“Looks good to me” is a lazy default: Why managers should give feedback on work output
“Looks good to me” is a lazy default: Why managers should give feedback on work outputIf you’re not regularly giving feedback on work product, you’re missing a valuable opportunity to invest in your team and set a higher bar.👋 Hey, it’s Wes. Welcome to my weekly newsletter on managing up, leading teams, and standing out as a higher performer. For more, check out my 2-day intensive course on Executive Communication & Influence for Senior ICs and Managers. One of my former direct reports came from a FAANG company. After a few months of working together, they told me: “I learned more from you in three months than I did from my previous manager in five years. When I sent them anything to review, they almost always said ‘looks good.’ This is the first time I’ve ever gotten such detailed feedback.” That conversation stuck with me because it revealed something kind of terrifying: Every time you say “looks good” about work that isn’t actually good, your team’s standards drop a little. It’s subtle, which is why it’s insidious. A “strategy doc” that’s actually a list of tactics gets approved. A customer email with weak positioning goes out. A proposal that lacks a point of view gets a green light. The work you label “good enough” today becomes your team’s new standard tomorrow. Your bar for quality gradually lowers, one “looks good” at a time.
Managers typically say “looks good” for one of two reasons: 1. You care about quality, but it’s faster to fix the work yourself.
This approach means you get stuck owning IC work, even if you technically have direct reports. By the time you finish redoing your team’s work, you have no energy left to zoom out, look ahead beyond this week, or think about strategic initiatives. 2. You don’t prioritize quality, so you think the work is fine as is.
This approach normalizes mediocrity in the name of efficiency. Your team thinks they’re moving fast and ticking all the boxes…except they’re executing poorly at each step. Unsurprisingly, they don’t get the results they’re aiming for. (Also, if you don’t prioritize quality, you can’t complain that your team doesn’t prioritize quality.) Every time you have an automatic response of “looks good,” you’re training your team to think less deeply about their work and depend on you to be their safety net. This is where we managers need to be intellectually honest. Most of us avoid giving real feedback not because we’re too busy, but because it’s a pain in the ass. It takes effort to identify why the work product isn’t landing, figure out how to fix it, share what great looks like, and explain this to your direct report in a way that’s compelling. There’s a lot of mental effort involved. But here’s the thing: You either invest the time to train your team, or you take a few hours every day to correct their work forever. Pick your poison. In the short term, giving feedback takes a bit longer. In the long term, training your team eventually makes your life easier and energizes your high performers. I love this quote from ServiceNow CEO Frank Slootman:
In my experience, giving feedback on a regular basis is THE best way to “confront” your team positively and productively. Here’s more on how to give specific, actionable feedback that drives behavior change. To be clear, no one expects you to give detailed feedback on everything. But you should be giving detailed feedback on SOME THINGS. Start by sharing one piece of feedback that is most likely to make the biggest difference in improving the work product. When you review a draft, vocalize what you notice—don’t just keep it in your head. Instead of saying “looks good” when you secretly think there’s room to improve, speak accurately. Your team deserves more than niceties. Try saying, “This was a great start. To make it even stronger, [insert feedback].” These tactics can take as fast as 5-10 minutes to do. What to do todayThe next time your direct report sends you something to review, ask yourself:
You raise standards not by giving a big inspiring speech once a year. You raise standards the same way most change happens: by deciding this is worth doing, showing up, and reinforcing the standard every day. There is no shortcut. If you want your team to have higher standards, that starts with updating your default response when a piece of work comes across your desk. Which question above jumps out for you? Hit reply because I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for being here, and I’ll see you next Wednesday at 8am ET. Wes My friend Anton Zaides wrote a post riffing on some of my most popular frameworks. I love the real-life stories he shares about when he did (or didn’t!) put these principles into practice, and what he learned. He wrote about these six topics—I’ve linked the original posts below: For example, I talk about the importance of using accurate language. Check out his story about this:
Full post is here: The April 2025 cohort is now open for enrollment. The course dates are April 10 & 11 from 12-3:30pm ET. It’s only January, and the cohort is already 40% full. 😱 If this is something you’ve been meaning to do, you may want to enroll in the next few weeks. (If you miss the April cohort, the next time I’m running the course will be summer 2025.) Here are new reviews from students from the most recent cohort:
- Deepti Shoemaker, Director of Analytics @ Paramount
- Hailley Griffis, Head of Communications and Content @ Buffer
- Vasile Gobjila, FinOps/TBM Delivery Lead @ International Airlines Group (Aer Lingus, British Airways)
- Sabah Qazi, Senior Product Manager @ Yelp In the past few weeks, operators from Anthropic, GitHub, Pinterest, Google, Guild, Maersk, Lyft, Adobe, Plaid, Uber, Toyota, Humana, Hello Fresh, General Motors, Stripe, Amazon, and more have already signed up. I hope you’ll join us. → To learn more, check out the course page. Connect with Wes
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