If you are leading a team of people, you should always make time to have a meaningful conversation with each member of your team about their progress at least once a month. If you are a ‘leader’ you will do this naturally, because you will want to find the time to develop your people and find out what makes them tick. If you are a ‘manager’ you will probably have to work hard at finding this time, because my experience of ‘managers’ is that they often spend most of their time keeping their managers happy and don’t have much time to spend with the people they are supposed to be managing. Or leading. Much has been written on the subject of Leadership v. Management and I will be adding to that here soon!
If you need to be told what the business benefits are of having regular formal and informal chats with your staff about their progress, here are some of them:
People who are listened to feel cared about, come to work more often and produce more (I know, because I have been one of those people!)
Having conversations with your people about their development will alert you to people in your team who have ambition and will give you the opportunity to mentor them – there is no better feeling than knowing you have played a part in someone else’s achievement (I know, because I have done that, countless times)
Identifying potential ‘stars’ in your team will help cut your recruitment costs, because you won’t be constantly recruiting team leaders and managers from outside the business (I have worked in several businesses where we have reduced recruitment costs in this way)
Having regular 1-2-1 conversations with your people will help you to understand what may be going on for them that may be getting in the way of their performance at work, helping you to prevent difficult conversations having to take place.
Here is one last tip – make sure your conversations are two-way, with the team member doing 80% of the talking. How many ‘reviews’ have you had where ‘the boss’ did all the talking, and how did you feel at the end of it?
You make some very valid points Graham especially regarding Manager one to ones! It’s important to feel an important part of the team even when you’re not a manager and as you said – feeling valued can come from great customer service from the top down. This is how we work at Gofers and why i love my job! I’m going to retweet this if you don’t mind 🙂
Jenny, very flattered that you re-tweeted this – thank you! I’m glad that you work in a company where these values and behaviours are in evidence. I see so many people going to work in jobs where they are obviously not cared about – you can tell by the looks on their faces that they are dreading going to work – and I was like that once myself!