Who Evaluates the Manager?

We spend a lot of time evaluating people.

We assess performance. We discuss strengths and weaknesses. We establish goals, review expectations, and provide feedback about where someone can improve.

But there is a question we ask far less often:

Who evaluates the person doing the evaluating?

Years ago, I decided to ask my team to evaluate me.

Not my supervisor. Not an executive above me. The people I was responsible for managing every day.

I created roughly 20 questions and asked them to be candid.

What was I doing well?

Where did I need to improve?

How could I better support them?

Did they feel their skills were being used effectively?

What did they believe our department did well?

Where were we struggling?

What areas did they need the most help in?

And perhaps most importantly, what was I doing or not doing that was affecting their ability to succeed?

I received some of the most honest and critical feedback of my career.

Some of it was encouraging.

Some of it was difficult to read.

All of it was valuable.

That experience became a turning point for me because it forced me to confront something that can be uncomfortable for anyone responsible for other people:

There can be a significant difference between how you believe you manage and how people experience your management.

Intentions matter, but experience matters too.

You may believe you communicate clearly while your team feels they rarely know what is happening.

You may believe you are giving people autonomy while they experience your approach as disengagement.

You may believe you are protecting your team by making every difficult decision yourself while others feel they are never trusted with meaningful responsibility.

You may think you are accessible simply because your door is open.

The people working with you every day may see something entirely different.

That does not automatically mean they are right about everything.

Management requires judgment. There are decisions that cannot be made by committee, information that cannot always be shared, and responsibilities that ultimately belong to the person in charge.

But feedback does not have to be a verdict to be valuable.

Feedback is information.

And good information gives us an opportunity to adjust.

After receiving that feedback, I began thinking less about what I believed people needed from me and became more intentional about understanding what they actually needed from me.

That distinction changed the way I managed.

Some people needed more communication.

Some needed greater independence.

Some needed encouragement.

Some needed clearer expectations.

Some needed opportunities they were not receiving.

Some simply needed to know that I trusted them.

The lesson was not that I needed to become a different person for every employee. The lesson was that effective management requires enough self-awareness to recognize that the same approach will not work equally well for everyone.

And I would never have understood some of those things without asking.

The Hard Part Is Not Asking

Asking for feedback is the easy part.

Receiving it is where the real work begins.

If you ask the people you manage to tell you the truth, you have to create an environment where telling you the truth is actually safe.

If people believe candor will lead to retaliation, defensiveness, damaged relationships, or subtle punishment, they will tell you what they think you want to hear.

At that point, the exercise becomes meaningless.

You cannot ask someone what you need to improve and then spend ten minutes explaining why their answer is wrong.

You cannot request honesty and then become distant when someone gives it to you.

You cannot invite criticism and then punish people emotionally for being critical.

If you ask, you have to be prepared to listen.

That does not mean accepting every comment as absolute truth. It means resisting the immediate instinct to defend yourself long enough to understand what someone is trying to tell you.

Listen.

Reflect.

Look for patterns.

Ask yourself whether there is truth in what you heard.

Then decide what you are going to do with it.

The Blind Spots You Cannot See

Self-reflection is one of the most important disciplines in professional growth.

But self-reflection also has limitations.

We evaluate ourselves through the lens of our own intentions.

The people around us experience the consequences.

That distinction matters.

Sometimes the blind spot is called a blind spot precisely because you cannot see it yourself.

The people around you often can.

That is why I eventually realized this was not something I wanted to do once. It needed to become part of how I evaluated myself year after year.

Because managing people should never become an exercise in believing we have figured it all out.

People change.

Teams change.

Organizations change.

And we should change too.

The same qualities that made you effective five years ago may not be what your team needs from you today.

The only way to know is to stay curious enough to ask.

For organizations, there is also a larger opportunity here.

We routinely create formal performance evaluation systems for employees while sometimes giving managers, directors, and executives very little structured feedback from the people who experience their management every day.

Perhaps that deserves reconsideration.

Whether it comes through a formal 360-degree process, an anonymous survey, periodic employee feedback, or a simple set of thoughtfully constructed questions, there is tremendous value in creating an avenue for people to evaluate those responsible for managing them.

Not to embarrass anyone.

Not to undermine authority.

Not to turn management into a popularity contest.

But to make the people entrusted with leading others better at what they do.

There may be few sources of professional feedback more direct than the people who experience your decisions, communication, expectations, and management style every day.

The question is whether we are willing to hear them.