Partners Should Review Each Other
Turns out, you get better at things when you know what you can be better at.
One of the most frightening concepts we’ve introduced at Motel was Partner Reviews. Since founding Motel 3 years ago we’ve always tried to make work fun and make it easy to build friendships at work. Usually this friendship-first attitude makes work-life easier, but it’s also makes some things such as addressing conflict with each other as partners, more challenging.
There’s never been a moment where I think my partners don’t want Motel to be the best company on Earth, and I love and respect them for that. Each partner wants to make Motel better, and we all have our own approach as to how to do just that. But there are moments of frustration that tend to stem from a lack of expectation management.
This is why I wanted to introduce the idea of Partner Reviews to my fellow partners at Motel. The idea being if we can give each other feedback based on a consistent set of criteria, we’ll know what to expect of each other, and make it easier to handle unforeseen situations in a cool and collected manner as a team. This isn’t anything novel or new, but companies that try to keep things light and simple like we do can overlook the fact that giving each other feedback in a structured way is immensely helpful not only personal growth, but for team alignment as well.
The Motel Partner Review
At Motel we do quarterly Partner Meetings where we get together for a long work weekend somewhere, and discuss the past and future of Motel. We think and plan our path for a better Motel. Now we block some time off to work on making ourselves better as Partners.
The Partner Review is a simple Google Sheet with a series of attributes by which we can evaluate each other. Partners are free to add comments within the sheet along with a score of 1–4. We send these out a week prior to Partner Meetings, and set aside 30 minutes per Partner to go through and discuss the reviews. We didn’t share the documents until the day of the meeting as to avoid any miscommunications or misinterpretations.
It can feel painful to be so blunt, or hear that you’re bad at something, but it’s also rewarding to know what you’re good at, and have something you know you can improve on coming straight from the people you’re lucky enough to respect and work with on a daily basis. This dumb little Google Sheet helped us work through so many misunderstandings and uncover some larger life themes that weren’t revealed by Slack, or Video Chat, or real life Motel Retreats where the entire team was together in one place for a few days. It’s helped us pin down some root causes for recurring issues by connecting themes and attributes. (e.g. If you have a low communication score, you may not seem clear or focused either. Which gives you something to work on there).
Partner reviews have also helped us understand each Partners reviews of each other. In the partner evaluation below you’ll see that Partner 1 gave Partner 2 low marks. But during our discussions when we broke down what was actually going on, we found that Partner 1 had frustrations outside of work that were not communicated to Partner 2. Partner 1 was expecting empathy on something the other partner didn’t know about. This meant that while Partner 2 had many low marks from Partner 1, those low marks weren’t solely attributed to them, but a shared concern and place to improve together.
Partner Reviews has made it easier to see where my peers empathize with me on issues, and where they might not — which gives me the ability to tackle issues from different angles, or with their help. For example, I used to tell Caleb and Matt wild ideas as soon as they popped into my head all the time (e.g. Maybe we should host a conference. Should we have our next retreat in Iceland? Should I buy a one way ticket to Cambodia?). After working through my own Clear, Focus, Communication reviews, it was easy to find out why I was getting low marks. I learned that my excitement in random things stressed them out — which is reasonable. I also learned that this didn’t really bother Thomas (or he had a higher tolerance in this regard) which gave me a healthy outlet when I needed one. Some people want to hear weird ideas, others get stressed out by them. Cool. I can work with that. I can get better at that.
A remote team simply doesn’t have the peripheral vision of a team working in a space together, but little things like Partner Reviews can make a huge difference, and help close that gap. These reviews helped me be more conscious of the ways in which I interact with my partners and my coworkers. I’m certainly more active in finding out ways in which I can avoid issues when they arise, and be more celebratory when people have made an effort that deserves recognition.
Conducting your own Partner Reviews
Sound scary? It was. It’s safe to say that all of our partners had their hesitations going in to the experience the first time around. Would this be the Red Wedding all over again, or more like the Battle of the Bastard? Go into the session with the attitude that you’re each there to make the other better, not to air grievances. You want to focus on promoting actionable, real improvements.
We all set aside 1–2 hours to thoroughly review each of our partners in the template, and then scheduled time to review together. We let each partner go through the entire review of each other partner and gave those partners an opportunity to ask questions and respond. We left the timing open ended and tried to let the conversations flow naturally. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but we all came out the other side feeling very positive about the experience and planning to revisit it next quarter.
Pro Tips
- First and foremost respect each other, if you don’t do this — it’ll be rough
- Avoid passive aggressive remarks.
- Be blunt, but show empathy
- Don’t gang up on each other
- Be patient with each other
- Give each partner the time to present their assertions
- Give each partner time to respond and question assertions
- Look for ways to understand perspectives rather than defend your own
As with all things at Motel, we’d love to improve this, so feel free to copy and use our Partner Review Google Sheet, and let us know if you find ways to make it better.
✌️MJ
