…or shrink them into insignificance Link to heading
Having a spectacular manager early in your career is a kinda profound experience. They somehow see you, understand your goals, weaknesses and likely some of your neuroses too. What they never do is learn those things while you are both awkwardly filling out Likert scales and quibbling over Key Results in the HR-supplied Annual Performance Review template.
Nobody likes peformance reviews, and for many folks they’re straight-up anxiety inducing. If either a people leader or their team member learns something new during an annual performance review, to me that’s a flag to peer deeper into what additional skills are needed by that people leader.
I’ll almost always start by looking at the quality of their 1:1s. How much time do they spend on work vs getting to know each other as actual humans who possess lives outside work? Are they run at least fortnightly? Are more than 1 in 5 missed? Are the missed ones rescheduled, or are they cancelled?
It’s not part of the job to try become every team members’ best friend, mentor or confidant (that’ll inevitably come off as insincere and offputting), but you DO have to discover the motivations of each individual (and often help them discover their motivations too as their goals evolve over time).
Taking this part of the role seriously as a people leader means you can (and likely will) literally change your team members’ life paths for the better, and it’s incredibly rewarding when you realise you’ve helped someone grow – a rare kind of satisfaction that I promise you cannot be found in the text fields above the submit button or signature block in the Annual Performance Review form.