Resources for evaluating supervisors

September 16, 2018 10:30 AM

My workplace has no culture or history of evaluating supervisors/managers. I'd like to change that, starting with myself. About six months ago, I took over a team of about 40 people, and I'd like to conduct some kind of evaluation of my work as a manager, identify weak spots, etc. I think this would have to be a largely anonymous exercise - my organization's hierarchical nature make me think that my team would be reluctant to be sincere about my shortcomings to my face. Are there any resources/guides for carrying out this kind of evaluation? I have identified another section of the company that would be willing to carry out the process itself, i.e., organize a survey, tabulate results, what have you, but we feel at a loss as to what kinds of questions are most important to be asked, etc. Any pointers?
posted by LingeringMoon to Work & Money (8 answers total)

Best answer: What you're looking for is a 360-degree feedback survey. A quick Google will turn up numerous examples. Here's a free one that looks promising. What I especially like about their questions is that they ask the respondent to evaluate, not rate, the subject (you!). That puts the determination of a norm in the hands of the respondent, eliminating the need to obtain buckets of data from other managers and (preferably) other organizations as well in order to establish stable and meaningful norms. In the interest of building some local norms, though, be sure to retain the data so averages can be compared across people and across time.

There are very, very few organizations out there where such feedback exercises can be done face-to-face, so your instincts are good about ensuring that it's fully anonymous. To be a genuine 360-degree feedback, you'll need to select some peers as well as your boss(es), but make sure the data is tabulated in such a way as to keep the three samples - direct reports, peers, bosses - separate. You'd be surprised how much variation there often is between these groups.

Once the data is collected and has been shared with you, be sure to close the loop with your team. Tell them what you learned from the survey and what you are going to do about the areas identified as relatively weaker. Then follow through. Especially since this is the first go-around in your organization, the respondents will be watching closely to see if their effort (a) was really welcome, (b) will make a difference, and (c) remained truly anonymous. A failure on any of these three points will decrease the likelihood that people will respond at all, let alone honestly, the next time they're asked.
posted by DrGail at 10:56 AM on September 16, 2018 [4 favorites]

Just to illustrate what DrGail said: Several years ago, the president of our institution requested a 360 degree evaluation for himself. It was touted as an anonymous process for his underlings. Well, he got a piece of harshly worded feedback and the executive launched a hunt to find out who was responsible for it. (The feedback was quoted to all of us so we could, I don't know, root out the culprit? so that's how I know what it said. Yes, it was harshly worded, but it was also true, in my opinion.) Guess what, no more 360 degree reviews, and I doubt many employees would participate anyway, knowing what happened last time.

Anyway, my point is, if you want this to work you need to communicate your commitment to anonymity for feedback givers, and your commitment to implementing the feedback you do receive. From your post you seem very sincere about it, which is good. But you do mention that your org is very hierarchical and people would be reluctant to give feedback unless anonymous, so I think you need to emphasize these points.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:16 AM on September 16, 2018 [4 favorites]

There are consultants that will work with your org and try to identify questions based on what you guys are trying to accomplish. If this is something you're interested in, reach out via me fi mail.
posted by pyro979 at 11:50 AM on September 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Agree with all the advice above.

In addition, you might also want to make sure the purpose of the evaluation is very clear to your team, i.e. that it is an opportunity for them to provide feedback that is constructive, actionable, and focused on your role as a manager. I’ve seen these exercises be used as nothing more than a venting process for disgruntled employees (whose grievances may or may not be legitimate) or a way of making personal comments that they wouldn’t dare say out loud. That’s not good for anyone, since the comments are unlikely to be taken on board and the process is devalued.

At my organization, we run these through our training section, which explicitly weeds out anything nasty or personal and “anonymizes” the results further. You might want to consider a similar process.
posted by rpfields at 11:55 AM on September 16, 2018

Honestly, I'm not sure this can be done effectively. I've never seen any kind of supervisor-feedback mechanism that seemed truly anonymous (how do I know that you won't put two-and-two together based on my feedback, even if my name's not on it?) and that I trusted would be safe for me to fill out honestly. Judging by the complaints I usually hear from management after these things go out ("Participation was not quite what we had hoped for…") I'm far from the only one. As an employee there is zero upside to me in filling out a survey like that voluntarily, but plenty of potential downside.

If they're mandatory, I just fill them out with a 5-out-of-5 in every category and leave no written comments. When I had to do mandatory instructor evaluations back in college, this was what 98% of my fellow students did.

If you do have employees who feel safe giving you feedback, you should already be hearing it from them. They'll tell you what they think is and isn't working, they'll feel free to ask for stuff to be done differently and will tell you when a new process or whatever is really making their lives easier. If you don't have a culture where that kind of thing is possible, I don't think any amount of anonymous survey-based feedback is going to be helpful. You'll certainly get some kind of feedback from such a process, but it's likely to be incomplete and misleading due to the power dynamics in play.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 12:34 PM on September 16, 2018 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Radical Candor is specifically about how to foster a culture of direct feedback and has plenty of suggestions for how managers can build an environment where their direct reports feel comfortable giving it to them. It might be worth a read.
posted by asterix at 3:35 PM on September 16, 2018 [2 favorites]

Maybe instead of focusing on management (i.e. people-oriented) evaluations, you could anonymously focus on morale? One thing I've noticed about every place I've worked is that *no* thought is given to morale at all, and managers seem not to understand that the worse morale is the more the work suffers in numerous, often nuanced ways.
posted by Violet Blue at 6:59 PM on September 18, 2018

Response by poster: Thank you so much for all of these answers - they're very helpful, and exactly what I was hoping for! Will definitely look at the resources suggested. Many, many thanks!
posted by LingeringMoon at 5:28 PM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]