> I just didn't have the full facts

Two things are true at the same time: that as an employee, you will always get a distilled picture of the wider reality from your manager (sometimes to help you focus, sometimes because they're forbidden to share it with you, sometimes because parts of it would damage morale and thus productivity), and that managerial competence is in the communication skills to achieve that focus and morale. Two different managers with different skill levels, each dealing with the same "full facts" reality, will deliver different results.

Related tangent: it's sad to see the decline of high school debate teams, there's probably no better early-life preparation for the management skillset. Competent managers persuade. They know who they're trying to persuade, what that person values, and frame the wider organizational reality in such a way that it will make sense and align their direct report.

The worst managers think their job is to tell you what to do and that your job is to do what they say.