Photo: Earl Wilson/The New York Times
Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Laura Yecies, the C.E.O. of SugarSync, an online storage service based in San Mateo, California. She says that just as teachers give constructive feedback in a classroom, managers should offer thoughtful performance reviews to employee
Yecies: As you manage and work with more people, you tend to see patterns and get used to different work styles. With more experience, you can more quickly notice when someone is struggling and what they need help with. Do they need more structure? Do they need more help with planning projects? Is it just that they have trouble getting started? I’ve seen that a lot.
I taught for a while at Santa Clara University, and I actually considered being a professor when I left business school. It’s one of the things I really like about managing people — the teaching element, and giving feedback. If you think about it, in an academic setting people expect to get feedback. You’re there to learn. You’re there to improve. If the teacher gives you a B, without any specifics, that’s not an acceptable situation. But that dynamic happens a lot in the workplace.
Bryant: Why is that?
Yecies: Because it’s hard, and people often don’t do things that are hard. People just avoid them unless someone holds them accountable. SugarSync is still small enough that I read every performance review. It’s not about so much agreeing or disagreeing with the rating. It’s about the quality of the review. Has the manager been thoughtful?