“I don’t know what you do.”
Not the best way to kick off a feedback meeting.
But there I sat, opposite the manager of my manager (my “skip-level manager”) who informed me bluntly.
I’d set this meeting after collecting my first round of feedback for my 360-degree review. As part of the second round, I was openly sharing the results with everyone who had been asked to complete the survey, and using it to have a discussion for further insights.
I thought it was going to be a great chance to finally have a one-on-one discussion with my skip-level manager and learn what he thought of the work I was doing.
Alas, it rapidly dawned on me that he had no idea.
“How can he be this ill-informed?”
“What the heck is my manager sharing with him?”
These thoughts and more were running through my head.
Hastily abandoning the original meeting topic, I gave him the elevator pitch for the topics I was responsible for and the projects the team was working on.
Several of the team’s recent launches had enjoyed great internal visibility, but it appeared the information hadn’t made it to him (or at very least he had forgotten). So, I asked what I could be doing to better support him.
He immediately rattled off a couple of tasks — neither of which were within my domain and therefore something I could help with.
It was frustrating not being able to say “yes” to help him with any of the tasks — but the responsibility was clearly within other teams, and in fact some of the things he wanted were already underway. He seemed not to be aware of this either.
I felt at a loss. I resolved to try to better educate him on the work we were doing. If he didn’t know what we were doing, then obviously in his eyes the work was neither valuable nor making an impact.
As he was C-level and without much availability, I offered a short (20-minute) monthly alignment meeting where I could go a bit more in-depth on a different project area each time to increase his awareness. He readily accepted.
Although I left the meeting without actionable feedback for my 360-degree review, I still felt I had learned a valuable lesson. I made a commitment to focus on improving the relationship with my skip-level manager.
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Credits:
Read aloud by the author.
Image credits:
Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash
Music credits:
True Feelings: Relaxing Lofi by The Turquoise Moon
Relaxing Lo Fi Chill by Sondé
Sofa Sleeping by Jon Presstone
Cultivating Skip-Level Relationships for Career Growth