A few years ago, I started sharing the feedback I get about my performance with my team. Some people are taken aback by that at first, but ultimately, it helps us as a group of leaders. If you’re a senior leader, you should consider sharing the feedback you get. Here’s why I think it matters.

Reset expectations

At Automattic, we tend to use three main categories: not meeting expectations, meeting expectations, and exceeding expectations. For several people at the company, “exceeding expectations” seems to be the target, and I’ve first-hand noticed several cases where people were disappointed to meet expectations, or to not exceed them two performance reviews in a row.

I’ve never exceeded expectations in my decade at Automattic. The expectations for my role are high, and I’m confident that if I ever exceeded my team lead’s expectations, that those would become even higher.

Bloating the “exceeding” category too much means we’re doing a disservice to our team members. It implies our expectations are too low. I’m totally fine with my team saying to their team members that they never see me exceeding expectations as the head for the whole division. Sharing my reviews helps reset unrealistic expectations of what success looks like.

Foster transparency

In most companies, performance reviews are a private thing. And I think they should be. The lead, the person reviewed, and HR, are the only ones who need to understand the full picture.

However, I think the person reviewed (me in this case) should have the agency to share his performance review: the things that are going well, but also the challenges. By being transparent about the challenges ahead in my career, I hope that I inspire others to do so as well. Ideally, we have a system where we evaluate the performance, not the person, and transparency can help shift that focus on the impact you’re having, not on who you are.

Prompt accountability

When the people who report to me know the areas my team lead is holding me accountable to, they can support me, and also hold me accountable. I look for people who aren’t hesitant to push back on me when needed, so I expect them to also not hold back when I make an odd decision, or I’m heavily focused on a project that seems to be out-of-sync with what I should be doing.

For example, in my latest performance review, there was an explicit mention of driving growth for Woo’s business. The person in charge of our growth focus did not sit back and wait for me to prompt her: she straight away came up with a plan for the months ahead, and asked for my feedback on that plan.

Show vulnerability

The first question I got from the team leads after sharing my performance review was: “I’m curious what your thoughts are after receiving this review.” And she was talking about my feelings about the review.

I replied that my first reaction to feedback tends to be feeling overwhelmed. Several of the leads indicated that they found that surprising. One lead added that his first thought was: “Oh, Job’s got this—that’ll be easy for him.”

When you’re in senior leadership, people start assuming growth is easy for you. I understand why, but several—if not most—of us struggle with imposter syndrome from time to time. I hope that sharing the feelings I go through in a feedback process encourages people who report to me to take those feelings seriously, but also not dwell in them. Within a few days of receiving the feedback, I was again focused on implementing the change.

Why does this matter?

As a senior lead who’s done this a few times, I noticed a few things. First, there’s better decision-making. I’m not the guardian of some private information: all people who report to me know what is expected of me—and by consequence, our division.

It also results in faster alignment. The last time I shared my review, we had a chat about it, and all leads in our division were on the same page as a result of that.

Finally, it fosters team autonomy. In my experience, lack of information is a major driver for poor autonomy. The more people understand what we’re doing, and especially why we’re doing it, the more likely they do not need hand-holding to execute on that direction, or even help build the strategy and the direction itself.