Comment by ChuckMcM

Brutal but true. When I first started managing people I thought "I'm going to hate writing performance reviews" but the reality was if my reports and I talked about what was expected of them and how I was measuring it, we didn't have any misunderstandings and the reviews were perfunctory at best. (if they weren't cutting it they knew it long before the review came around, if they were exceeding their expectations they knew that too)

But what I did hate, was managers who played games to make their 'friends' look good and their 'enemies' look bad. How was senior management supposed to understand the organization when getting such an intentionally warped view of it? That taught me the value of "skip level" discussions where I would talk to some of the reports for the manager I was managing about how they managed and how well the employee understood what was expected of them and how their performance was analyzed.

Not surprisingly, being a good manager is often perceived by your peers (and even your boss!) as a threat since you "make them look bad." That was the part I disliked the most. I'm always willing to help a person become the best at what they do. But if they already feel like you are "making them look bad" and they don't understand what they need to do to look better, they can often look upon advice as "an attempt to trick them." All rooted in insecurity I suspect. And all very sad.