Last updated: March 7, 2025
Let’s be honest: ranking your department leaders alongside their teams might seem efficient, but it’s ineffective.
You wouldn’t judge a pilot by how well they serve drinks in the cabin. So why evaluate team leads by the same standards as their direct reports?
It’s a common slip-up, treating everyone as equals in performance evaluations, even when the roles aren’t the same. But doing so often misses what truly defines leadership. Worse, it creates confusion, competition, and can actually reduce the impact those leaders are meant to have.
Why a One-Size-Fits-All Evaluation Doesn’t Fit
Department leaders do more than deliver on individual goals. They align teams, drive strategy, resolve conflicts, and connect dots across the organization. Their success can’t be captured with the same metrics you’d use for a support agent, developer, or content marketer.
Here’s why lumping leaders into the same evaluation pool as their teams doesn’t work:
1. Role-Based Expectations Are Different
While individual contributors focus on execution, leaders are looking across the board. A product lead isn’t just shipping features they’re making sure what’s built supports long-term roadmap goals. A marketing manager? They’re not just running campaigns they’re making sure every message aligns with what the company stands for across all touchpoints.
2. Metrics Should Match the Role
Team members are evaluated on personal output: tasks completed, bugs fixed, content delivered. Leaders, on the other hand, influence outcomes like collaboration, team effectiveness, and strategic progress. Ranking them together muddies both sides of the story.
3. You Can’t Grow Leaders if You Don’t Measure Leadership
If you want to nurture great leaders, you need to evaluate the behaviors that actually make someone a strong manager things like coaching, cross-functional impact, and decision-making under pressure. These aren’t always visible in a sprint report, but they’re vital for long-term success.
Ready to transform your leadership reviews?
A Smarter Evaluation Model: Two Layers, One Goal
The better way? A dual-layered evaluation model. One that keeps alignment, but respects the unique nature of leadership roles.
1. Core Metrics for Everyone:
- Goal achievement (e.g., campaign results, feature delivery, onboarding success)
- Contribution to team or company OKRs
- Collaboration and communication
2. Additional Leadership Metrics:
- Team performance: Is the team delivering consistent results under their guidance?
- Cross-functional impact: Are they helping reduce silos and remove blockers across departments?
- Team enablement: Are they building and empowering people who can take on more?
- Strategic execution: Are their decisions aligned with long-term company priorities?
This isn’t about letting leaders off the hook. It’s about giving them a scorecard that reflects their full responsibility.
My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better
Real-World Example: The 60/40 Approach
One company introduced a 60/40 performance model for department leaders: 60% of their evaluation came from team outcomes and leadership effectiveness (think reduced errors, improved onboarding, and positive feedback from peers). 40% was based on personal delivery (like launching a new feature or completing a key project). It created clarity. Leaders stopped trying to “outperform” their teams and started working for their teams. The shift? Less stress, more strategic impact, and higher employee engagement overall.
Final Thought: Reward the Role, Not Just the Results
Leadership isn’t about doing more, it’s about enabling more. So if you’re evaluating your department heads the same way you rank their teams, it might be time to step back and rethink the system. Recognize leadership for what it is: a lever for impact, not a slot on a ranking list. When you measure what matters, you create more of what matters.