The drawback is that most of the time, words are highly reductive and inferior to indirect and nonverbal communication. They are only useful if the issue is extremely isolated or about adding/removing things off someone's plate.
Virtually every time when an employee doesn't work out, it's because they used bad judgment. Feedback is useless for that.
So for example, you will ask them to write documentation and they might technically write documentation, but maybe they write it unclear and don't even recognize it as such. Now, do you want to teach someone the concept of "clarity" like an English teacher? No! If they can't understand what level of clarity is needed based on other code in the company or other cues, it is a manifestation of a judgment problem.
Of course working together won't be instantly smooth like a Swiss watch movement, and you can make adjustments, but there cannot be a big judgement gap. The employee has to be able to recognize what you mean by "clear" without a full blown multi-year English lesson. If they consistently think their work as a "first draft", to be double-checked always by you and given specific feedback over, that is a judgment problem. Massive time-waste.
> So for example, you will ask them to write documentation and they might technically write documentation, but maybe they write it unclear and don't even recognize it as such. Now, do you want to teach someone the concept of "clarity" like an English teacher?
Yep, if you're that person's manager, what you do is you tell them, unambiguously, that the documentation they wrote was not clear, and you tell them why, and you direct them to examples of clear documentation and other resources that can help improve their ability to write documentation. That's the job! If you don't want to do the job of a good manager, that's fine, but you're doing a disservice to the people who work for you. And, weirdly, you seem to be patting yourself on the back for it. But make no mistake: being unwilling to mentor and teach is actually just bad management.
There are lots of books you can read to improve your management skills!
1) You cannot mentor and teach good judgment.
2) Management has virtually nothing to do with mentorship and teaching. It is more akin to having a garden. You have a particular type of soil and sunshine and rainfall (tasks, company culture, pre-existing teammates, etc) and you pick the right seeds that will flourish in this environment.
3) Books will teach you nothing useful, because they are almost always a) written by psychologists who couldn't manage a group of chickens let alone humans b) written by competent managers for the purpose of having a feel-good career capstone, not transmit actual advice. What they would tell you behind closed doors is virtually diametrically opposed to the platitudes in management books.
Obviously you can. People are not born with good judgment. Every single person with good judgment was mentored and taught it by different people throughout their lives.
Perhaps you mean that you can't mentor or teach adults good judgment? This is slightly more plausible but also wrong. People are capable of learning new tricks their entire life.
But especially if we're talking about the people I think we're talking about - entry level ish employees, probably in their 20s - no, this is silly, these are exactly the people you can mentor and teach good judgement. They are hungry for someone capable of doing so!
> Management has virtually nothing to do with mentorship and teaching.
I'm telling you, you need to read a book on management. You don't seem to know anything about it, but are nonetheless opining on it very confidently.
> Books will teach you nothing useful
Hahahaha no wonder you're so ill informed. You're wrong, books are great. If you go through life trying to reinvent the world from within the bubble of your own mind alone, you are doomed to fail.
You don't need to answer that. It is a rhetorical question. But consider what you wrote relative to good parenting, regardless of ages.
Nobody stops learning. On any measure, hopefully as long as we live, we are all still children relative to where we will be in a decade or two.
Mentoring, books, feedback, encouragement are valuable to give and receive throughout our lives because there is always another level of skill and wisdom to be achieved.
Virtually every time when an employee doesn't work out, it's because they used bad judgment. Feedback is useless for that.
So for example, you will ask them to write documentation and they might technically write documentation, but maybe they write it unclear and don't even recognize it as such. Now, do you want to teach someone the concept of "clarity" like an English teacher? No! If they can't understand what level of clarity is needed based on other code in the company or other cues, it is a manifestation of a judgment problem.
Of course working together won't be instantly smooth like a Swiss watch movement, and you can make adjustments, but there cannot be a big judgement gap. The employee has to be able to recognize what you mean by "clear" without a full blown multi-year English lesson. If they consistently think their work as a "first draft", to be double-checked always by you and given specific feedback over, that is a judgment problem. Massive time-waste.