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.

Speak Up!

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard the following statement in performance reviews: “He is a great engineer. Keeps quiet and does his job.” Most managers nod after hearing this, acknowledge the engineer and discuss a totally different person for promotion. I’ve also lost count of the number of engineers who get frustrated at not getting promoted after being told they are doing a great job.

Why does this happen so often, especially in the Indian software industry? Here are a couple of reasons why I, as a manager, tend to pass over the quiet folks when looking for a senior engineer who can excel as a leader.

First, I expect the senior engineer to be able to influence her peers and business leaders, especially across geographies. I work in India, in the software product development space, where the ability to be crisp and clear in describing your point of view is extremely important. The engineer could be talking to architects, product managers or heads of business units, who may not have a lot of time to spend in detailed discussions. If the engineer is a quiet recluse who finds it difficult to open up and speak in a broad setting, I will not have the confidence that she can influence business and technology direction for the product she is working on. On the other hand, a person who is articulate and can convey her point in a few sentences would be far more effective.

Second, I also expect the engineer to mentor and motivate other engineers. I’d like him to set an example, be a person other engineers can look up to and learn from. I’d like him to help nurture ten other engineers like him, which would raise the team’s overall performance. I would need to see evidence that the engineer can act as an energy amplifier, before deciding to promote him. Here again, a quiet person who does his job well may not be the best possible candidate.

I do realize this topic could be controversial, especially in India where we have been taught to be quiet in schools, and often rapped on the knuckles if we speak up. However, the more we speak up, the more confident we get, the more influential we become. Changing the world is then just a step away.

On Decision Making

A short video that I did for the Intuit India Managers' Forum, back in April.

Management and the Movies

Walk into any bookstore and chances are you’ll find at least a quarter of the store stocked with books on management. If the store is in an airport, I’ll wager it’s close to 70%. Luminaries like Peter Drucker, CK Prahlad, Tom Peters et al smile down on you benevolently, encouraging you to purchase their book and change your life forever. You steal a glance at the man in the grey suit, purchasing Tom Friedman’s latest along with the 90 page flavor of the month, Who Moved My Mouse. You feel you are missing out on something, you feel you’ll be less of a manager if you don’t read these books. You feel you need to spend thousands on these hardbound tomes, to earn your pay.

I have an alternative. Go to the movies. Watch films like The Godfather. Twelve Angry Men. Apollo 13. Braveheart. Watch the greatest movie ever made, Sholay. Go ahead and combine business with pleasure. Trust me, you’ll learn a lot.

Need to know how to get someone to agree with your point of view? Make him an offer he can’t refuse. How to convince eleven peers to reconsider their opinion? Observe Henry Fonda’s Juror #8 in Twelve Angry Men. Intense collaboration, critical decisions being made as the clock is ticking away? The pressure cooker ‘Houston, we have a problem’ situation in Apollo 13. Inspirational leadership in the face of insurmountable odds? William Wallace in Braveheart or King Leonidas in 300. Take your pick.

In closing, do consider of course, our very own Thakur Baldev Singh, from Sholay. Recruiting skills? Check. Watch the khote sikka dialog and the train robbery scene. He sure knew how to identify talent. Mission statement? Very clear, very precise: Gabbar, alive. He also displays an amazing utilization of scarce resources in achieving that objective. The Thakur’s only shortcoming though, was that he was a hands-off manager. Not his fault, of course.