How to Give Your Manager Feedback (Without Damaging the Relationship) (Ep. 305)

Most people think giving feedback to their boss is about courage. Like if you could just be brave enough, the right words would come out and they would land pretty well, or at least to the degree that the feedback was received and the relationship would be even stronger than before. But that is not how it works.

Giving feedback upward is not really a courage problem, although that does play into it, but that’s not the main thing. Instead, this is a lot more a communication problem and the people who do give upward feedback well are not necessarily bolder than others, but they understand the mechanics of how communication skills help influence another person, especially when that power dynamic is uneven.

So if you have some feedback for your manager and you’re kind of tiptoeing around it and you think it’s awkward or uncomfortable, know that the problem here is not your courage. The problem is likely that you don’t yet know how to communicate this well so that you can influence in an effective way.

And that’s what we’re gonna cover in this particular episode.

My name is Ramona s Shah, and I’m the host of the Manager Track podcast.

There’s a reason why most people keep their mouth shut when their boss runs a bad meeting or makes a call that quietly seems to tank morale on the team because when we calculate the risk, it feels pretty obvious that speaking up might actually damage the relationship

while when we stay quiet, nothing really changes and we are safe.

because at the end of the day, you might think, you know, it’s not really my job to help them get better and become a better leader to our team. That’s kind of on them. If they wanna have feedback and if they wanna learn and grow, they should be asking for feedback, they should be checking in and it’s not on me.

To bring that up sort of in an unsolicited way,

so let’s talk about all of that. But first, research on upward influence consistently shows that the employees who shape their boss’s behavior most effectively are the ones who give the most feedback. they’re the ones who frame it in a way that the boss, the manager, or the leader can actually hear it.

So I’m going to walk you through why giving feedback to your boss feels loaded. How the dynamic shifts as trust builds. How to test the waters important before going all in. And the core principles that make upward feedback land when it does not flow naturally because going back to the risk calculation, yes, you put yourself out there and you’re taking a risk.

But if you think about how to be the best version of yourself at work, how to be most effective, how to actually be a leader, influencing your manager in a positive way that’s helpful to you, but also to the rest of the team is the right thing to do, even if it means we have to take a risk.

That’s kind of the role of being a leader.

okay, let me start by naming the thing that actually makes upward feedback hard. because it’s not what most people think 

The difficulty, and I alluded to this earlier, is not the content of your feedback or again, the courage. If your boss asked you point blank, Hey, what could I do differently? How can I support you better? You could probably, probably give a clear and somewhat useful answer. In 30 seconds, you probably already know what to say,

but the difficulty is that the relationship has an inherent power imbalance, and the feedback by its nature implies an evaluation. So every time we talk about feedback, that process of evaluating someone else is inherent in it. So when you combine these two things, the power imbalance and the evaluation, it feels like you’re stepping outside the boundaries of your role.

You are not the one being evaluated, which would be sort of natural in a manager direct report relationship. You’re being the direct report, but now suddenly we’re asking it to be the other way around. And while you already know what to say, the hard part is this awkwardness about having this role reversal happening in the moment.

And so when managers show up in a one-on-one meeting and say, Hey, do you have any feedback for me? Anything that I can do to make your job easier and better? Well, we probably immediately have some kind of bullet point list. Shorter or longer, depends on the situation running through our heads. It again is awkward and uncomfortable to respond to that because of the weird role reversal and so.

A, that question isn’t useful and typically doesn’t lead to a whole lot of insights. And two, as the direct report. we can’t say nothing and we also just can’t go down our bullet point list. It’s not going to land well. So the few things that we need to keep in mind based on psychology, human behavior, 

And let’s not forget the self-protection instinct, that part of psychology at play here too. Your boss controls things that matter to you, like your work assignments, your visibility, your performance review, your career trajectory in the organization, and even when your boss is reasonable and open-minded.

Your nervous system registers the power gap, and we tend to sort of go down that rabbit hole of the worst case scenario. And so it naturally will read the situation as risky before your rational brain really gets, you know, gets a say, gets a vote, and then in the midst of this ambiguity, we like the kind of phrase and, we’ll whitewash our bullet point list in our head.

Now, in most organizations, people don’t really talk about, or at least not explicitly whether upward feedback is welcome or if that is off limits, and most managers don’t address it either. And if they do. Unfortunately, oftentimes they say, please let me know if there’s anything I can do, if you have any feedback for me.

They say that upfront, but then when it comes down to it, you quickly notice that, oh, no, actually not really. They’re fairly defensive or there is a consequence down the road if I do give feedback. So in theory, they wanna be open in practice, it doesn’t quite look that way. So you might be left to guess what to do or what not to do, and because of that, by default, we tend to be risk averse in the absence of clear signal.

So to underscore this, in the absence of clear signal, not just words, but also actions, most people simply default to silence.

The real barrier is not the lack of courage. It is the structure of the relationship that creates friction, and most managers have never been given a clean playbook or learn those communication skills for how to work around that friction because it exists. In most cases, whether we have a good relationship with our boss or not.

There’s very few exceptions where the manager direct report relationship feels a lot more like a horizontal sort of flat relationship, but those are rare. what gets us closer to that type of relationship and make feedback feel safer is obviously trust.

the more trust exists between you and your boss. The sort of wider the lane gets for feedback, right? And early on in a relationship, that lane is narrow. You have a very small window and the feedback has to be low stakes and very carefully framed if done at all.

But as trust builds over months and years, you earn more room to be direct. So it’s a bit of a spectrum like that. We open up and expand by building trust,

So as a key principle, calibrate your directness to the amount of trust that you have built. And the mistake that I see most often is that people jump. To a level of directness that the relationship has not earned yet. So they give feedback like they are talking to a peer that they’ve known for years, and the boss hears it as either presumptuous or insubordinate, not because the actual content or you know, message was wrong, but because the framing did not match the level of trust.

By the way, the same is true on the other side. If you’ve built a lot of trust, but you’ve never really gotten into that place where you are being direct, it can also hurt the relationship and the effectiveness between, you know, you and your manager. ’cause they may feel like, Hey, we have so much trust and, I’ve made you feel safe and I’ve asked you for feedback, but yet nothing’s coming back.

Why not? Why aren’t you invested enough in my success here that you would be transparent and open and direct and honest with me about what I could do better? Why not is your own sort of self protection mechanism so strong that you can’t really see that I would benefit from the feedback and hence it seems like a bit of a selfish action.

So that is when trust is there, but we aren’t direct. But then equally it can be an issue when we are too direct, when trust is not there. 

So the first question to ask yourself before giving feedback upward is not, what do I wanna say? Instead? It’s how much trust do I have in this relationship. And what level of directness does that trust support? That’s the first question to ask yourself.

Now, if you’re not sure where you stand, test it. you don’t have to go all in on your first attempt, right? Start small and pay attention to the other person’s reaction, your manager’s reaction. You could try offering some input on something minor, like after a meeting you might say. Hey, I noticed the team’s eating a little unclear on next steps.

Would it help if we added a quick recap at the end of those meetings? That is not even framed as feedback. It is framed as a suggestion. You are offering a solution, not pointing at a problem or at what they did wrong. Right. It was just like, That’s what I noticed at the end of it.

Then, you know, watch what happens. Does your boss engage with it? Do they dismiss it? Do they seem annoyed? Their response to low stakes input tells you a lot about how they will handle higher stakes input later on. So that’s a low stake test. Once you’ve seen a few positive signals where they respond really well to you, making comments like this, you can erase the stakes slightly.

You might say something like, Hey, I want to share something I’ve been thinking about. I noticed the team tends to go quiet when priorities shift midweek, and I think a short heads up before things change could help people stay motivated. And here’s how I think we could do that. What do you think? Now you are getting closer to, you know, real feedback. You’re naming a pattern and you’re tying it into a team outcome. But you’re still leading with observation and ending with a question.

You are still giving your manager room to either take it or leave it right, or to disagree or not, and be fine with it. So in those moments when you say like, I noticed this pattern, here’s a suggestion

I have to solve it. What do you think? So from low stake, it’s like you point at one event. Mistake, test is now you’re pointing at a pattern, something that keeps happening over and over, and you see how they react to that. So what you’re looking for is not enthusiasm to it, but you’re looking for openness.

If your boss says, Hmm, that’s a really good point, or Asks a follow-up question, or even just nots and moves on without real tension, giving it a green light to do whatever you propose to do. That is good, but if they get defensive, they shut it down, or they bring it up later in a way that feels punitive or sarcastic, that is useful data to have That gives you a sort of an indicator that you’re still on a narrow line and your approach needs to stay at the lighter end of 

the spectrum. Now again, you’re not looking for enthusiasm for someone like, oh my gosh, thank you for feedback as a gift, right? This was a wonderful gift. No, that’s not it. You’re looking for openness. Openness is the green light.

If this kind of thing is resonating and you are someone who wants to get really good at the people side of leadership, I wanna tell you about the leadership accelerator. This is our 12 week manager readiness program that we run specifically for new and early stage managers who are good at their jobs and now need to become good at leading.

We go deep on exactly this kind of skill, like navigating difficult conversations, building influence, giving feedback that actually changes behavior. It is a small group setting so you don’t go through it alone, but with other managers who are in the exact same situation as you.

It combines live virtual calls on a weekly basis, on demand training and one-on-one support so that what you learn actually sticks. So it’s not an information overload and 

It’s also not a detached learning course on only one thing, but we’re building really strong foundational leadership skills over the course of 90 days. So if you are a manager who feels challenging those moments or don’t really know yet how to do it, ’cause you’ve never had leadership training, or if you are leading a team or in HR and you wanna make sure that your managers are well equipped to be successful in their role as a people leader, then check out the link in the description for the leadership accelerator. Again, our cohorts and our groups stay small on purpose so that we can support you individually based on the situation

that you are in. And so you’re actually walking away with a significant amount of increase in competence and confidence, and we have data to back up those results learn more on our website ar cova.org or check out the link in the show notes. Now back to the episode,

if feedback does not flow naturally with your boss, if there is no built-in rhythm where they ask for your input and they generally wanted, you need a structure. And this goes back to having influence by applying strong communication skills, and those skills are based on a framework.

A set of principles. So the four principles that we teach about upward feedback is one, you wanna lead with their goal. Not your opinion, and this is probably the single most important move. So whatever feedback you want to give, anchor it to something your boss, your manager, has already said that they cared about.

If they talk about wanting the team to move faster, then tie your feedback to speed of execution. If they’ve in the past talked about improving retention, tie your feedback to retention. Now reason why this works is because you are not challenging their agenda. You’re demonstrating that you’re serving it 

It can activate defensiveness or just a lack of action as and follow through after feedback.

But when you frame the same idea as supporting their previously stated priority, then you bypass that defense mechanism entirely. For example, instead of, Hey, I think you should give the team more context when priorities change, you could say. You mentioned wanting their team to move faster on deliverables 

And I think giving a bit more context when priorities shift would help them reprioritize and understand the why of it without losing motivation and therefore momentum. So you anchor that feedback to something they’ve already said that they care about. You’re serving their agenda.

You’re not challenging it. So it’s the same message, but completely different reception, right? In the first version, you’re telling your boss what to do. The second one, you’re helping them get what they already want. So that’s principle number one. Principle number two is use questions to deliver the message and.

this is a really underrated tool for upward influence. Instead of making a statement, you wanna ask a question that leads to sort of the same conclusion. So lemme give you an example. If we say, I think we should move the deadline, I made a statement. My opinion, when I ask a question, it would sound like this.

What if you move the deadline by a week, that might give the team enough room to actually hit the quality bar that you’ve set questions. let the person like above you, right? Your manager arrive at a conclusion themselves and then own it.

it’s a different mindset. A statement puts you in the position of telling, which again, they can feel, that can feel presumptuous when the power dynamic is uneven. But a question puts you in the position of inviting and that feels collaborative. and if they say yes, they’re bought into it.

Right.

it makes them feel more like they’re in the driver’s seat and yet your idea, your sort of input still gets on the table. What if we tried. X lands better than I think we should do X. So that’s kind of the main thing about these principles. 

Let your boss arrive at a conclusion and own it. Principle number three, pick your moment privately. This was a non-negotiable. Don’t give upward feedback in front of others unless you have a whole lot of trust in place. So not in a team meeting, not in a group Slack channel, not even in a casual group conversation where it might seem harmless public feedback to someone above you in the hierarchy, so to speak, no matter how gentle puts them in a position where they have to manage their image in front of an audience.

And that almost always triggers defensiveness, even if the person would have been completely receptive in a private setting, right? The content might have been identical, but the context, the setting of how you give the feedback changes how it lands. So pull them aside, send a message asking for five minutes, wait for a one-on-one.

Choose a private venue ’cause that matters as much as the message in itself. And sometimes I see leaders have a really good poker face and they will take it and they will make you feel like it was fine that you mentioned the thing in a slack message. ’cause they realize like, whoa, my ego, my defensiveness got triggered, but I shouldn’t, I’m supposed to be, receptive to feedback.

They’re like, thank you and I appreciate that. And all of it deep down. Many of them still don’t like it. So at the core, don’t make your boss look bad. Don’t make those comments in front of others. Principle number four is whenever possible replace the word feedback with suggestion and advice. This one is really about language.

The word feedback carries weight, especially upward. It signals that evaluation that we talked about early, earlier. It signals. Judgment. And even when you mean it constructively and like, and a suggestion, it can put someone on alert. So generally speaking, I say like drop that world entirely. You are not giving feedback.

You are sharing a suggestion. You’re asking for their advice on something that you’ve been thinking about or you are checking if they are interested in some advice from you. You are flagging something you notice in essence, right? Hey, I have a suggestion on something I noticed.

Can I share it even or even simpler using language such as I’ve been thinking about how we run the Monday sinks. I have an idea that might help. Would you be open to hearing it? You are delivering the same substance, but you have removed the frame that triggers the I am evaluated Alarm Bell internally that then sort of like immediately racks up this wall of defensiveness, these small language shifts matter more than most people realize. The same is true by the way, when you talk to your direct reports. Small language changes will influence how receptive they are to your message. So when it comes to upward feedback, I tend to say, just drop the word feedback, say suggestions, say idea, say observation, and you’ll notice that people will be more receptive to it.

so here’s the full sequence. First, assess your trust level with that person. How wide does that lane, that determines how direct you can be. Second, if you’re not sure, test the waters with low stake suggestions, right? Individual moments. and watch the response.

Or talk about a pattern that you’ve detected where this is sort of the mid-level, test that you can run, then when you’re ready to share something more substantive. Lead with their goal, not your opinion. Use a question to deliver the message.

Do it privately and frame it as a suggestion or observation rather than feedback. None of this requires you to water down what you’re saying. The content stays honest and direct, but what changes is the packaging and in a relationship where power is uneven. Packaging is not just superficial and irrelevant.

It is how the message is going to get through.

Now one more thing. If you do this well over time, your boss starts to see you as someone who helps them think better and act better. And that is a different category than someone who has strong opinions.

The first one gets pulled into rooms, the second one gets managed. Skill is the same, but the framing is what separates the two that has a direct impact on your exposure to other people, to projects. The trust with your manager, which is likely the most important relationship you have at work.

Try one of these moves this week. Pick the one that fits your current situation, whether that is a low stake or mid stakes test, or a fully framed suggestion.

Then see what happens and if it works. Do it again. If you have other people in your environment, coworkers, or friends that would enjoy this episode, please make sure to share it along and check out the resources in the show notes to help you become a leader.

People love to work with. And with that, I’ll see you next week with another episode of The Manager Track podcast. Bye for now. 

If you enjoy this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader. People love to work with. This includes a free master class on how to successfully lead as a new manager. Check it out@ourcova.org forward slash masterclass. 

The second resource is my best-selling book, the confident and competent new manager, how to quickly rise to success in your first leadership role. Check it out at our cova.org/books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there.