Edition 4: When Did Your Team Last Review You?
Business Momentum: Edition 4
Published: 07/09/2026
Performance reviews usually focus on the employee. But what might you learn if you gave your team the opportunity to review your leadership, communication and management style?
We spend plenty of time reviewing the performance of the people we manage. But good leadership and effective people management also mean being prepared, occasionally, to turn the performance review around.
Whether you’re a business owner, director, manager, supervisor or team leader, managing people inevitably involves reviewing performance, supporting development and helping people do their best work.
In some businesses that’s a formal annual appraisal. In others it’s a regular one-to-one, and in many smaller businesses it’s simply an ongoing conversation between the manager and the person they manage.
However it’s done, we’re generally comfortable asking questions about somebody else’s performance. Are they doing a good job? Are they meeting expectations? Is there something they could be doing better? Do they need more support?
But perhaps there’s another question we don’t ask quite so often.
When did your team last review you?
Not through an employee survey or another HR exercise. I mean having an honest conversation about what it’s like to be managed by you.
Because while we’re considering how well somebody is performing for us, perhaps occasionally we should consider how well we’re performing for them.
And that might tell us considerably more than we expect.
Would They Tell You What You Need to Hear?
We’ve probably all heard somebody say, “My door is always open.”
Perhaps you’ve said it yourself.
It’s a good principle, but having an open door doesn’t necessarily mean people feel comfortable walking through it. There’s an important difference between being available and being approachable.
Think about the people you manage. If one of them disagreed with a decision you’d made, would they tell you? If they thought a process wasn’t working, would they challenge it? If they could see a problem developing with a customer, another member of the team or the way something was being done, would they feel comfortable raising it?
Or would they decide that it was easier to say nothing?
The answer probably has less to do with whether your door is physically open and much more to do with what has happened on previous occasions when somebody has challenged you. How did you react? Did you listen and consider what they were saying, or immediately explain why they were wrong?
None of us particularly enjoys being criticised. When we’re responsible for a business, department or team, it’s very easy to become defensive because we usually have reasons for the decisions we’ve made. But if every challenge is met with an explanation of why we’re right, eventually people learn something: don’t challenge.
That can create a dangerous situation for anybody responsible for managing people. The team continues talking to you, but gradually they start filtering what they say. You hear what they think you want to hear rather than what you might need to hear.
From the manager’s perspective, everything can appear perfectly fine.
From the team’s perspective, perhaps it isn’t.
Good communication isn’t simply about keeping people informed. It’s about creating a relationship where information travels comfortably in both directions, including information we might not particularly want to hear.
Sometimes the most valuable thing somebody in your team can tell you is the thing they were most reluctant to say.
Would You Know Before They Told You?
Now imagine that one of your best people walked into your office tomorrow and handed you their resignation.
Would you be surprised?
It’s an interesting question because people rarely become unhappy, frustrated or disengaged overnight. Usually something changes gradually.
Perhaps somebody who previously contributed ideas stop doing so. Maybe they become quieter in meetings. They still do their job, but some of the enthusiasm disappears. They stop volunteering for things they would once have become involved with.
None of those things necessarily means somebody is about to leave, of course. People have lives outside work and there can be all sorts of reasons for changes in behaviour.
But good managers tend to notice when something has changed, and more importantly, they have the sort of relationship that allows them to ask about it. That’s where the quality of the relationship becomes important.
If somebody is frustrated with their role, struggling with something, unhappy with a decision or simply beginning to wonder whether they still have a future within the business, when would you rather know, when the problem first starts? Or when they’ve accepted another job?
Sometimes a resignation genuinely does come completely out of the blue. But sometimes the signs were there; we simply didn’t recognise them or create the opportunity for the conversation to take place.
Perhaps the question we should be asking isn’t simply, “Are my team happy?”
It might be:
Do I have the sort of relationship with them where they would tell me if they weren’t?
That is a very different question.
Perhaps It’s Time to Turn the Review Around
This brings us back to the traditional review.
The next time you sit down with somebody you manage, whether it’s for a formal appraisal, a regular one-to-one or simply a catch-up, try turning part of the conversation around.
Instead of spending the whole meeting reviewing them, give them an opportunity to review you.
You might ask what you do that helps them perform well. You might ask whether there’s anything you do, or don’t do, that makes their job more difficult. You could ask whether they feel comfortable disagreeing with you, whether there’s something happening in the business that they think you’re not seeing, or what they would do differently if they were managing the team.
Some of the answers may be exactly what you expect.
Others may not be.
And that’s probably where the value is.
This isn’t about allowing somebody else to decide how you should manage. You’re still responsible for making decisions, and you won’t necessarily agree with every opinion or suggestion. It’s about understanding what the working relationship looks like from the other side.
There is one important part of this conversation, though. If you ask somebody for honest feedback, you need to think carefully about how you respond when you receive it.
Imagine asking, “Is there anything I could do differently that would help you?”
They give you an honest answer.
You immediately explain why they’re wrong.
What are the chances they’ll answer honestly next time?
Sometimes the best response isn’t to agree or disagree. It might simply be:
“Thank you. Let me think about that.”
Then actually think about it.
Because asking for feedback and then ignoring it can be worse than never asking in the first place.
How Are We Doing?
We hear a lot about employee engagement, motivation and workplace culture. They’re important subjects, but sometimes the language surrounding them makes improving the relationship with our team sound far more complicated than it needs to be.
Perhaps it starts with better conversations.
The relationship somebody has with the person managing them can influence how comfortable they feel raising a problem, whether they contribute ideas, whether they take responsibility and, ultimately, how they feel about coming to work.
That reaches much further than the relationship between two people. It can influence how the team works together, how customers are treated and how effectively the business performs.
Next time you’re preparing to review somebody, perhaps don’t spend the whole conversation asking:
“How are you doing?”
At some point, turn it around and ask:
“How are we doing?”
You might learn something you weren’t expecting.
Something to Think About…
If the people you manage were given the opportunity to review you today, what do you think they would say?
The more interesting question is whether their answer would be the same as yours.
Business Momentum
Practical thinking to help you move your business forward.
Business Momentum is produced by Mentor Members Ltd, providing practical ideas and thought-provoking questions for business owners and the people responsible for managing and developing teams.
Sometimes moving a business forward doesn’t require another complicated strategy.
Sometimes it starts with a better conversation.
If you’re a business owner, manager, supervisor or team leader in Portsmouth, Southampton or the Isle of Wight, and you feel you or your team would benefit from an independent perspective and practical business mentoring, we’d be pleased to offer you two complimentary mentoring sessions.
We can use the sessions to discuss the challenges you’re facing, the objectives you’re working towards and where some additional support could help you move forward.
Nigel Cook
Founder & Business Growth Mentor | Mentor Members
September 13, 2026
September 13, 2026
September 13, 2026
