Top 20 Questions To Ask Staff in a Supervisor Evaluation

The competence level of staff in an organization is often the yardstick for measuring the success of that company. And a performance evaluation is an effective tool to assess the expertise and capabilities of your workforce.

While it’s typical for managers to evaluate employees, it’s essential to have avenues to ask a manager questions that assess their performance. The management will lead better if they receive timely feedback on the company’s performance from employees, increasing productivity and employee satisfaction. 

In this article, we'll discuss supervisor evaluations and explore the top 20 questions to ask a supervisor in an evaluation. 

Let's get started!

How do you evaluate a supervisor?

You evaluate a supervisor by asking the right questions and intently listening to the answers. With this, you can get a good idea of how well your supervisor fulfills their responsibilities and provide feedback to help them succeed. 

Here are five things to consider when assessing a supervisor: 

Make the process confidential.

Honest feedback is typically not gotten when there's a possibility of reprisal from the evaluators, knowing who the responses came from.

Employees fully express their reservations when organizations protect their identity.

Inquire about challenges.

By asking relevant questions about challenges and setbacks, you can identify issues about work processes, tension among employees, and restrictions due to personal shortcomings. In addition, a supervisor evaluation provides an opportunity to obtain employees' input on addressing these issues.

Find out what’s working.

In addition to evaluating the supervisor’s personality, you should review their performance in the role - what they’re doing right and growth opportunities. Often, there’s no need to fix what isn’t broken - just find a way to improve it. So, it’s essential to find out what’s going well and decipher ways to help it remain that way.

Take necessary action.

Lingering issues are detrimental to a company's success. Once the company identifies and defines challenges, they should be addressed immediately. Addressing challenges can range from improving the management onboarding process, offering leadership coaching to supervisors, optimizing the welfare packages, etc.

Taking timely action shows that the opinions of employees are highly valued. It also builds trust in the organization's leadership.

Follow up.

Supervisor evaluation is an active process, and employees play vital roles in achieving the outcomes of this process. 

Following the execution of an action plan, surveys that help the company see improvements in the manager's performance should be regular sessions.

What Questions Would You Ask To Evaluate A Manager's Performance?

The right questions can make all the difference in gathering valuable information and insights during a supervisor evaluation. Appropriately managing organizations attracts and retains top talents with less difficulty. Hence they perform better than their counterparts competing for these top talents.

To enhance working relationships in the team, addressing negative actions to produce positive outcomes is expedient. And to prevent engagement decline, it’s best to craft the questions to ask your supervisor to address specific actions.

Every manager is different, and while it's impossible to draft questions that apply to every evaluation, some questions serve as a general guide. 

Let’s explore them!

Feedback questions to evaluate a manager's performance should cover four key areas of assessment:

1. Supervisory functions.
2. Effective communication.
3. Maintaining a positive work environment.
4. Work habits.

1. Supervisory functions.

• Does your manager promote teamwork and good working relationships?
• Does your manager delegate authority appropriately?
• Is your leader actively involved in your training and development?
• Is there a clear sense of purpose, direction, roles and responsibilities for you individually and the department?
• Are concerns identified and dealt with timely?

2. Effective communication.

• Does your leader ask and acknowledge inputs and ideas from team members?
• Does the manager communicate openly and honestly with employees?
• Do you receive open and constructive feedback?
• Are you constantly informed of your work status and updates in the organisation?
• Are the metrics used to measure your performance thoroughly explained?

3. Maintenance of a positive work environment.

• Are you positively motivated?
• Are team-supportive actions recognized and rewarded?
• Does your team manager handle conflicts effectively?
• Does your team leader encourage innovation?
• Is your work atmosphere conducive yet efficient?

4. Work ethics.

• Is your manager tactful and resourceful?
• Is there efficient use of time in the team?
• Does your manager maintain a positive work attitude?
• Does your manager demonstrate a good work ethic?
• Does your team lead demonstrate empathy?

How Do You Give Good Feedback To Your Supervisor?

Honest feedback is the gift that keeps giving. While there’s no one-size-fits-all, there are some general rules of thumb when providing feedback to your supervisor.

Some tips include the following:

Be clear and concise

Good feedback is straightforward and devoid of sentiments. It's entirely based on facts and observations, highlighting positives and negatives. It reflects authenticity and confidence in your opinion.

It’s essential to point out the required changes and the impact these changes will have on the overall company's outputs. This makes the evaluation process productive and valuable.

Say positive words

Although feedback to your supervisor typically highlights aspects of leadership you find unsatisfactory, good feedback should begin with appreciative words. Begin by acknowledging the support and efforts put in so far by your supervisor.

Starting positively makes the receiving party more receptive to your observations.

Ask questions

Giving feedback in the form of questions is an excellent strategy. This technique lets you focus on specific actions, making the session more conversational. A response shows that the question is well understood and the management can proffer a solution quicker.

Therefore, make the feedback bidirectional by also evaluating your performance. Ask questions about specific aspects of your work performance. It's a way of letting them know you hold their opinion highly and are open to criticism.

You can go a step further by carrying out self-evaluation. Assembly has the ultimate self-evaluation guide. Check it out.

Be sincere

Being honest and professional makes the evaluation effective. Avoid playing down how you truly feel about certain situations for fear of being disliked. 

Instead, find ways to be sincere without being disrespectful. Constantly being dishonest prevents appropriate actions, and the challenge will persist.

Criticize constructively

Be constructive when pointing out the negative aspects of your team's leadership. A constructive approach focuses on solutions rather than challenges. 

It indicates that the feedback aims to improve the team's effectiveness, not just complaining.

What is constructive feedback for a supervisor?

Constructive feedback is an assessment that helps the recipient improve outputs and produce better outcomes. If feedback doesn't induce positive corrective results, it's not constructive. 

Constructive feedback in performance evaluation is a core step in fostering a productive work culture. It's the key to improving team morale and boosting the company's productivity while keeping the tone of delivery polite and reassuring.

Giving feedback constructively requires a combination of a solution-oriented mindset and empathetic communication skills. It must be a less critical and more comprehensive list of possible solutions.

Possessing a good knowledge of how to deliver highly resourceful reviews by employees helps improve the manager's performance and the workforce's productivity.

 Nurturing a Workplace That Thrives on Feedback

A supervisor evaluation fulfils two crucial requirements for a company's success: prioritizing employees and improving the manager's performance. Therefore, feedback from employees is honest and regular. 

According to a recent report by Gallup, managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores. Only a manager that's open to constructive criticism improves. A listening manager quickly identifies where to improve the team's productivity level.

So, rather than having a work culture which discourages employees from highlighting key observations about team leadership, it's best to cultivate and nurture a work atmosphere where employees can provide feedback real-time and do it without fear of rebuke.

Use Assembly to optimize supervisor evaluation. Assembly empowers employees to provide feedback in real-time. Book a free demo today.