07/12/2020
Dear Leaders, Happy Monday.
You likely have only three more Mondays of 2020 left.
This weeks leaders letter concentrates on reviewing your team of managers feedback from their team.
Performance can be tricky to understand. As a leader, your performance is based on how the teams underneath performance and how close you are to the targets you set at the beginning of the year.
You have likely heard of skips, skip catch-ups and skip 1-2-1’s are commonplace in large organisations but have you considered how you review monthly reviews and quarterly reviews?
Something that can be frustrating is how you can understand how your management team and the set of managers underneath are performing. It is also an area many busy managers don’t see as important as attending more meetings or replying to more emails.
Being able to proactively review and receive unfiltered feedback can be difficult but not impossible. Your teams are likely providing feedback to their line manager in the form of a monthly or quarterly review.
Something I am a huge advocate of is opening up and reading your direct reports reviews and the feedback provided by the team. You will see a variety of feedback you likely don’t see yourself and you will see how they interact with the different members of the team, especially when in their one to ones and behind closes doors / closed video calls. This will work for teams leads, department leads and management team members.
You may also undercover your hidden leaders, those in management positions or those speaking up and informing their managers of potential issues and where to drive the business forward.
This approach could help with mentoring and coaching opportunities, a way to proactively improve company culture and an opportunity to improve company-wide communications.
You will likely see patterns of feedback, often ignored by your managers, these are areas you cannot overlook and have to proactively manage and nurture your managers into the right areas or bring in external experts to help evolve your business.
Moving forward consider in on focusing in on making the time to review the direct feedback your managers are receiving and help them to improve their management styles, their management approach and improve the working environment for your middle management and their teams.
Your next set of leaders and the teams around them deserve your time and experience to guide the people and company forward.
Thanks and have a proactive week.
Danny
P.S. If you are looking to improve your team, reach out to develop your management team.
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