I am not totally certain that these are the real questions employees are asked at Google, but they sound pretty good to me and the author of this original article seems pretty credible. 🤔
How It Works
According to the author, the employees are given a survey with these 3 10 questions where they are asked to give an answer between 1 and 5. They are then asked two open-ended questions, "What would you recommend your manager keep doing? What would you have your manager change?". Here are the 11 questions to be answered with a number between 1 and 5 (where 1 is strongly agree and 5 is strongly disagree).
The Questions
- My manager gives me actionable feedback that helps me improve my performance.
- My manager does not "micromanage" (get involved in details that should be handled at other levels).
- My manager shows consideration for me as a person.
- The actions of my manager show that he/she values the perspective I bring to the team, even if it is different from his/her own.
- My manager keeps the team focused on our priority results/deliverables.
- My manager regularly shares relevant information from his/her manager and senior leaders.
- My manager has had a meaningful discussion with me about career development in the past six months.
- My manager communicates clear goals for our team.
- My manager has the technical expertise (e.g., coding in Tech, selling in Global Business, accounting in Finance) required to effectively manage me.
- I would recommend my manager to other Googlers.
- I am satisfied with my manager's overall performance as a manager.
My Thoughts On these Questions
Would you want to work in a company where they ask you these questions every 6 months? As an employee when review time comes around I often roll my eyes and think, "whatever, more office politic ceremonies taking me away from coding", but as a manager and CEO I want to know- I want to know if people are unhappy or if their boss is doing a shit job or if someone is actually a superstar loved by everyone. It requires extra effort and critical thinking from the employees, but hey you're paying them to work, right? 😂 Plus, they ultimately benefit the most from improving the process and keeping managers accountable. It terms of the questions themselves there are a few I especially like. Giving good feedback all of the time is tough, and so question 1 will really keep the managers on their toes in terms of really looking at something handed to him or her and giving good feedback. I like that. I don't think anyone wants to be micromanaged, so 2 is a fine question to ask. 3 and 4 are kind of just, "the manager is polite and nice to me" type questions imo. 5 is kind of keeping everyone on track and regularly communicating the overall project vision. Sure, I could see that being important. I think 6 is a really good one. Even when you are just a lowly peon scrub at a company, it's still nice to have an overall sense of what the high up leadership is excited about and what direction they want to move. Otherwise, you get tasks handed to you where you are like, "why in the f*&% are we even doing it like this?". Question 8 is similar to this but to me it sort of subtly implies that the smaller, day-to-day goals are also communicated well. 9 is an excellent one because I've seen dozens of managers who are simple too incompetent and unskilled to provide good feedback to the subordinates! They just grind out the years, sitting at a desk for a paycheck, make friends, and somehow they rise to become a director of people of whom this person has no clue what they are doing! I think it's great to have the opportunity to say to everyone, "hey, in terms of the technical aspects of what we are doing, my boss is a f*&%in' idiot. 😄". Imo non-technical managers aren't very useful since pretty much anyone with a half-working brain can "be a nice person" and "remind everyone to do their tasks". Questions 10 and 11 the ultimatum questions that basically boil down to, "Is this person a good manager?". The open-ended follow up questions are great too because people may want to clarify something, explain their answers more, etc. Overall, I think it's a great leadership evaluation survey, and I would for sure give it out to my own employees if they don't think it's too bothersome.
A Checklist For Yourself
Suppose you are at a scrappy startup that doesn't even do evaluations (ain't nobody got time fa dat). You still want to be an awesome boss, right? I think it's a good exercise to just read through this list every once in a while when you are alone and ask yourself, "what would my subordinates rate me for this question, and why? How would they rate other managers here, and why?". This is a great way to keep yourself and others in check because especially when you are the leader there's pressure, loads of money on the line, a million things that all need to be done right away then it's very easy to just be an asshole and forget that these are real people and this is their life. So, in the long run it's best to be a good boss, and if you can honestly give yourself a strong rating in all these questions then chances are you are a pretty decent boss (either that or you are totally delusional about how your employees feel. Lol).
Circling Back To Kate
For those of you who don't know, I am the founder of a company called Kate From HR where we make an awesome chatbot (named Kate) that claims "to be the ULTIMATE chatbot for your organization!". It would be pretty cool to have evaluations automated and anonymous and do it right in Slack or whatever chat program the company uses. It's a perfect feature to add to our "HR-related chatbot", and these questions provide an excellent templates for my clients to start from when creating their own evaluation questions. So, big thanks Google and Jeff Haden for releasing these evaluation questions so we can all use them too!
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