What Else Is Important?

When thinking about performance management, always keep in mind this basic mantra: "Set expectations, hold them accountable, provide them feedback, and react to the results." Regardless of what tools, frameworks, or metrics you use, it boils down to those four things. But other, second-order considerations come into play based on those four things—career growth, motivation, and relationships—and we'll talk about them in this course as well.

Career growth

As you gain time with your team (and they with you), you'll be more and more responsible for their growth and development. Obviously, your team members will need to "do the work" to earn the promotions and develop the skills that will help them ascend in their career, but yours will be the hand on the tiller, so to speak, leading them into projects and opportunities to provide or demonstrate that growth. Growing the people on your team is your responsibility, and one metric you should be holding for yourself is the growth of the people reporting to you. How many of them have received promotions? How many of them reached a point where you "had to" promote them up and out of your team? In sports leagues, this is often referred to as a "coaching tree": the assistants of some coaches go on to become full-fledged coaches themselves. You should be trying to grow your coaching tree as you grow as a manager.