The Receiving End of Criticism

By Susan de la Vergne

Leadership gurus and guidebooks dispense a lot of advice about how to deliver feedback to employees, especially when "feedback" really means criticism. But they rarely say much about how to receive criticism. That's because, while delivering criticism is hard, receiving it is harder.

When I was a young manager working the IT group of a large retail bank, my boss rarely delivered feedback anyone would call encouraging. In fact, she could be pretty harsh. I remember some of these conversations.

"I heard you were late to the meeting, and then when you got there you didn't contribute. What was that about? Don't you have any ideas?"

"You left early on Friday. Do you think I don't notice things like that? Employees who excel around here work late on Fridays. Every Friday. If you want to make Assistant Vice President, that's how you do it."

I'm not exaggerating. She said things like that. Probably hadn't read any guidebooks about how to dispense "feedback." More about receiving criticism.

Rating Engineers

A Tool for Engineers and Their Managers

By Gary Hinkle

Engineering managers often ask me how they should "rate" engineers. Recently, I developed a specific tool to assess overall engineering competency. The tool can be used by both the managers doing the rating as well as the engineers being rated, and even if your company has its own rating system, this assessment tool can supplement your system as a general assessment for just about any engineering job.

The tool helps you examine four competencies that are important for engineers' continuous improvement:

Technical Competency

Communication Skills

Leadership Competency

Management Skills

Getting the balance right between those four is a challenge that many engineers never achieve. 

You may wonder why "leadership and management" appear on this list, given that it's an instrument to assess individual contributors. Because leadership is mostly about being influential, trusted and respected. All engineers need these abilities--for reasons that I hope are obvious. Many engineering responsibilities involve work that's management-oriented, such as managing oneself (tasks, time, priorities), contributing to project plans, and accurately estimating the duration of tasks.

I've developed a tool that examines specific criteria in each of these four critical areas. The "Engineering Competency Assessment Tool" is free for subscribers to Engineering Momentum. Click here to download the tool.

Note to hiring managers: you can also use this assessment during the hiring process. Give candidates the assessment to test whether they're candid and open. If they don't own up to any weaknesses, that's a problem. Focus the interview on validating what they view as their strengths, and openly discuss how they can develop in the areas they indicated have room for improvement.

Whether you're sizing up a prospective employee or helping develop employees you already have, this tool can help you do both.