Tell The Truth

Telling the truth is not easy, the alternative is even harder.

“That is the first time someone has given me constructive criticism.”

This is what one of my developers told me after our first performance review. I had been his manager for 3 months and I gave him a satisfactory review with a list of things he needed to work on to be “advanced”.

He had moved up the ladder in a different department and had recently moved over to engineering. So by all measurements he was a new developer even though he had been at the company a while.

We had walked through his review. He had given himself “advanced”. And I didn’t blame him. He was a hard worker and put in the effort. He just needed some time before he was ready to take on more responsibility as a developer.

He needed some more reps.

I scheduled a follow up meeting later to make sure he was good to go which is when he told me he just hadn’t received constructive criticism before which is why he initially took it hard.

All of his previous managers had lied to him.

Early on in my career as a manager I would have probably pulled my punches a bit too and tried to couch everything in a positive light. The thought of confrontation would have scared me.

That is ok.

Its natural.

The problem is that if you are not honest with your team members they cant really grow. If you coddle them they will be weak.

You need a little pressure to keep them working for something.

You also need a track record of telling them the truth because if things go bad in a hurry, which they can, you want to have been telling the truth otherwise your direct report will get blindsided by an onslaught of negative reviews.

You will also get caught in the fray because your employee will push the blame for their bad performance back on you, and they will be right. Most of the time you lie thinking it is to protect them but it really is to protect yourself.

So dont lie, tell the truth.

Being a good manager is a skill that also requires you to put in the reps. However, there are ways to accelerate your learning, like following my substack and letting me know what you need help with.