A manager’s success is measured by how well their team perform. This introduces some vagueness to their performance, as we only see it by proxy. I heard these five points from Hans, one of my managers on how he evaluates his manager reports.
- Team performance: This is a summary of each team member’s manager’s reports. Opens up the conversation on how the manager makes sure the team members are successful, and if they are not, what the manager does to change the situation.
- Team engagement: this is more about the relationship to reports, whether is it developing or stagnating, and how well the team sees the manager as the go-to person to solve problems. If the reports are working together as a team, it’s also about how the team is behaving beyond individuals.
- Product ownership: own the products in their domain, and have a good understanding of challenges, projects, plans, visions, and relation to the overall strategy. Also includes being able to connect the dots across initiatives and being a good sparring partner in the domain. Helps the manager of managers to avoid being surprised by random questions from stakeholders.
- Stakeholder management: How well the manager can build and maintain relationships with stakeholders. This helps get things done especially for designers embedded in product teams, but more generally smooths out projects.
- Initiatives: Things not falling under the other categories, but impacting performance in other areas. Extra product, operations, design team related, or any other work the manager is doing. Also making sure to overwhelm managers.
What I like about these points, is that aspiring seniors who are eyeing the management track can also take a hint on what they need to get better at.
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