Expert Answer
Anonymous
As a manager, there are a few things I am looking at the measure my progress and improvement.
The first thing I look at is having clear measurable success metrics for the team that aligns with the org and company and working towards meeting that goal. My current team is responsible for delivering mission-critical messages to our end users. We have various metrics tracking the reliability of our backend systems and the deliverability of our messages. To make sure we are tracking our success metrics, we do a monthly review of our core metrics and have in-person discussions if there are any potential problems or a way to improve our metrics.
The other thing I look at is people management. There are two main areas here. One is growing people and the other is doing performance management. For performance management, I have continuous conversations around performance and expectations utilizing my 1-1 time with my reports so there is no surprise when there is a performance issue. When I had someone who was marked as below expectation, the person agreed with the ratings because we had continuous conversations. While the IC was improving and got back on track, the annual performance review looked at the past year and the IC wasn’t surprised by the rating. For growing people, I also utilize 1-1 time and discuss individuals' short-term and long-term goals. I discuss with my reports where are growth areas, and how we can find opportunities to help them grow. For example, I had a mid-level engineer who was interested in improving their technical leadership skill and getting more involved in defining and scoping projects phase. I started inviting the IC to meetings with stakeholders and had a quick sync after such meetings to discuss the meeting and describe why I answered some questions in a certain way. The IC is now one of the senior engineers in the team and he is effectively leading projects involving multiple teams.
To receive feedback and be aware of what I am doing well or need to improve on, I do two things. I have my reports meet with my manager once a quarter where they can provide feedback to my manager without me being present, and later my lead will relay the feed to me with his input as well. The other thing is my current company does pulse surveys twice a year. When the survey results are out, I have my team get together and discuss the results and provide more context without me being present. I review the final outcome and create action items as needed. For example, one of the feedback I got was improving the overall recognition of our work. I started announcing our project deliveries and impact to the broader group.
