Latest / The Difficult Boss Podcast with Fexingo: Managing Up, Toxic Managers, and Workplace Survival / How to Manage a Boss Who Never Gives Feedback
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to talk about a specific kind of difficult boss today. Not the one who yells, not the micromanager, not the credit-stealer. The one who gives you absolutely nothing. Luna: The silent type. I've had that. It's almost worse than constant criticism, because at least with criticism you know where you stand. Lucas: Exactly. And it's more common than people think. I was looking at data from a 2024 Gallup survey — about 40 percent of employees said they received no meaningful feedback from their manager in the past month. That's a huge slice of the workforce operating in the dark. Luna: Forty percent. So for every ten people, four are just guessing whether they're doing a good job. That's exhausting. Lucas: It is. And today I want to focus on a specific case. A product manager at a mid-sized SaaS company — let's call her Priya. She'd been on a team for eight months, shipping features, running user tests, and her boss, the VP of Product, would only ever say 'okay' or 'fine' in stand-ups. Never a single piece of developmental feedback. Luna: Classic. And 'fine' is the worst. You can't improve on 'fine'. You don't know what 'fine' means. Is it good enough for a promotion, or just barely not getting fired? Lucas: Right. So Priya started to feel anxious. She'd overprepare for every meeting, put in extra hours, but with no signal, she couldn't calibrate. Her confidence eroded. And she started to wonder if her boss was silently dissatisfied or just checked out. Luna: Which is it usually? In your experience, when a boss gives zero feedback, what's going on? Lucas: It depends, but there are a few common patterns. One: the boss is conflict-averse and worried that any criticism will demotivate you. Two: they're overwhelmed themselves and feedback just isn't a priority. Three — and this is the one people don't talk about enough — they genuinely don't know how to evaluate your work because they're not close enough to the details. Luna: Okay, the third one rings a bell. So the silence isn't personal, it's a competence gap on their part. Lucas: Exactly. And once you reframe it that way, you can stop taking it as a judgment on your performance and start treating it as a problem to solve. That's where the strategy comes in. Luna: Alright, I'm listening. Because the standard advice is 'just ask for feedback' — and I've tried that. It usually gets a 'everything's fine' response. Lucas: That's the trap. Open-ended 'how am I doing?' questions invite vague, polite answers. Instead, you need to ask a specific, low-friction question that forces a decision. I call it the 'decision-forcing question.' Luna: Decision-forcing question. Give me an example. Lucas: Priya started sending her boss a brief weekly email on Friday afternoons. It had three bullet points: one thing she'd accomplished, one decision she was making next week, and one question about something she was unsure of. And she'd end with a direct ask: 'If you have any feedback on the direction for next week, I'd love to hear it. If not, I'll proceed with the plan.' Luna: So she's framing it as 'approve or stay out of the way.' That forces a response because silence means consent. Lucas: Exactly. And it worked. The first couple of weeks, the boss just replied 'looks good.' But by week three, he started adding a sentence or two. 'Actually, I'd prefer you talk to the sales team before that decision.' That was the first real feedback she'd gotten in months. Luna: So the trick is to make giving feedback easier than not giving feedback. Because for a busy or anxious boss, silence is default. Lucas: That's the principle. You reduce the cognitive load of feedback. Don't ask them to evaluate your whole performance. Ask them to choose between A and B, or to confirm a plan. That's a tiny ask they can answer in ten seconds. Luna: But what if the boss still stonewalls? What if even that gets ignored? Lucas: Then you escalate structurally. Priya had a second step. She scheduled a 15-minute monthly check-in with the explicit agenda: 'I want to make sure I'm aligned with your priorities. Can we review my top three projects and you tell me which one is most important?' Again, it's a forced choice, not an open evaluation. Luna: And that's harder for the boss to dodge because it's a meeting, not an email. They have to say something. Lucas: Right. And in that meeting, she used another technique. She'd start by saying, 'Here's what I'm planning to focus on for the next four weeks. If you had to pick one thing to change, what would it be?' That single constraint — 'one thing' — makes it manageable. Her boss actually gave her a useful piece of feedback: he wanted her to spend more time on user onboarding data. Luna: So she got directional feedback without ever asking 'how am I doing?' She asked 'what should I do next?' Lucas: Exactly. And that's a more productive question anyway because it's forward-looking. Past performance is done. What you want is guidance on where to invest your effort. Luna: I think the hardest part is emotional, though. When you're getting silence, you start to feel invisible. Like your work doesn't matter. Lucas: Absolutely, and that's real. The psychological research on feedback deprivation is pretty clear: it increases anxiety and decreases job satisfaction. One study I read found that even negative feedback was better for engagement than no feedback at all. Luna: So silence is literally the worst. Worse than criticism. Lucas: In terms of engagement, yes. So part of managing a boss who never gives feedback is also managing your own mindset. You have to build your own feedback loops. Peer reviews, customer data, personal metrics. You can't rely on one person for your entire sense of progress. Luna: Priya did that too? Lucas: She started keeping a simple log. Every Friday, she'd write down one thing she learned that week, one thing she shipped, and one thing she planned to improve. She shared it with a trusted colleague in another team. That external validation helped a lot. Luna: So you're saying: create your own feedback system, and use decision-forcing questions to extract what you can from the boss. But what if after all that, the boss is still silent? Lucas: Then you have a signal. If you've made it easy, you've structured the request, and they still won't engage, that tells you something about their capacity or their willingness. At that point, it's a data point for a bigger career decision. But most of the time, the problem is not malice — it's inertia. And the right nudge can break it. Luna: Okay, that's actually really actionable. I think a lot of people need to hear that they're not crazy for being frustrated by silence. Lucas: And that's part of why we do this show — to help people navigate those gray areas where the standard advice doesn't cut it. If you've found episodes like this useful, and you want to support the podcast staying independent and ad-free, you can do that at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small gesture that goes a long way for us. Luna: Yeah, and it really does help. We don't run ads, so listener support is what keeps the lights on. And we appreciate every single contribution. Lucas: So back to Priya. After three months of using these techniques, she actually got a promotion. Her boss said in the review that she'd shown strong initiative and alignment with company goals. The feedback she'd extracted had helped her focus on the right things. Luna: That's a great outcome. But it also shows that the boss did have an opinion — he just wasn't volunteering it. She had to pull it out of him. Lucas: Exactly. And that's the core lesson. If your boss is a feedback black hole, you can't wait for them to change. You have to change the structure of the interaction. Make it easier for them to give you something than to give you nothing. Luna: So next time someone says 'my boss never tells me anything,' I'm going to say: 'Have you tried a decision-forcing question?' Lucas: That's the phrase. And if listeners want a cheat sheet, we'll put the exact email template Priya used in the show notes. But for now, the takeaway is: silence is not a verdict. It's a communication gap you can bridge. Luna: Well said. Alright, that's it for this episode of The Difficult Boss Podcast. We'll be back next week with another survival strategy.