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Comment by CoughlinJ | Hacker News Reader

Speaking as someone who's had his "tone" addressed in emails, and the survivor of many a blunt conversation with my boss, the best way to get a point across is to just state the facts. Don't be pompous, don't feign ignorance, or try to blame others, just spit it out, and have whatever you need to tell them written or typed out on a piece of paper. The last thing is to be respectful. Even if you don't respect them, they ARE in a position above you, and that DOES mean something, not only to them, but to others as well. Keep it civil, state the facts, and never apologize (unless you're the one who messed up. If that is the case, do so sincerely and politely).

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Yup, respect, empathy and congruence.

Be respectful, understand that it might be hard to hear your feedback and try and word it in the most direct way possible.

I think i might be missing another thing, but I forget. Those three things will get you far though.

Not sure that I agree with them being in a position 'above' you though. You are both adults. They might have more responsibility than you, but that does not mean that they are 'above' you. I treat every single person in the company I work for as an equal, from the junior consultants to the MD and chairman of the board. I also expect them to treat me the same.

Assuming this feed back is about giving the boss bad news about him or the company, and not about fessing to to a personal error:

You missed one very crucial bit of advice: Don't do in public. The split second your boss feels humiliated or under threat it is only a matter time. This also gives you an added bonus, your boss will trust you and believe you have his/her back. You have "confided" rather than exposed. Their egos love that BS. In many or even most cases, they will owe you one.

as a boss, the 'respect' and 'above' thing kinda bother me. I mean, it /is/ my company, but on the other hand, if I didn't think you were good at something, I wouldn't be spending my money on you. (I mean, sometimes an employee who is very good at one thing starts telling me how to run something that I don't think they know very much about, and that can be irritating, but eh.) If you are a boss and you are hiring non-interns that aren't better than you in their areas of expertiece, you are incompitent.

I mean, I'm not a very good boss; I think of most of my relationships the way you think of contractors. which is wrong for most people, but personally? I get really uncomfortable with this idea that I'm "above" an employee.

On the other hand, I think this actively contributes to me being a bad boss. A whole lot of people really like the idea that the company is a family or something, rather than it just being a mutually benficial relationship. I mean, if you are part of the company, and I own the company.... that has some (i think) disturbing implications. If it's just a mutually benifical relationship, on the other hand? that seems much less disturbing to me. But many people are more comfortable with the former. (and yes, many of those people like to see the company as more of a co-op where everyone has ownership, and that's another area where I'm a bad boss. I'm not any better at pretending that other people own what is mine than I am at pretending to own other people. I have enough experience with real co-ops and communes to want to avoid that sort of thing.)

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