I’m scared: I have to evaluate my manager
Hello everyone, my name is Luis and I’ve been part of Mercadona Tech since April 2018 as a software engineer. But this story starts more or less one year and a half after my arrival.
It all began in June 2020, when I had to evaluate my manager’s evolution last year, and I felt totally lost.
In this article I’d like to share how I faced that process and how we created a framework to help other teammates do it in a valuable way for our managers.
In Mercadona Tech, we officially receive a performance review from our manager at the end of the year. Still, usually, we have two performance reviews per year (among many other 1:1 meetings). We analyze the last 12 months and see which points may need improvement to help us keep growing.
We were asked to do the same to our manager at midyear, and here the problem arose. I was concerned about not being good enough doing that. It’s not easy to tell somebody things to improve and even less to your manager!
For more than a year, he was my manager, and I felt comfortable talking to him; that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he was helping me a lot to grow up, and I had the opportunity to return that help, but I had no idea where to start. Well, to be honest, I had one clue, some teammate had shared this form from ReWork, but it wasn’t enough.
When I returned from my summer holidays, I told other managers about my concern and asked them for their feedback. They told me that their reviews weren’t as helpful as they would have liked, which surprised me.
I then realized that I wasn’t alone, and we formed a small task force to think about how to improve the process and make all those reviews valuable.
We started gathering some feedback from my mates about how they faced the performance review.
Once we had some feedback about the rest of the team, we found that some had the same fears. However, other ones had some beneficial articles or techniques to do a good performance review.
After some meetings with the task force, we did a personal-thinking exercise to answer three critical questions about the review:
- What do you expect from it?
- Why is it needed?
- What strategies do you follow?
Everyone in the task force answered those questions and we met again to discuss all that information we had.
We all agreed that a bullet-point document would focus on the essential things.
After a couple of months iterating, finally, we arrived to our guide to evaluate our manager’s evolution, and here it’s:
Why a Performance Review?
The Performance Review is one of the many tools we use at Mercadona Tech to give feedback constructive to our managers. This feedback is necessary to seek challenges that make us better professionals and enhance the things we do well. When we review our managers, we can help them improve in the same way that they help us in our reviews. In the case of managers, they are measured by the support they give to their collaborators, so by assisting them to be better, we help them give us better support. Everybody wins.
What parts does the Performance Review have?
It should review the evolution concerning the previous review (if any) and analyze whether or not everything that we set out to do has been achieved. In addition, a good review should look back on the points where our manager stands out the most and those where they can improve - the more detailed, the better.
Tips for writing a good Performance Review
- Try to be objective and remember that you only see part of your manager’s performance.
- Be concrete. Use data, details, examples… to support your recommendations. The SBI (Situation-Behavior-Impact) framework is handy: Describe the situation, describe the behavior and communicate the impact it has had on the whole team or us.
- Write things down monthly to be ready in the following review.
- Be honest and sincere to avoid surprises. The 1:1s should be a place to share feedback bidirectionally with a higher frequency than the performance reviews.
- The recommendations must have a possibility associated solution or at least how we would have faced that situation. An improvement point without an alternative solution is not an improvement point; it is a complaint.
Manager role
To make an objective, data-based assessment, you must understand their role and their related responsibilities.
- Is a good coach: guides, mentors, supervises and supports you to achieve better results,
- Challenges you and gives feedback,
- Increases the value of the team,
- Knows every member and ensures an inclusive environment throughout the team,
- Communicates instructions and listens to your feedback,
- Helps you develop your skills,
- Their vision and strategy make the team row in the same direction,
- You see them as a technical reference,
- Makes good decisions taking into account the opinions of the team
Review template
Here are some questions that may help you to write a valuable performance review. Maybe you have some other ones. If so, I encourage you to write them in the comments :)
Answer with a few words
- What would you recommend them to continue doing?
- What would you recommend changing their management?
- Give an example of a situation where your manager helped you to improve your performance. How does it help you to improve?
- Write the three qualities that best define your manager.
- How do they keep the team focused on results and priorities?
- How do they show you the value you bring to the team?
- Do you feel that your manager does “micromanagement”? What do you think should improve to make you feel more autonomous?
- How does your manager motivate you?
Answer with yes / no
- My manager shows consideration for me as a person.
- My manager regularly shares relevant information from their manager and top leaders.
- My manager has discussed my professional development with me in the last six months.
- My manager has the experience to guide me when I have a problem.
- My manager is someone I can trust.
- Are the objectives that your manager communicates to you clear?
On a 0–10 scale, how satisfied are you with the frequency of communication you have with your manager?
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Conclusions
After reading many articles, asking my teammates, and sharing some techniques with other managers, I’ve understood how important feedback is, especially from bottom to top.
As I empathize more with the manager position this past summer, I felt quite comfortable doing the performance review, and overall, I did a pretty valuable feedback interview. And I’m sure the rest of the team has improved their reviews as well.
Win-win!
Never forget that we are part of an XP team, and everything we do is feedback loops.
Take care of them!
Finally, to share those guidelines, we added them to our onboarding process to be helpful for new members. Even though we have it in a private document, our idea is to make it public to the community… So stay tuned for it!
