You’re a manager who wants to evaluate the performance of your supervisor. What questions should you ask?

1 Assess your goals

Before you start the evaluation, you should clarify your goals and intentions. Why are you doing this? What do you want to achieve? How will this benefit your supervisor, yourself, and the organization? Having a clear purpose will help you frame your questions and feedback in a constructive and respectful way. It will also help you avoid any personal bias or emotional reactions that might cloud your judgment.

2 Review your supervisor's role

The next step is to review your supervisor's role and responsibilities. What are their main tasks and objectives? How do they align with the organizational vision and mission? How do they support your team and other stakeholders? How do they measure their success and impact? By understanding your supervisor's role, you can evaluate their performance based on relevant and realistic criteria. You can also appreciate their strengths and challenges, and identify areas for improvement or recognition.

3 Gather evidence and feedback

To evaluate your supervisor's performance objectively and fairly, you need to gather evidence and feedback from different sources. You can use your own observations, data, reports, surveys, or testimonials to support your assessment. You can also solicit feedback from your peers, subordinates, customers, or partners who interact with your supervisor regularly. You should look for both positive and negative examples of your supervisor's behavior, skills, results, and impact. You should also compare their performance with their previous goals, expectations, and standards.

4 Prepare your questions

Once you have collected enough information, you can prepare your questions for your supervisor. Aim to ask open-ended, specific, and respectful questions that elicit honest and meaningful responses. Avoid leading, accusatory, or vague questions that might put your supervisor on the defensive or confuse them. Good questions might include inquiring about their performance in the past year, what they are proud of and why, how they balance their own workload and supervisory duties, how they communicate and collaborate with their team and other stakeholders, how they handle feedback and criticism, what skills or competencies they want to develop or improve, and what their short-term and long-term goals are and how they plan to achieve them.