Run Skip Level Interview

---
name: run-skip-level-interview
description: Use when a senior manager wants candid feedback about team health, culture, and manager effectiveness from employees who report to their direct reports — to surface issues that would not otherwise reach them through normal reporting channels.
source: Scott "Radical Candor" (St. Martin's Press, 2017) — skip-level feedback practices; Slootman "Amp It Up" (Wiley, 2022); Google re:Work manager feedback methodology; SHRM upward feedback best practices
tags: [skip-level, senior-manager, team-health, upward-feedback, candor, manager-effectiveness, organizational-health, listening]
---

# Run Skip-Level Interview

Conduct structured one-on-one conversations with employees who report to your direct reports — to hear candid assessments of team health and manager effectiveness that would not surface through normal reporting channels.

## Why This Is Best Practice

**Adopted by:** Skip-level interviews are standard practice at Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Netflix; Kim Scott's "Radical Candor" framework requires skip-level listening as a check on whether direct reports are being candid with their own managers; Frank Slootman documents using skip-levels as a standard CEO and division president practice at ServiceNow and Snowflake to maintain organizational health signals; the US Army uses skip-level sensing through informal "command climate surveys" as a leadership tool at every echelon
**Impact:** Google's research on manager effectiveness (Project Oxygen) relied partly on upward feedback channels to identify what behaviors distinguished the highest-rated managers; McKinsey's 2021 organizational health research found that leaders who actively sought multi-level input were 2× more likely to identify performance-degrading cultural issues before they became structural; the primary organizational health risk identified in skip-levels is information that has already reached the senior manager's direct reports but has not been escalated — surfacing it creates an early-intervention window that does not exist without skip-level access
**Why best:** Information filters as it travels up reporting chains — direct reports tell managers what they think the manager wants to hear, or what they judge safe to share; this filtering is systematic, not random, and removes precisely the signals that would be most useful to senior leaders; the manager's skip-level reports are two information-filter layers away from the senior manager and have the most to gain from candid assessment of whether their direct manager is effective

Sources: Scott "Radical Candor" (St. Martin's Press, 2017); Slootman "Amp It Up" (Wiley, 2022); Google re:Work "Guide: Identify What Makes a Great Manager"; SHRM "Upward Feedback" best practice guide

## Steps

### 1. Set the purpose and protect the boundary

Skip-level interviews are a listening tool, not an investigation. State this explicitly when scheduling:

```
"I do skip-level conversations with everyone on the team — not to check 
up on [manager's name], but because I want to hear directly from each of 
you what's working, what's not, and what I might not be seeing from my 
vantage point. This is confidential — I won't share specific things you 
say with [manager's name] in a way that identifies you."
```

Two firm boundaries that must hold for skip-levels to produce candid information:
1. **Not an investigation**: if employees perceive you're looking for ammunition against their manager, they will either stay silent (protecting the manager) or fabricate problems (processing a grievance). Make clear you're listening broadly, not probing.
2. **Confidentiality**: if employees believe their candid answers will be shared with their direct manager, they will not be candid. Aggregated themes can be shared; attributed statements cannot.

### 2. Schedule the right cadence and scope

**New senior managers**: run skip-levels across the full team within the first 90 days. This establishes a baseline and signals that you listen at all levels.

**Ongoing cadence**: quarterly for direct-report managers who are new, underperforming, or managing through significant change; semi-annually for established, high-performing managers.

**Format**: 30–45 minutes, one-on-one, private. Group skip-level sessions produce social desirability bias — people say what the group norms allow, not what they actually think.

### 3. Ask questions that open rather than lead

The questions determine the quality of the data. Leading questions produce confirmation bias; open questions surface what you didn't know to ask about.

**Opening:**
```
"Tell me about what's going well for you right now — in your work, on the team."
```
Start positive. Employees who feel psychologically safe to share positives are more likely to surface problems.

**Team health:**
```
"What's working well about how your team operates?"
"What's one thing you wish worked differently on the team?"
"When you have a problem at work, how do you think about who to bring it to?"
```

**Manager effectiveness:**
```
"What does [manager] do that helps you do your best work?"
"Is there anything you wish [manager] would do more of, or differently?"
```
Note: do not ask "what does your manager do wrong?" — this frames the manager as the subject of an evaluation and produces defensiveness or grievance-venting rather than useful signal.

**Organizational context:**
```
"Is there anything I should know about that you think might not have 
reached me — about the team, the work, or the culture?"
```
This is the most important question. It explicitly invites information to bypass the filter.

**Closing:**
```
"What's one thing I could do — or should know — that would make a 
difference for you?"
```

### 4. Listen for themes, not incidents

Individual skip-level conversations produce anecdotes. Themes across multiple conversations produce signal.

Document after each conversation:
- What is going well (be specific — these are things to reinforce)
- What friction or concern was raised
- Any "this might not have reached you" disclosures

After completing a round of skip-levels across a manager's team, synthesize the pattern:
- Is a concern raised by one person? → note but treat cautiously
- Raised by two or three independently? → significant signal worth addressing
- Raised by all or most? → systemic issue requiring direct action

The individual conversation is data; the pattern across conversations is the finding.

### 5. Close the loop appropriately

**With the employee:** If they raised something actionable, follow up within 2 weeks. Even a brief message: "I heard what you said about [theme]. Here's what I'm doing with that." This signal — that the conversation wasn't performative — makes future skip-levels more candid.

**With the manager:** Debrief with the direct-report manager after completing their team's skip-levels. Aggregate, anonymize, and frame as development data:

```
"I finished the skip-levels with your team. I want to share some themes — 
not specific quotes. The consistent strong themes were [X, Y]. 
One thing that came up more than once that I want to talk through with 
you is [Z]. This isn't a judgment — I see it as something worth working 
on together."
```

Never share attributed quotes. Never use skip-level data to build a performance case without separate documented evidence.

**With yourself:** What did you learn about your own management gaps? Skip-levels sometimes surface issues with how the senior manager is setting context — unclear strategy, inconsistent priorities, insufficient resources — that shows up as manager or team dysfunction downstream.

## Rules

- Confidentiality is non-negotiable — attributed skip-level quotes are never shared with the direct-report manager; violation destroys all future candor and signals that the tool is surveillance
- Listen for themes, not incidents — one person raising a concern is an anecdote; three people raising the same concern independently is a pattern requiring action
- Not an investigation — employees who sense the senior manager is looking for problems will distort their responses; frame as listening, not auditing
- Act on what you hear — skip-levels where nothing changes produce employees who stop being candid; follow through closes the loop
- Debrief with the manager, not about them — share patterns as development data, not as a performance report

## Common Mistakes

- **Using skip-level information to build a case against a manager**: this is the most damaging misuse — it creates a culture where employees won't be candid because they fear contributing to their manager's downfall.
- **Group skip-levels**: group dynamics produce social conformity, not candor; individual conversations are required for honest signal.
- **Skipping the positive questions**: opening with "what's not working?" primes the conversation for grievance rather than full picture; start with what's going well.
- **Running skip-levels only when something is wrong**: reactive skip-levels are perceived as investigations; establishing them as a standard cadence makes them a cultural norm rather than a red flag.
- **Not closing the loop**: employees who shared something and heard nothing back conclude that the senior manager's listening was performative; they disengage from future skip-levels.

## When NOT to Use

- During an active HR investigation involving the manager — skip-level conversations during an investigation are discoverable and confuse the investigation process; work with HR to keep these separate.
- As a substitute for the direct-report manager's own employee feedback mechanisms — skip-levels supplement upward feedback, they do not replace the manager's responsibility to seek feedback directly from their own team.