Evaluating Manager Effectiveness Through the Lens of Others

Leadership and management are widely recognized as necessary for the success of any team or business, yet we rarely address the challenges of assessing those skills directly, focusing instead on secondary indicators such as overall team performance. But what happens when managers are held accountable for their individual contributions or their impact as force multipliers rather than being limited to a generic assessment of team performance? How might such mechanisms be structured and how would the overall organization benefit? Of course, managers must retain accountability for the performance of their team but the goal should be to identify those situations where a team is successful because of the person at the helm. Fortunately, the answers may be simpler than you think. In fact, many companies already have the ability to take an accountability-driven approach to leadership performance assessments and are lacking only the fortitude to fully commit.

Perhaps the most basic steps in introducing accountability are creating clearly articulated goals and holding leaders accountable for team failures, as opposed to only lauding them for team success. There are very few ways for a single individual to carry their team over a finish line and there are myriad ways for a manager to be a wrench in the works. Yet rarely are team leaders truly held accountable for negative results as this can feel “harsh” to the business owners and senior leaders who are, themselves, part of the same failing chain of command. We see this phenomena regularly, regardless of the business size, ownership status or industry. In the corporate world, it often appears as though a key criteria for promotion is simply to be a “good guy.” For some reason, being a “good guy,” someone who is well liked by the executive teams and senior peers, is valued more than being a good leader. The “good guy” criteria can even be used as forgiveness for an underperforming team. In smaller businesses, the “good guy” concept is often reframed in terms of loyalty. I cannot tell you how many conversations I’ve had with small business owners about the promotion of a loyal employee despite a clearly unqualified resume and consistently lackluster performance reviews. When these are the criteria, how can you hold a leader accountable for poor performance? After all, they’re a loyal, good guy. Unless managers are consistently held accountable for team performance, successful or struggling, a business is committing to suboptimal performance.

Leveraging team feedback when assessing managers can be seen as putting “too much power” in the hands of teams, but consider the long term impact of this attitude. The best manager I ever had made me feel seen, heard, and valued despite my relatively junior status at the time. I bent over backwards to ensure that I met the goals he set for me and that he, in turn, looked good to his superiors. If offered an opportunity to express this view, my endorsement of his leadership would have directly reflected the force multiplier he was - encouraging me to go beyond and do more than I might have on my own. I grew as a professional under his watch more than at any other time in my career. I have also had the experience of working with the polar opposite leader. This individual, rather than providing me with challenging opportunities, took them all on himself and kept me in the dark on decisions that impacted my organization. While the team still met our goals, my time in this role can be compared to working in a windowless sound-proofed room, which severely stifled my performance and my development as a leader. My feedback, had it ever been requested, would have similarly reflected his impact on my own contributions, negative as they were. Unfortunately, because he was one of the “good guys”, I suspect such feedback would have been ignored. A leader’s failure to support the humanity of their team members is no guarantee that the team will miss its goals but it does ensure that the team will fall short of its potential. When a lone individual has the power to multiply or minimize the contributions of an entire team, they should be assessed and held accountable for the results they are either creating or denying the company. 

Assessing management performance has consistently been a challenge, but for years, companies have searched out the “voice of the customer”. They have used the data to make critical changes to their products, delivery mechanisms, customer service or anything else identified by the customer through surveys. The focus is on boosting the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which ultimately drives customer loyalty, sales, and profitability. Companies form entire organizations around the voice of the customer, and have found that acting on the results has favorable business impact. Many companies have NPS as a goal on all leader scorecards and the results are included in the compensation calculation. This intense focus serves only to highlight the disconnect in assuming that the voice of the employee is unrelated to driving productivity and profitability. If a manager’s scorecard included a measure for capturing the voice of the employee, sub-optimal managers could be trained or weeded out before they destroy the present, and potentially the future, motivation of their employees.

As an internal parallel to “voice of the customer” surveys and NPS, many organizations have created 360 feedback, pulse surveys, employee engagement surveys and other mechanisms to directly assess how team members view their leaders. Yet few organizations use these metrics directly in evaluating management performance. Instead of leveraging 360 results as an objective assessment of subjective characteristics, the surveys are viewed more as a checkbox and those things we “ought to do.” In defense of this attitude, it is difficult to convince people that the survey results are confidential, which can create an underlying concern that the report will be treated quantitatively - a perspective that is often exacerbated by the inclusion of a verbatim section that is truly difficult to anonymize. Indeed, companies that embrace the 360 are still likely to leverage the results as directional at best and the managers for whom the report is generated often dismiss negative findings by saying “I know who that is and he / she doesn’t like me.” But the lack of faith in the results is a communication issue and a failure of the leadership to place appropriate emphasis on the data rather than a fundamental flaw in the methodology. “S/he doesn’t like me” may be another way of saying “I am failing in my responsibility to support him/her”, a rephrasing that indicates a leadership flaw. In any one case, this data may reflect a failing on either side of the relationship but as more of the team indicates such a lack of faith, there comes a point where the data should be heard. Despite the fact that using specific targets and thresholds could account for minor personality conflicts, the results are too often used as general indicators rather than directly influencing a performance assessment. 

Beyond direct feedback from teams, there is also an opportunity in larger organizations to track the performance of team members when they no longer report to that individual. While the track record of any individual likely reflects that person and the next manager as much as the manager being assessed, over time, trends will emerge. Organizational longevity and success depends on a steady stream of developed talent and the ability to raise up individuals within the system. Consider for a moment how a large organization might resemble the NFL. There is competition between teams, but if every team played great football, the entire league would benefit from a growing fanbase. Now consider a leader like Bill Belichick. He stacks up the wins for his corner of the organization but, so far at least, few of the coaches or players he has trained have gone on to great success on other teams. In his role, he’s like the highly skilled sales leader, racking up outstanding sales results for his organization, while not necessarily developing leaders that leave and strengthen the overall league. As a long time Patriots fan, I am less concerned about the other teams achieving similar greatness through the gift of a highly developed coach trained under Belechick’s watch. But if I truly look at the league as a whole, I could see where the overall organization could benefit if he could develop others’ ability to lead with skills similar to his own. Of course, the NFL is too loosely affiliated for there to be any realistic chance of someone telling Bill that his wins are less important than the health of the entire league, but most large companies have several Belichicks running loose. Few of those organizations have as good an excuse for letting the short term results of a small corner of the organization outweigh the greater good of their other, and future, employees. 

I have written several articles about the importance of supporting the whole person, valuing emotional and mental health along with business results, and holding leaders accountable to their team’s feedback is one way to walk the talk on this front. Even those leaders who are failing to give this support may be trying to do well but the intent is far less important in this case than the impact felt by the team. Tightly coupling team performance with a manager’s assessment is a risky proposition but it is a risk that many organizations already take when they reward managers for positive results. Companies must ensure that if a manager receives credit for victories, they also take equal responsibility for losses. An organization must decide whether the short term, localized results of a single team are more important than the overall well being of the whole. People tend to deliver what is measured so if employee support and long term results are truly what is important, be sure to choose your metrics carefully. 

Postscript: In technical organizations, the lack of detailed accountability around management assessments also contributes to a “leadership drain” with top talent filtering onto individual contributor tech tracks. For more on this phenomenon, see Belle Walker’s latest article.