Measuring Performance and Delivering Effective Feedback

Engineering Leadership Roundtable Recap: Managing Underperformance

We just wrapped up our latest monthly Engineering Roundtable here in San Diego, and despite the physical distancing and our collective Zoom burnout, we had a fantastic conversation on this month’s topic, “Managing Underperformance”.

The discussion topic board once we were all done

These events are valuable because they provide inspiration and connection. By listening to peers, you can step back from day-to-day operations at your company and get outside your bubble. In the best case, you can walk away with a few new ideas to try out with your team, and extra motivation to see it through.

This month had tons of great advice and bits of inspiration. Here’s what we covered:

Topic: Measuring performance without undermining trust

Problems we’ve encountered:

Some types of underperformance can be challenging to identify. Weak team members can fly under the radar as their friends and colleagues “cover” for them to keep things on schedule. Pair/mob programming can obfuscate underperformance. Managers can only get so much visibility without literally looking over their shoulder.

Organizational structure can make it challenging to isolate underperformance as well. If a team member is resourced on many projects across teams, they may always have “something important” that keeps them from staying on schedule with you.

Finally, manager must gather information constantly. Sometimes you may only identify an underperforming colleague after they leave. Sometimes you only learn that someone is underperforming when another person leaves out of frustration.

Lessons we’ve learned:

• Peer reviews are critical to keeping communication open. They can be scheduled as part of regular performance reviews, and they can also be made into part of the daily or weekly cadence of team meetings.
• Train people to give effective feedback. It’s not something that comes naturally to most engineers, and it’s the foundation of a culture of high performance.
• Formal or informal canvassing of your organization gives a lot of insight. If you ask everyone in your organization, “Which three people would you most want to work with?” or “Who at the company is most helpful?” you can get insight into who makes your team better (and who doesn’t).
• If your project is a low priority, it’s challenging to keep everyone productive. Sometimes there’s no way around these structural barriers.
• Do what you can to get people to self-identify as “not doing their best work”. Build a culture where everyone is expected to be a team player, and colleagues can hold each other to a high standard and communicate clearly about issues.

Topic: Delivering effective feedback

Problems we’ve encountered:

Engineers can struggle with communication. Peer-to-peer feedback is critical to building a high-performing team. If feedback comes haphazardly and without empathy, strong engineers will leave.

Giving good feedback is challenging because we are human: it’s hard not to take feedback personally. Often when feedback is given, it is not taken to heart, or it leads to excuses and arguments about technicalities.

Lessons we’ve learned:

• It helps to separate facts from assessments when giving feedback. Start by laying out what has actually happened, and do what you can to get agreement on those facts before moving on to your assessment of those facts (and what can be done going forward).
• As you lay out facts, take time to step back and ask, “What do you think?”. Let your team member speak freely, remain calm, and listen carefully.
• Keep in mind that all feedback requires at least two meetings. As a manager, you have time to prepare for a hard conversation, but the receiver is hearing it for the first time. It can be helpful to send out a written recap of the feedback after the meeting, and schedule time to talk about it once it has been fully digested.
• One effective technique is to build team culture around same day, peer-to-peer SBIR feedback. Engineers learn to solicit feedback in real time, and learn how to deliver it effectively. This helps everyone get comfortable giving feedback, and also results in a nice “record” of feedback that the manager can review over time
• Another effective technique is to have something like a “three strikes” rule. Once a manager is sure something is wrong, they can deliver feedback as a “strike” to impart the seriousness of the problem. As strikes accumulate, the previous strikes can be used as a record of prior feedback delivered.

Zoom has been a surprisingly effective tool for the small roundtable discussion format. We’ve replaced the whiteboard with a screen-shared Trello for topic selection, and by keeping everyone in view with Gallery Mode, we can react to people, interject politely, and feel like we’re part of a group.

We’ll be having another event next month. Our topic will be “Communicating Good and Bad News”. If you’re an engineering leader in Southern California, I hope you’ll join our group and attend the event!