgs (I'm a consultant and get brought in to play "doctor" with hopeless projects a lot).
To summarize - each of us is pretty unique, and without going though it you can't know how words can affect other people, even those above you that should know better. But they didn't get to that elevated position via honed skill of listening calmly to their subordinates feedback, did they.
I disagree. Losing the respect of your subordinates is IMHO worse than of your superior.
In my experience, this is both harmless and necessary. If I, as a manager, can't handle that, then I'm kinda screwed.
But it is also highly dependent on the types of people we manage.
Source: Manager for over 25 years, of a bunch of folks much smarter and more experienced than me.
Although one may lead to the other, they are different things.
I’d advise against going in the first one throwing punches.
Go with actionable feedback and be honest about what it is and what is not something you can solve. From there, if you genuinely care about whatever you’re complaning, you are more likely to be taken seriously.
I’d advise against going in any one throwing punches. Instead, give actionable, honest, factual feedback with the intent to legitimately help the other person.
Sometimes you need to a bit more assertive and blunt so that you become the top of the agenda, that’s what I meant by “throwing punches”.
Perhaps it means a much more over the top attitude in your view? (Happy to be corrected here)
Not all organizations will work like this, but that's a dysfunction that will need to be corrected. In that case, you should do what works (and that will be different for everyone), my particular situation won't apply to your particular situation.
High-performance managers realise they are there to enable the talent. You're Brian Epstein, not John Lennon. The job is to create the conditions for folks at the pointy end to be wildly successful.
One of the most defining characteristics of this attitude is the maxim "hire people smarter than yourself", a very fine sentiment with the only problem being that by induction it makes the CEO the dumbest person in the company.
But I digress. If I'm fucking up, then I hope to god my trusted lieutenants will tell me without any pussyfooting around. It's practically what I hired them for.
I've always worked in places that are essentially established businesses. People are mostly bureaucrats and lazy. I believe that's a large majority employers. If you honestly can't understand that that's how a lot of people work, then I think you live in a bubble.
Albeit, yes, with a flagrant disregard for authority (I hesitate to label myself "type A", it's such a reductive term) that worked best when in the second and third decades of my career I was generally engaged on a consulting basis as a fixer/troubleshooter.
So I would admit guilt to an accusation that I have placed myself inside my current bubble intentionally. It's a matter of psychological safety and self-respect. I wasn't kidding when I said I hope you can find a way off that chain, it's an outcome I'd wish on all my peers.
We are all human, we have biases and blindspots.
Your trusted lieutenants can come to you and tell you you forgot to do X and because doing X is something either within your personality comfort zone or just outside it, you can if reasonably adjusted take that on.
But there will be things you are not reasonably adjusted for, things that require you to make significant adjustments to your world view and personality - things that you need to make serious compromises on
Some people are so maladjusted they cannot compromise on stuff most of the world agrees on - generally we call them criminals. But this is a spectrum - bad managers usually have very poor matching between their personal problems and the needs of the role.
But even good managers reach a point that their instincts and their rational mind cannot take them past.
In short “everyone is promoted to their level of incompetence” is not a skills problem, but a character problem.
A lot of managers in tech got there because they are technically strong. We can argue about whether that's correct or not but I think that's typically the case. People who perform well as engineers are the ones who are given leadership opportunities. People who do not are not.
So first challenge is given you were maybe one of the smarter hires, of some smart people that tried to hire people smarter than themselves (let's assume), how do you hire people smarter than yourself? at scale?
Where we end up typically in successful tech companies is with some degree of a mix of trying to make "folks at the pointy end successful" and some degree of "telling the folks at the pointy end what to do". Usually managers and directors are very strong technically and quite sharp, though more distant from the actual work because they don't do it any more. The precise mix depends on culture and circumstances but it's almost never this ideal environment of servant leaders surrounded by immense talent and just facilitating that talent doing great things.
I've been in places that are very close to the "good" end of this spectrum and there's still going to be some pause in giving feedback to leadership that they've done something wrong. Maybe you have a great relationship with your lieutenants where they can be openly critical of you and you reinforce that. I think that's highly unusual in a social environment. It's a lot more likely there are certain things they won't share with you because they estimate the damage to the relationship is larger than the utility of being open.
EDIT: I misread your statement about hiring people smarter than yourself, so I think we agree there. The problem is still that if you're the smartest person there's a bit of tension between that and creating conditions for the people under you to be successful. Btw, I still think you should try and hire people smarter than yourself ;) it's just hard to impossible to scale that - as you point out.
> I think that's highly unusual in a social environment
Agreed, but in my experience of startups particularly, this becomes more commonplace with older founders. It can also form the basis of an high-performance enclave within otherwise ossified large companies/institutions; these tend to get dragged down by the mediocrity police after a few years, but in the meantime you can get some good stuff done.
Whether the music industry analogy is valid may be debatable, but I've had the privilege of seeing it first-hand, music was/is the family business, I grew up knocking around recording studios. So this mindset is engraved on my expectations of all talent-based professions, and I try to remember it whenever I fail to be humble.
The phrase “hire people smarter than yourself” is a platitude that is intended to foster an attitude, just a useful way of framing & thinking about people, mainly aimed at the manager, but has the byproduct of making ICs feel good about themselves. It’s not really a literal measurable specific requirement or goal. One way to see that nobody is taking it literally is that nobody is reporting IQ on their resume, and nobody is giving standardized IQ tests during job interviews. (And of course I mean statistically nobody, I’m not claiming that it’s never happened.) Often in hiring ‘smart’ doesn’t really mean smart anyway, it means wisdom, experience, attitude, skill, communication, knowledge, motivation, creativity, adaptability, friendliness, culture-fit, etc., there are many different ways someone can be ‘smarter’ than you on at least 1 axis of whatever ‘smart’ means, and it’s generally not hard to find them if we’re realistic about how smart we are on all axes.