[lawrjone]

I think it's a really hard balance to strike. There's so much company politics/etc that isn't beneficial for a team to experience, but equally, without being exposed to that noise you won't develop an intuition that helps you navigate the organisation.

Whatever the situation I think it's crucial you can trust your manager to be straight with you and give their unvarnished opinion of things if you ask them directly. That helps you trust they're communicating things accurately to you, which makes you feel more comfortable relying on them to provide you with the information instead of trying to seek it out some other way.