When 3pm rolled around around this past Friday, I climbed up through the pile of papers on my desk at influencers@ and headed to the conference room, where every 20 minutes I met with a member of the team and checked in. I asked them how their week was going, what challenges they were facing and how I could assist.
This weekly check in is simple, easy and so important. Per the recommendation of my go-to COO expert, Ryan Durkin, a team leader needs to check in regularly with everyone at the company (while size allows for it) and get a pulse on how the team is doing. Let’s face it – the business week is busy. At a start-up, it is borderline insane. As a result, personal issues and work-related challenges can get pushed aside while everyone scrambles to meet deadlines. The Friday afternoon check-in ensures that those issues don’t get missed and can get resolved going into the next week.
The check-in is super casual. Consider the following questions to ask your team:
- How was your week?
- What challenges did you run into?
- Are you stuck on anything?
- How is everyone else on your team – are you getting along?
- How can I help?
In addition to these questions, the key is to let each team member know what they did well and opportunities for improvement for the next week. These should be clear and actionable, ie “The design work on that flyer was fantastic! For next week lets work together on reducing the amount of verbiage that is used in copy for our marketing collateral.”
Super easy questions. 15-20 minutes for each person. Every week. Get it done.