Pro-Tip: Deliver Feedback as a Cop and Not as a Messenger

An engineering leader at Square shares an important lesson about giving feedback as a manager. She says managers should carefully evaluate the information before turning it into deliverable feedback. An individual’s evaluation of another is frequently mixed with personal perspectives and incentives. As a manager, I would rather protect the trust and respect my team has with each other so that it does not affect their daily working relationship than deliving feedback is difficult and it hurts the relationship between the receiver and the receiver. An ideal world of ICs is rarely the case even with the best intentions.