The Group Skip

[I'd posted this on Medium a few years ago. Copying it here because reasons] 

This post is mainly for managers of managers, and specific to upward feedback, but the principles should hopefully be interesting to everyone. I have been practicing this system for several years now, with an overwhelmingly positive response from both my direct reports, and the people they manage. As always though, your mileage may vary.

One of the best signs of a healthy team is its ability to collect feedback. This usually happens through retrospectives if the team is following agile principles, or through surveys and other approaches if not. Timely feedback helps the team learn, make appropriate course corrections, and continuously innovate.

What’s true for a team is true for its leaders and managers too. Timely feedback helps a manager know what’s working in their approach to management, and what can get better. Some managers proactively seek out feedback on themselves, others prefer their manager collect feedback from their reports and share it with them, and some go with a combination of both. As a manager of managers, I aim for having regular one on one (1/1) skip level meetings with the direct reports of my directs. This is not just to seek feedback on the managers, but for me to learn from individuals on what’s working in the team, what’s not, and how I can help. It’s also an opportunity for me to coach, and be coached.

Photo by Shane Rounce from Unsplash

 

That said, I also schedule what I think of as ‘group skip levels’, where I meet with all the direct reports of my directs, collectively as a group. These meetings are almost exclusively to get feedback on the manager, and I do my best to keep them focused. These are not to override the direct, 1/1 feedback, but complement it.

The basic idea is that often times one gets more feedback in a group setting than what one would get through a 1/1 meeting. There could be a few aspects that you, as a team member, may shy away from calling out in a 1/1, or in written upward feedback, as you may consider it too trivial, or something which impacts just yourself. However, if you hear someone else talk about it first, you’d feel confident about bringing it up too, knowing that it’s not just you who felt that way.

I ask questions in three broad categories in these meetings, and for the most part, stay silent and take notes. The first category is around strengths the manager exhibits, the second on opportunities, and the last on the team. Since the first two categories are fairly well known and obvious, I’ll expand on the last.

I ask three sub-questions in this category:

Do you feel like a team?
Answers to this have varied from “obviously we do, why do you ask?”, to “yes, but..”, and “a team with a boss”, to “of course not, we aren’t a team.” This question gives me insight into team building capabilities, which I believe is really important for a manager.

What are the achievements the team feels happiest about during this time horizon?
This helps give me a sense of how the team thinks about itself — are the achievements a collection of parts, or is there a cohesive, greater whole which the team feels good about? Does that align with the overall mission and purpose of the team?

What are the missed opportunities for the team this time horizon?
This provides insight into areas the team feels they are capable of handling as a group, but did not get around to addressing, which may be due to different priorities, or not enough alignment across the team and the manager. To me, a healthy team isn’t one which agrees all the time, but rather aligns and commits to decisions after debating them internally. I also probe to get a sense of how the manager encourages debate within their team, and how they create space for discussion.

I write down notes as people speak in these meetings, and after a few minor edits for language and typos, send it to each of my directs within a day of the meeting. We talk about it in our next 1/1, and use it to drive specific actions and course corrections as applicable. I sometimes arrange a follow up with the teams after a few weeks, and see if things have changed, especially in areas where the concerns were a bit more acute. While it’s good to seek out feedback, it becomes effective only if you have acted on it, or explained why you chose not to, thereby creating a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement.