I have not yet managed employees in a professional setting but based on my experiences being managed by (and having seen) some great managers up close, I have concluded that I am a manager to my two younger siblings (depicted above).

It begins with their incessant and daily queries. They stream in like pings from the workplace and chime similarly. How do I do this? Why do I need to do this? What’s in it for me? I have made attempts to constrain these questions to regularly scheduled 1-on-1s but, with the number of my social media accounts the siblings have access to, the effort remains futile.

I have to regularly keep up with these questions and, in the process, scope out areas for growth. Critical feedback is pertinent and (given the familial setting) can easily become a notch harsher than in a professional setting. The end goal, however, remains the same: enabling and encouraging growth and pointing out bases to cover.

Some of their queries can resemble full-on expense reports. Fast food? New iPad? New Laptop? Minor ones I can approve but most necessitate involving the higher-ups. Higher-ups, of course, being my managers: the parents. Based on the task at hand, the parental unit can form itself into a hierarchy — with one being my immediate manager and another looking at higher-level concerns. Sometimes, they can even represent different departments with differing approaches to the same problem.

The most important performance reviews tend to precede the various academic application cycles. For these, I need to consider their performance quite critically: both to secure them a favorable review but also to note patterns that I might miss on a day-to-day scale.

There are some extracurricular and personal development goals where we can only snapshot the trend lines during a given review. The eventual outcomes require longer-term inputs so I have to work with them to try and prod the inputs in the right directions.

Then there are the hard metrics (test scores!) which, when filling out a particular review/application, can only be taken for granted but, after weaknesses are identified, can usually be tackled with shorter-term strategies for next time. Most important, however, is how we actually put together these applications and the perception captured within them. Like perf reviews are to managers, I need to scour for and then help put together my siblings’ best face for the committee.

Things can get interesting when one of the siblings is up for a promotion (oftentimes raises in monetary and social allowances). The performance reviews assume renewed importance. Productivity spikes. Various tasks above-and-beyond are quickly performed to secure brownie points.

It’s the deadline effect. And as evil as it may sound, deadlines bring out the best in my reports (sorry, siblings). Like any good manager, I need to remember Parkinson’s Law at all times:

Parkinson’s Law: work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

If things devolve, I need to go back to the higher-ups and — since firing the siblings is not an option here — usually need to broker an agreement of some sort. But what continues to remain paramount in the highs and lows is that we’re on the same team.