Managing people

When sometime tells them “You suck at Y” and they genuinely care about Y, they ask five additional follow-ups: “What have you seen me do that makes you think so?” “What do you think will help me improve in Y?” “Who is excellent at Y that I can learn from?” “How do you assess at Y?” “Why is Y important to be good at?”

Excellent feedback receivers recognize the bias inherent in every piece of feedback. They can see that when X person gives feedback about Y, they should listen closely because they care about Y, and X is an expert in Y. Conversely, if X talks about Z, they’ll disregard it because X really doesn’t know shit about Z