A Very Rough Self Review
Good morning, it’s January 26th.
LATE JANUARY. The calm of the holidays is becoming a distant memory. Last week, we did a super-fast assessment of your team. Not a performance review, nothing formal, just a temperature check. The practice I’m encouraging is a cache refresh. I want you to have a non-reactionary profile of your team actively in your head, a perspective not based on your last three reactions.
DO THIS. RIGHT NOW. For yourself, do the same exercise we did for your team. Write down the top three concerns, worries, or obstructions that are bothering you right now. It’s been a few weeks, you’re past the glow of the New Year, and anything that is showing up as friction this week is probably a bigger deal than you are currently forecasting.
Like the prior mini-exercise, we’re doing a very, very rough draft of your self-review. I reluctantly tell you this because it gives what is a simple exercise a bit too much perspective, and all that is important right is a gut feel. We’ll get to action later. Put it somewhere safe.
BONUS: Figure out if anything on this list is worth sharing with your manager. Share it. Tell me how it goes.
This Week in Rands
There is a set of evergreen pieces on Rands that just… generate… consistent traffic. They are discovered and rediscovered over the years, and they have struck a chord. The original Wolf piece is one of those works.
The first piece is a brief, tight snapshot. The piece resonates with leaders because I did the classic Rands thing of giving a name to an important thing sitting right in front of you. What I did not do was explain what to do with these very valuable engineers.
I don’t tell you because I’ve tried to manufacture Wolves over the years and mostly failed.
Read more here.
Leadership Links:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/Leadership/comments/1qlrgqv/feeling_stuck_in_middle_management_how_did_you/
- https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-update-the-vent-and-the-disaster/
- https://leadershipfreak.blog/2026/01/19/eliminate-self-imposed-stress/
Join thousands of helpful leaders in the Rands Leadership Slack: https://randsinrepose.com/about/