Do you get appraised by your subordinates?

How does it make you feel? Tell me about when you’ve been appraised.
I was thinking earlier today - it would be useful if my colleagues or subordinates would rate my performance and point out areas for improvement, things I’ve done that they have disliked or disagreed with.

Of course I am fairy convinced that if such a thing did happen I would be immediately on the defensive, and probably take a self-esteem hit.

I have one colleague who does point out where I have done something that he would do differently, and every time I immediately defend my actions. But this person also tends to be off the mark about 90 percent of the time, and also tends to stick his head in the sand and shy away from risky decisions.
On the even rarer occasions when someone else has given me constructive critisism I have taken it on board and actually benefited from it.

It’s dangerous. When I was a manager we had an appraisal process which wound up with red/orange/green ratings on several different metrics. The last one I got was all green except for one orange, much better than my boss and my VP. I soon lost my group in the great flattening we went through.

Now I’d like to think this was because they thought I was so technically skilled I could still contribute technically, but I have my doubts. :slight_smile:

In all honesty I had just enough people reporting to me to get a rating at all, and I’ve enjoyed not going to useless meetings. But it might not be a good idea to get better scores than your management.

Well, we have an annual survey that asks questions about the supervisor (which is me). It pretty much clues me in as to what I’m not doing in a way my guys would like me to. But no direct appraisal, really. Just that.

I have to conduct student evaluations almost every year and then I just summarize their comments and hand over the summary to my dept. head. This is in a college. I guess it helps a little.

I do student evaluations every other year or so, just for my own use. It’s been helpful at times in tweaking the way I approach parts of the curriculum.

At my last place of work we had what they called “360-degree appraisals” for management. The same form was filled out by 2 or 3 subordinates, 2 or 3 peers, and 2 or 3 “customers” (internal co-workers my team supported.)

It was all supposed to be anonymous. I had a staff of ten, but I still knew who my folks were by their answers. It was very enlightening and I found it beneficial.

But then, I’m an excellent boss… :cool:

We just did this. I clearly keep most people happy but piss someone off. When we brought this in, the idea was supposed to be that it would motivate us to be better managers etc. But I have no idea which of the dozen or so people involved I am pissing off or why. So where do I start? Pointless.

If it makes sense to evaluate your employees on their work, why doesn’t it make sense to evalutate the managers? We ARE their work.

I wish more places would do this. I’ve had managers that were great at managing, but lousy at personal interactions. I’ve had managers that acted like your best buddy, but couldn’t actually manage. Heck, I had one manager that we all joked was only good for keeping track of vacation time.

Lobsang, you mentioned that you would probably get defensive. Do you keep that reaction in mind when it comes time to hold evaluations of your subordinates? They probably feel exactly the same way.

I am a subordinate. I had a boss for all of two years, we had this great opportunity to appraise him, give him feedback. We wrote it all down “anonymously”, which was a crock of shit, not because they told, but because there were two different offices involved and he cared about one and not the other, so one gave him only glowing reviews, and the other not so much. We were of the second half, and this wasn’t a surprise.

Anyway the fucker listened to everything, promised to do better, and the very next day went back to his old behavior. So - what’s the point? If you’re gonna do it, do it seriously.

Posteth Lobsang, “Do you get appraised by your subordinates?”

Every frickin’ day. So long as it’s kept in the lunch room and they accomplish their assigned tasks, I don’t care what they think of me.

Officially? In writing? Going into my “record?” No.