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Date: 2/21/2023
HADLEY – An evaluation of Hadley’s Town Administrator Carolyn Brennan was conducted and the results were presented at the Select Board’s Feb. 15 meeting by Jennifer Sanders James, the town’s assistant procurement officer and licensing coordinator. Brennan received overwhelmingly positive feedback from department heads and Select Board members alike. The review did include a few small areas for improvement, but Brennan took them in stride and vowed to follow up so she could best understand how to improve.
The evaluation performed is known as a “360 review.” It is different from a traditional performance evaluation because of its sources of feedback. In a traditional evaluation, one’s direct manager or supervisor is the sole evaluator. However, in a 360 review, feedback is solicited from all directions in the organization, meaning one’s peers and coworkers respond as well. This allows for a more well-rounded insight into the employee being evaluated.
James explained the exact process by which feedback was collected and its variety of sources.
“We send anonymous 360 reviews to 17 department heads and heads of boards that work closely with Carolyn in her day- to-day and we got 11 responses sent back, most of which were anonymous. Department heads were told that if they had any staff who also had moved back that they could either print them their own copy or kind of compile it with their own if they wanted to. The Select Board were given their own separate review form to fill out as well. Jane [Nevinsmith] and I have met twice and we reviewed all the feedback, filed it all together and figured out how to best present this information for all of you,” James said.
The categories Brennan was evaluated in by the department heads were valuing behaviors,
interdependent behaviors, communication, valuing diversity behaviors and leadership behaviors. She was ranked on a scale of one to five in each of these. Her composite score for each category was above a four in each one. James summarized the department heads feedback by saying “the main thing that was noted was that Carolyn treats everyone with fairness and respect, she respects confidentiality, she involves people in the decisions that involve their departments and that she’s very supportive.”
The department heads also gave constructive criticism for Brennan. Though many of the reviews overlapped with each other in terms of their comments, the main areas for focus were for Brennan to stop being worried about hurting people’s feelings in order to do what’s right for the town, to stop being distracted by her phone in meetings, and that she should allow people to work from home sometimes. It is worth noting that the phone distractions were acknowledged to be of a professional nature and due simply to Brennan’s hectic work schedule, rather than her using her phone for personal reasons.
In addition to the department heads, Brennan was also evaluated by members of the Select Board. These reviews were based on nine categories: decision making, communication, team player, personal development, planning, conduct at meetings, leadership/supervision, understanding role and ethics. Once again, scores were out of five, and once again she scored above a four in all categories except in leadership, where she scored a 3.5. James talked about Brennan’s overall strengths according to both sets of evaluations.
“Overall, between the Select Board and the department heads, the overall strengths for Carolyn were her professionalism and her ethics: hardworking, trustworthy and putting the town’s needs first came up numerous times across both sets of reviews. And advocating and championing the staff; everyone really acknowledges that she’s working diligently on pay equity, workload equity, getting people the help they need and preparing the town and the different departments for the future for when people retire and as the town grows,” James said.
James also delved into the areas for improvement according to the Select Board evaluations. Board members reported that Brennan should communicate more with them and that she should not be hesitant to ask for help when she needs it, especially since Brennan herself is always offering her support to others.
“The areas of focus that we noted were communication with the Select Board – involving you all sooner and on more topics, sharing more information on what’s happening and sharing the background knowledge that she has – and support for herself. Carolyn is very big on getting everyone else support, what they need and telling people to go home after they’ve worked their hours and to not burn out, and we need to make sure she knows that it’s not a sign of weakness to ask for that for herself as well, and to delegate when possible, and to do what’s right for the town regardless of any hurt feelings or making sure that one department doesn’t just get what they want,” James said.
Brennan spoke after the presentation, thanking her colleagues and reporting feelings of relief after she had been nervous to come to the meeting to hear her evaluation.
“I want to thank you. You cannot not be nervous coming into a meeting like this and just wondering…but also, like two weeks ago, right before the deadline of the 360 I said ‘I’m not going to get a good one after that conversation.’ You kind of worry about it, but it’s definitely really encouraging. It was way better than I thought it was going to be. It’s the things that you’re trying to strive for but you’re not sure that it’s going to get perceived that way, but this is showing me that ‘Yes.’ And it is the support from everybody,” Brennan said.
Regarding the areas for improvement, Brennan said she was not quite sure where certain criticisms were coming from, but that she would reach out to staff to see their perspective and to remedy the miscommunication.
“Some of them, I would love more feedback as to how to increase communication, to be more specific about how you want things communicated to you. Also, hearing from the staff that not being supportive of remote work, I’m not really sure where that came from. I don’t even know that I’ve had anybody come to me and ask me for it and I said ‘No,’ so I need to reach out and get some feedback of where that’s coming from because certainly there are times I definitely understand if someone has a deadline and can’t be disturbed, and if you’re the only person in your department and you’re also having to answer a lot of questions throughout the day, there’s a lot of value for certain things. I will take that on to reach out to the staff to see where that might have gotten miscommunicated,” Brennan said.