LoL: A Particular Use Case for Quantification

Alice was a manager reporting to me who was struggling to build an effective relationship with her reports. This was a well-known problem and I was paying attention to it; I was having regular conversations with her about how it was going, as well as regular skip-level 1o1s with her reports to get their perspective. Ongoingly, the general message when I talked to her reports was some version of “yeah, still some problems but we’re hopeful she can work this out, here’s how it’s been going lately, here are some signs of improvement.”

2–3 months passed. I was talking to one of her reports who was again telling me he was optimistic and that things were hopefully going to turn around, and suddenly I asked him “Imagine you left the company and were looking for a new job. You find a job you’re interested in and you discover Alice will be your boss. On a scale of -3 to +3, what’s your response, where the scale is:

-3: No. Just no. I don’t care if it’s the best job in the world, it isn’t worth it if I have to renew my relationship with Alice;

-2: Ugh. Do I have to? Maybe there are some very significant reasons why I want this job and am willing to undertake the pain of this relationship again, but boy howdy it better be a ludicrously great job;

-1: Oh well. If the job is decent and I was pretty sure I’d take it anyway, I’m not happy to hear this, but I can live with it;

0: No impact

+1: Oh cool. I’m somewhat more inclined to take the job because I’ll work with Alice;

+2: Wow. I’m much more inclined to take the job because I’ll get to work with Alice again. I’m willing to take some pain to do it;

+3: Almost irrespective of how bad the rest of the offer is, or how terrible the environment, if I get to work with them again I’ll do it!

(This scale may sound familiar)

He said “-2. It was -3, so it’s improved.”

And I said “we’re done here.”

I thought of this Friday as I was talking to someone I work with whose manager had been rightfully terminated. He mentioned that he wished it had happened sooner, but he also acknowledged that when he was having regular 1o1s with his boss’s boss, he never explicitly told him “my boss is bad. They need to improve or leave.” I asked him “if your grandboss had asked you to rate your boss on that -3 to +3 scale, what would you have said?” and he responded “Somewhere around -2”.

A-ha.

And honestly, I’m guilty of this too. I reported once to a manager who I knew should be fired for about 18 months before he was actually terminated. I had regular 1o1s with my boss’s boss. I never shared this opinion with him, and when he asked me about my boss I’d say mealy mouthed things like “he really wants to do well,” or “he takes feedback really well.”

It’s incredibly difficult, I think, to tell your boss’s boss what you think about your boss when you think your boss is failing. The act of verbalizing an essay “my boss is failing, let me tell you all the ways” sounds unkind, or like snitching, or … well, not something that many people seem to do well.

But somehow, in at least two cases I’ve seen, asking someone to rate their boss on this scale seems to shortcut through this discomfort, perhaps because numbers feel less like an attack, less like an editorial opinion. There’s less heat associated with them.

The other benefit of this is that using this scale (in addition to, not in exchange for, meaningful conversations) lets us correct for communication styles and preferences people have. Alice may tell you their manager is the best damned manager they’ve ever worked for; Chris, who is similarly fond of her manager, might tell you their manager is “reasonably decent.” While Alice may rate her manager a +2 on that scale, and Chris would rate her manager a +1, the important thing is that both scores are positive.

I’ve committed to my people, and told my managers, that it’s a requirement of their job that their people rate them positively on this scale. I don’t care how high or high low. 0.1 is fine. But your people have to be marginally more interested in coming to work in the morning because they report to you.