> You would think that you can just tell you reports "hey you can be honest with me and speak your mind", but the difficult part about that is no one will take

> You would think that you can just tell you reports "hey you can be honest with me and speak your mind", but the difficult part about that is no one will take you at your word when you say that. Of course not, because of the SNAFU Principle: "True communication is possible only between equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors pleasant lies than for telling the truth." If I'm working for you, you are not my equal. You might be my superior in the organizational sense, because you have the power to demand I be fired if I push you hard enough. You are also my inferior in that you can't meet your KPIs without my cooperation. Under no circumstances will I tell you the plain, unvarnished truth. It isn't what you want to hear, especially if you've got senior managers or clients breathing down your neck. Shit doesn't just roll downhill in the Army. You don't want to hear that it is flat-out impossible to come to me on Friday afternoon with a feature request that must be in production by the following Monday. Instead, I'd tell you that it can be done, but I'll expect time and a half for all of the overtime I'll be working that weekend, and it will probably be buggy because the requirements were scribbled on a fucking bar napkin and I probably won't have time to test it properly. You won't like that either, but at least you'll have the basis for a rough cost-benefit analysis you can present to your bosses to ask them, "How badly do you want this done in the current timeframe?"