How do you survive your own Performance Review as a manager?
Last year I have been struggling with work-related stress, Performance Reviews being the apex of stress inducing events. After an almost break-down towards end of the year, I decided that I had to fix it.
Shift of focus.
At the end of 2018, I took a job at a new company where, for the first time in my career, I would be managing a team without being the technical lead. This novel condition created the space for me to focus much more on management, where I have grown a lot. It also made my life miserable when I started thinking about measuring my own performances.
In my new workplace, as in many other companies in the industry, individual performances are assessed in 6 months cycles via a mix of self-evaluation, team feedback and manager input. These data sources are then used to answer a core question: “What was the impact of this person in the company?”
Measuring impact as a manager.
While this lens makes it much easier to have performance conversations with engineers, applying it to managers is much more difficult.
Evaluating impact as a manager is a tricky proposition. Do you consider your team’s impact as yours? How can you split between what the team would have achieved without you and what you enabled the team to achieve? You are not the one writing the code, after all.. And what about the team members? Am I striking the right balance between supporting them and challenging them? Are they growing thanks to my work or despite my work? Is there something I should be doing for them that I am not doing enough of or at all?
These were the kind of questions I was asking myself, sadly realising I had no real answers. The more I thought about it, the more I felt I was failing at my job. The more I felt like a failure, the less I was able to focus on work. The less I was able to focus, the less I achieved. The less I achieved, the less impact I had. The less impact I had, the more I felt I was failing at my job.
It was a terrible downward spiral, it took an heavy toll on my work life and, after a while, started to take a hold of my life outside work as well. I was extremely lucky that the people in my personal life were supporting and understanding. They helped me realise what was happening and pushed me to find a solution, instead of wallowing in self pity.
Making it better.
Looking back at the questions that triggered my self-doubt spiral, we can broadly split them into measuring direct impact (What have you achieved?) and measuring indirect impact (What is your effect on the team?). Since the best way to fight back self-doubt is hard-data, I set off to gather as much as possible on these two topics.
What have you achieved?
My first action was to start write down my achievements regularly. At the beginning it felt extremely awkward (no one likes to brag!) but, as time went by it became more and more natural. The focusing question I use to start the thought process is “How have you been serving the team or the wider organisation this week?”. I then write it down using a slightly tuned version of the STAR model:
- Situation: What was the context you were operating in?
- Task: What would be expected of you in this context?
- Action: How did you act? What did you do?
- Result: What was the net outcome of your actions? How is the context changed for the better now?
- Supporting Evidence: Is there any substantial deliverable that you can show? (E.G. a document, a roadmap, working software)
The simple fact of writing the achievements forced me to frame my impact in a much more tangible way. It was also extremely useful in compensating for the recency bias, the tendency that we have of giving much more weight to recent events (and achievements!) than past ones.
What is your effect on the team?
The achievement tracking takes care of the direct impact but what about the indirect impact? I found out the best source of information on this to be feedback. The problem then becomes: how do we encourage feedback to happen organically in the team?
To influence this I started by leading by example, I make a conscious effort to give direct feedback to my team members often and in a structured way. No matter when or how I do it, I always make sure to be explicit that feedback is happening. This is as simple as starting the conversation by asking “I would like to give you some feedback on X, is this a good moment?”. Another device I have started using, on suggestion from my manager, is to ask this questions during 1:1s : “Who do you think is doing a great job in the team? Have you told them?”.
In the long term, all these small things have the effect of making giving direct feedback common place in the team. Success!
I also use anonymous surveys to gather feedback on specific topics but I would caution not to overdo this. Giving effective and structured feedback is a time consuming activity. If you send everyone in your team a 20 question survey weekly, they will stop answering. Feedback fatigue is real!
Regular performances check-in.
Finally, I have introduced a monthly touch point with my manager, where we discuss my performances. In this meetings I briefly present my achievements together with the collated feedback and then we discuss them. Having this conversation is extremely valuable to keep a good perspective on your track but, to be effective, it requires two things:
- Psychological safety: you need to have enough of it to be comfortable talking about your mistakes or any negative feedback you have received. If you are not comfortable discuss these topics with your manager, you can have these Performance check-ins with a mentor or a peer.
- Two way commitment: your manager (or mentor or selected peer) needs to be committed to the process as much as you are. If there is no critical counterpart to your data, the whole thing risks of becoming a self-congratulatory ritual devoid of any learning opportunities.
In the end..
After I have started these practices, I feel much more positive on the value I bring in my team. I am also much less worried about discovering too late that I am neglecting some aspects of supporting my team, since I am confident that they will be raised early enough to give me time to correct course.
“If it hurts, do it more often and bring the pain forward”
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