I am in a position where I am not technically anyone's supervisor or manager, but 4 people somewhat report to me. My problem is that I feel my boss's actions are undermining my attempts to bring these 4 people to where we both (my boss & I) expect their performance to be.
More details: My boss is technically responsible for twice a year performance reviews of myself and the 4 people who somewhat report to me. He has set up my position to be what he calls an "operations manager"... the responsibilities he clearly expects of me are to monitor the work outputs of the 4 others, both for quality and timliness and provide guidance to them as needed. He holds me responsible for all feedback to the 4 except for the annual review (which he does), and except for any performance issues that rise to a level of formal performance improvement plan. When it comes time for the annual reviews my boss demands that I tell him all of the details of what each of the 4 needs to improve, and then proceeds to give the 4 rather negative reviews. I have observed that these negative reviews seem to leave the 4 confused and frustrated, and I am sympathic with that.
I have tried to balance my comments to my boss with lots of positives about improved performance, including very specific examples. My boss is less interested in these positive examples. I think we're just dealing with a real difference in ideas about performance evaluation... and I'm feeling stuck in the middle. I'm new to any sort of supervision, but it does seem to me it's a strange set up where I'm responsible for day-to-day supervision of these 4 people, but he's really the one they report to. I feel like I need to stop sharing as much detail with my boss about their performance, but I know this would mean I would not be meeting his expectations for me. As things stand now, I wind up feeling like a rat when the 4 people get dragged through the mud in their evals, they know I'm the boss's only source of information... They know I've been demanding and have given them feedback about where I'd like to see changes, but nothing like the highly critical and vague "you'd better shape up" sort of feedback my boss gives in these annual evals.
Can some with more experience offer ideas about how I can better handle this situation? I'm concerned that the way things are going now, the 4 are going lose trust for me, and I've spent a lot of effort trying to build that over the past 8 months.
You may find it useful to
You may find it useful to listen to the casts on performance evaluations in a matrix environment:
Part 1: http://www.manager-tools.com/2006/12/performance-evaluations-in-a-matrix-environment
Part 2: http://www.manager-tools.com/2007/01/performance-evaluations-in-a-matrix-environment-part-2-of-2
Your situation sounds broadly similar to the one described there, people are working for you on a day to day basis but someone else does their performance reviews.
You say you've given them feedback. Is it in the Manager Tools format? Are you doing One on Ones? Are you coaching them? By coaching them you may be able to get to the position where when you tell your boss what the needs for improvement are you can also tell him how that need is being met.
Stephen
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Skype: stephenbooth_uk
DiSC: 6137
Experience is how you avoid failure, failure is what gives you experience.
What about those metrics?
You imply that there are quality and timeliness goals. Measureable metrics are good for this situation. You should be able to provide your boss with the statistics for each team member against their goals. That's the performance your boss probably cares about the most.
And if you provide the right resources to your "team" then they will hit their goals, and everyone's going to be OK.
It's having clear data on behavior and results that matter. If you end up only having subjective info and characterizations ("he does a good job but sometimes quality suffers") then your relationship with your "team" will be poor, regardless of your boss.
John Hack