Your employees are vital to the success of your growing business – especially when they are happy and productive.
You not only establish clear communications, but it’s an almost effort-free opportunity to improve internal processes, give corrections constructively, and connect with your employees with compassion.
So how do you structure one-on-meetings that don’t waste time and focus on feedback, performance, and personal connection?
In this episode of Help! My Business Is Growing, our guest Debbie Rosemont talks about one-on-one meetings and how they boost team productivity and your company’s success.
She shares practical and actionable tips on how you can structure them to ensure maximum productivity to benefit your growing business.
They don’t know what they’re working towards, what they want, to measure or what “done” looks like.
Productivity is achieving desired results, either as an individual or a team.
But you can’t measure your team’s productivity or if they are getting results if you have not clearly defined your objectives.
And, of course, hitting them is impossible if your team is not fully aware or has not been informed of what the company hopes to achieve.
Do you need a 30-minute or 1-hour weekly or monthly session? Even a 30-minute weekly meeting can be really effective if done correctly. Decide on what you feel is the right amount of time you need to focus on one person’s performance and experiences with the company.
You can also include fun, icebreaker-type questions to get to know or understand them better, like: “If you were an animal, what animal would you be?”
Start with something positive or a win, then move on to the meat, give them constructive criticism or help them overcome challenges, and finally end with something light and cheerful.
You can then look at your employees and group them into logical teams. For example, they are all in the same department or do the same thing in various other departments across the organization.
Assign a team leader for each team. So, for example, if you have 50 employees broken down into groups of 10 employees per team, you’ll have 5 team leads, and you can meet with these leads.
If you are already holding one-on-one meetings, something you can do in the next week is to consider each team member’s role in your organization and come up with a couple of questions you could ask in a one-on-one regarding productivity.
Kathy (host):
Hi there, and welcome back to Help! My Business is Growing, a podcast where we explore how to grow and build a business that is healthy and sustainable. I’m your host, Kathy Svetina.
Kathy (host):
Having motivated employees is crucial to the success of your growing business. Because as their productivity levels increase and business goals are met, your revenues are going up. But keeping your employees motivated and productive can sometimes be easier said than done. And it’s a challenge facing many businesses today, especially with the growth of remote teams and hybrid work setup. And while there’s tons of productivity management tools out there, you have chats, you have time tracking tools to help with this productivity, these tools can’t do it alone. And a lot of times, they can actually be counterproductive, because employees might feel that you’re trying to keep tabs on them or micromanaging which is not good. These tools need your help.
Kathy (host):
And one of the best ways to boost productivity is to hold regular one-on-one meetings with your people. Because even the best employees need encouragement and direction to succeed in regular one-on-one meetings, establish clear communications with your employees. They’re a great feedback mechanism to help improve internal processes, and they enable you to give corrections constructively and connect with your employees with compassion and on that human level. But how do you make that happen? And how do you structure one-on-one meetings without wasting time?
Kathy (host):
Just a quick reminder, if you want to take home some of the informative tips from our guests today. And trust me, there’s a lot. All of the episodes on this podcast, including this one, come with timestamps for topics that we discuss, and each one has its own blog as well. You can find the links and detailed topics in this episode’s show notes.
Kathy (host):
Today, my guest is Debbie Rosemont. She is a sought-after Productivity Consultant Trainer and Founder of Simply Placed, a company that helps busy women who feel overwhelmed and overloaded, prioritize what matters plan their time, and produce valuable results confidently and easily. Debbie also helps clients implement strategies to work smarter, not harder. Through her group, it’s about time virtual productivity program and her highly customized individual six-month productivity transformation package. She’s also the author of a book called Six-word Lessons to be More Productive, and a co-author of One Habit for a Thriving Home Office. Join us.
Kathy (host):
Welcome to the show, Debbie.
Debbie (guest):
Thanks, Kathy. I’m glad to be here.
Kathy (host):
So glad you’re here that we finally get to meet on the podcast here. You’re a Productivity Expert, and when you have people on your team, what I noticed is that a lot of people struggle with managing, not just their own productivity, but also their team’s productivity. Some actually end up resorting to tracking time, because that’s what they’ve been used to. But the issue with that is that time and productivity are obviously not the same.
Debbie (guest):
No.
Kathy (host):
With the businesses that you work with, what do you see them struggling with the most when it comes to the productivity of their teams and how they’re tracking?
Debbie (guest):
You just hit the nail on the head. Being busy, and someone looking busy or spending time does not necessarily equate to being productive. My definition of productivity is achieving desired results. That’s whether we’re talking about an individual or a team, we’re productive when we’re achieving desired results. So that’s probably the biggest thing I’ll come back to again, and again. When you’re talking about how do we measure if our team is being productive? Well, are they getting the results? Have you clearly defined what results you’re after? Does everybody know what the benchmark is? Does everybody know, the objectives and what you’re shooting for? Because then it’s easier to measure, and it doesn’t matter like you said, how much time someone takes necessarily. Of course, we want everybody to be working as effectively and as efficiently as possible. But the bottom line is, are they getting the results in the time that we expect that they would? I think that the first mistake people make is not knowing what they’re working towards, not knowing what they want to measure or what done looks like.
Kathy (host):
How would you do that in terms of, let’s say that you have an employee that’s not really performing well in terms of productivity that you would want to see? How do you go and the find those KPIs, so to speak those goals for them? Do you start with their job description and what they’re doing first? How involved and how much should you know about what they’re doing on a day-to-day basis to be able to give them those goals? How does that look like?
Debbie (guest):
A job description is a great place to start, assuming that it accurately reflects what the job is, right. Sometimes we pull on an old job description when we’re hiring, and that’s a great time to update a job description if you’re hiring somebody new for a role, making sure that it reflects and that you’re going to attract, and set up expectations for what you want this person to be able to do from the beginning. So that’s a great tool to use for onboarding and training somebody. Are they set up for success to do these things for which you’ve hired them. And then it’s also a great tool to monitor performance, or evaluate performance? You’ve come back to that. “Well, we hired you for this. These were the expectations. This is what we told you you were working towards, and let’s see, we can talk about how often you should be checking in, but let’s see how you’re doing.” An annual performance review is typical in many organizations and companies. While that’s fine, I would never want the results of the performance review to be a surprise for anyone. I think we can be checking in much more frequently than once a year with our team.
Kathy (host):
Yeah. And I mean, once a year, I’ve had managers that in, when I was in the corporate world that checked in with me once a year, and it just felt so disconnected.
Debbie (guest):
Yeah.
Kathy (host):
Because something that I did 365 days ago, it’s just not relevant as much anymore.
Debbie (guest):
Right. If we think about breaking that down, and that’s also just can break down overwhelm for an employee or a team and we say, “Okay, well, if annually, the goals are this. Then, how does that break down to quarterly? What do we want to be accomplishing or working towards in a 90-day time period? Because that’s a nice cadence for check-ins as well, that is still kind of high level and the pretty big picture. But are we moving our big objectives forward during the year, not just at the end of the year? We’re gonna check and see how we did.”
Debbie (guest):
A 90-day plan is a great kind of subset of that annual review process. And then even from there to take that 90 days and say, “Okay, well, that’s a 12-week time period, how often do we want to be checking in on this?” Getting away from a manager’s need to monitor time or track time, more than “Hey, in a 12-week time period, here’s what we would expect, or want to accomplish?” How do we break that down to where should we be about a month from now and do we check-in that? Or is there a need to check in weekly on how we’re doing on these things?
Kathy (host):
There are two things that are really important here that, as you were talking that I was thinking about. One is knowing what the goals are of your organization because I feel that a lot of people struggle with that, especially in their smaller businesses, the ones that I worked with. They’re between 1 million and 10. And they’re kind of all over the place, especially if they’re growing really fast.
Debbie (guest):
Right.
Kathy (host):
Having those goals set for the next year, at least for the next year. So that you know what you’re working on, and what you should be prioritizing is not just important for your financial performance, which is what I’m focused on, but also how you’re managing people, how you have those types of conversations with your employees, and where you be what you’re tracking them on. If someone has, let’s say that you have done your homework, and you’ve been really great with setting your goals, and you have communicated that to your employees, let’s say first, how would you communicate that to your employees on a specific goal? Would you give them regular updates on how you track towards the goal? Or would you give them a goal like let’s say, once, in the next year, this is where we’re going to do. How would you communicate that to them?
Debbie (guest):
Yeah, I guess the first thing I would do is even take a step back and when you can involve your employees in setting those goals. You may have as an organization, values, mission, kind of major objectives which are set and those are in place when you’re hiring employees. But then in determining a one-year goal or even a little bit longer term. If you can involve your employees get their buy-in, get their input, and then have it be a little more collaborative than saying, here are my goals, and kind of pushing them, draw them in, in the creation of those goals where that’s possible. And then it’s not so much, here are the goals, go do the work, but we decided that this is what we’re working towards this year. And so then you can ask the employee, “Now, let’s think about specifically each of your roles in this.” Asking the employee than to set their part of it right, based on our team goals, then what will you employee A have as your individual goals in this coming year? And then they break it down to, what does that mean quarterly? What does that mean monthly?
Kathy (host):
Yeah, I love that. It’s very, very specific to that particular person. As you’re communicating these goals, you have to have meetings with your employees.
Debbie (guest):
Yeah.
Kathy (host):
Which is where we talked about on this podcast about team meetings. It was a great episode about that. if you’re interested in how to run those effectively, go take a look at that episode. It’s really good. But what we’re going to I really want to talk about here is one-to-one meetings, because I feel like they’re incredibly important, not just for the productivity of the employee, but also in terms of having that. It brings that personal touch to the business and you get to know them. You get to know them as a person. They see that you care because you should care. They’re in your business, or they’re helping you be successful. But how do you structure it so that it’s productive, but it gives them structure, but that it’s also that they can be I’ve seen that in the corporate world that can be incredibly time waster as well? How do you make them productive in terms of lessons?
Debbie (guest):
I think ensuring that there’s an objective that you’re working towards, in a one-to-one. Why are you having a one-to-one? You just touched on a few possibilities – building trust and relationships, checking in on progress to goals, getting employee input, and giving feedback. Those all could be potential objectives, in a one-to-one. Then you can determine, “Well, in order to achieve those things, how often do we need to connect one to one?”
Debbie (guest):
If you’re having good team meetings, that’s where again, good collaboration and updating each other on what’s going on in various team projects can happen. But individually, you’re focused more on one person’s performance and experience in the role and in with the company.
Debbie (guest):
Some organizations will do that once a month, and others once a week. Deciding on how often and then how long – once a month. It could be that it needs to be a long meeting. I’d say an hour, once a month is probably a minimal amount of time to check-in. But once a week, 30 minutes can be really effective. I mentioned the timeframe, you don’t always have to fill the 30 minutes.
Debbie (guest):
It the importance of having an agenda to meet the objectives you want. “Alright, in order to accomplish these things, we need to touch base on 1,2,3,4.” Right? I’ll give a sample agenda that you might use in a one-to-one. But when you follow that agenda, if you accomplish those results in 15 minutes, you’re done, right. You don’t have to stretch it into a half-hour. That’s how we can make sure it’s a good use of time.
Debbie (guest):
We can know it’s a good use of time if we agree on an agenda that will be productive. And then if we stick to that agenda, still allowing for the human element – conversation, of course, but we do put some boundaries around. “Alright, well, we will go longer than a half-hour, we’re going to be respectful of both people’s times. And if we find something that takes us far off of this agenda, and we need to schedule another meeting, we’ll do that. But this is what we’re going to accomplish in the one-to-one.” A sample agenda that I could see being productive. And in those things that we just talked about, you mentioned wanting to foster connection, build relationships, and really get to know your employee, and you as their manager.
Debbie (guest):
I always love to have a one-to-one start out by inviting somebody to share with me, “What’s a win since we last met?” If it’s weekly, and if this is a half-hour agenda, one to one, “What’s a win in the last week? Tell me about a win.” So that’s a great positive way to start it off.
Debbie (guest):
And then I like to ask about what’s been the biggest challenge for you in the last week so that you can really get at “Where are you struggling? What might I be able to offer you as a suggestion to help you overcome this challenge?” Or it could be that an employee says, “Something like what works great. My biggest challenge is I’m not sleeping at night because of my toddler’s teething or whatever it is. That’s not work-related, but it is impacting them as a person and we work with not just the employee as a company employee, but there is a whole person. You’ll hear things like that when you invite them to tell you about what’s been a challenge since they last met, then I think it would be appropriate to touch base on their priorities. “What have you tell me a quick update on? These three priorities that we talked about last time? And where are you at?” So just getting, milestones, timeline updates, that sort of thing.
Debbie (guest):
And then I would ask something like, “Is there any place that you’re stuck in moving things forward? Or any worries or concerns about meeting the objectives we talked about in the timeline that we’ve set forth?” So can you don’t have to worry about monitoring their work hours or their time, especially when we’re talking about distributed teams, if you have companies you’re working with, or if not everyone’s working in the same place? There’s the remote work happening. As long as the results are getting achieved? Doesn’t really matter exactly what hours, right. I think touching base on those things. Basically, what’s a win? What’s a challenge update on priority projects?
Debbie (guest):
And then “Is there anything you need from me to move things forward? Or do you have any concerns about meeting the timelines that we talked about?” That would be kind of just a core agenda that I don’t think checking in on most things once a week is necessarily redundant, or too often because so much can change in a week. I would add to that a few things if the check-in were less frequent than every other week or once a month.
Kathy (host):
Yeah, I know. That’s a great agenda. And I love that you start with the win first, like, start with the positive first, and then going to the challenges. I think that that is so important for the employee morale as well.
Debbie (guest):
Yeah. There’s other little things that really, if you were trying to get to know an employee, personally, you could add-in, an exchange of what something interesting about you that I wouldn’t otherwise know, right? I mean, just kind of almost like that icebreaker get-to-know-you questions. You can throw those in once in a while to get to know employees that are just kind of fun. Sometimes I’ve heard of these as being tricky interview questions, but done, without any ulterior motive. But if you were an animal, what animal would you be? Right? Like we can learn about people and their personalities through some of these just kinds of fun questions.
Debbie (guest):
Sometimes ending a meeting with something that’s light-hearted like that. I’m sure you’ve heard of like the Oreo sandwich approach. You’re giving feedback, start with something positive, give them constructive criticism, and then end with something positive? Well, the same with a one-on-one, right? Start with a win, get to the meat of what you need to talk about, and then end with something like, that’s a possibility as well.
Kathy (host):
Yeah, I love that. Is there anything that you think should not be discussed in a one-to-one meeting that maybe it’s more appropriate to be in a team meeting or have a separate type of discussion?
Debbie (guest):
I think there are things that could be brought up in a one-to-one. You want your one-to-ones to be in a place where it feels like a safe space. I wouldn’t necessarily say there are things that are off-limits, but there are things maybe that aren’t going to be as appropriate just for workplace conversation in general. When we think about extensive talk about religion, politics, or things that are potentially more divisive, and controversial, not that we don’t. We want to avoid those topics altogether. But I’d say, railing against an employee in a one-to-one about who they voted for in the last election is probably not appropriate, right. But that wouldn’t be appropriate in any workplace. Just because you’re potentially behind a closed-door one-to-one, it doesn’t mean that you can bring up things that you wouldn’t otherwise bring up if somebody else were in the room. That’s something to keep in mind.
Debbie (guest):
And then the other thing I would think you’d want to take from one-to-one and potentially bring to a team is if there needs to be a conversation that involves other decision-makers, or key stakeholders. If you start to get involved in something that really is about another team member, should this be said to their face? Complaining about somebody or sharing negative feedback, while that could potentially come up in a one-to-one if it feels either gossipy or this would be more productive to actually talk with that other employee or the entire team about. If this is something we need to air out about team communication, then let’s make sure to add that to the team agenda and we won’t spend too much time talking about it here. That would be appropriate to kind of almost like a parking lot if you heard that term?
Kathy (host):
Yep.
Debbie (guest):
“That’s not on our agenda today. But you bring up a good point. Let’s make sure we talk about that at our next team meeting and put it on the parking lot.”
Debbie (guest):
A lot of people struggle and this is what I’ve struggled with myself, too. Full disclosure here. That is one-on-one meetings, you go a lot into The updates on the projects that they’re working on. We talked about the priorities that they have on their plate, how is that different than giving updates on what they’re working on? Is it different? Or how is it different? We could talk about that?
Debbie (guest):
Well, I think it could be slightly different. Asking the employee what priorities you have this week, let’s say your meeting weekly, would help you make sure that you’re hearing things that you think shouldn’t be their priorities as well, not micromanaging the work. But if employee says, “My priorities are A, B, and C,” and that a deadline for D is coming up within the week, and you haven’t heard them talk about Project D, then you might be able to ask about or clarify that.
Debbie (guest):
As far as updates on the work itself, that’s where- One of the keys to ineffective one-to-one is some preparation. Both having the employee prepared to not like to think on the top of their head to provide updates because they might ramble. But to come in with some bullet-pointed updates on key projects. So that might be part of kind of a standing agenda, that and maybe if it’s necessary, even having them submit that ahead of time to say, “Here’s where I’m at with this, this and that project,” and then the conversation doesn’t have to be informed on what’s going on, but rather questions then the manager has about that progress or that update. Thinking about what’s best communicated verbally, versus what can be provided in writing ahead of time could be a time saver as well.
Kathy (host):
Yeah, and I like that because it keeps the meeting on point. And again, it makes it very productive and structured to go with the win and the challenges, the prioritization and the other ones versus getting bogged down to the minutiae of each project, which I again, have been guilty of myself that it’s just a shining ball, and you start following it. Before you know it, 30 minutes have gone. Yes, it’s like, “I have all these things that I haven’t gone through yet.”
Debbie (guest):
The other thing that you bring up a good point. We could spend a lot, even with an agenda, we could spend all of our time on the first agenda item, and we don’t get to the other. If you have a 30-minute meeting, or whatever your time is, you can almost have in parentheses about how long you’ll spend on each of the agenda items, or just what the expectation would be. It doesn’t mean that we can’t have some flexibility.
Debbie (guest):
But if we notice that we spend five minutes on this, and 10 minutes on this, and five minutes on this. And on the first five minutes saying we’re already 10 minutes in, we either need to adjust the agenda or table something for later. The other thing is that, I just think this is a good meeting strategy in general, whether it’s a one-to-one or group meeting, but asking a question in such a way, so you get a concise answer if that’s all you need. Give me the headline about this project. What I read in the newspaper as far as where that’s project data so that you get them to kind of summarize or give cliff notes rather than the details.
Kathy (host):
This is very structured, which I love, and I love structure. I love templates like this. But I see that a lot of businesses that are growing, and they have not implemented any of the structure before, not just in the one-on-one meetings, but in other places, too. They struggle with implementing this because they’re uncomfortable. They’ve never done it before. I think the issue behind it is too because the employees are not used to it. It feels almost like a culture shock when you go from just having a breezy conversation by the water cooler to this completely feels like the rigid structure of a meeting. how do you make that transition so that it doesn’t feel so abrupt?
Debbie (guest):
Yeah. This is just a change management concept. When you’re asking anybody to change or there’s a transition, you always want the person that you’re asking to make an adjustment or buy into an adjustment to understand the why. And in particular, what’s in it for them. Just as humans, we want to know, why would I do this way? What’s in it for me to do that? Using language like, “We’re going to implement a one-to-one agenda. We haven’t used that before, but the reason we’re doing it is so that we can be most productive. We might shave some time off. We’re going to make sure to hit on the key points that are so important for us to discuss, to establish a relationship to and you can reiterate the objectives of those one-to-ones. But what’s the why behind the change? How does this employee benefit? Those are the two things that I would cover.
Debbie (guest):
And then you could also make a smooth transition by giving advance notice not just springing it on them by saying, “In two weeks, we’re going to start implementing some more structure to the one-to-ones, and here’s why.” You’re giving them some time to adjust to the issue. And then you could also consider making incremental change. Rather than going from a completely unstructured conversation with time limits, no time limits, and the one-on-one, we’ll go for however long we want. You can at first, just say, “We’re going to, instead of just meeting ad hoc, grab me in the hall to do a one-to-one. We’re going to start by calendaring the one-to-one. And we think weekly, for about a half-hour will work. We’re just going to start with that.” And that’s the change, right?
Debbie (guest):
Then you can implement and say, “This seems to be a good cadence. We want to make sure these are as productive as possible. We’re going to make sure that we hit on these four points in the one to ones and you introduce an agenda of sorts.” It doesn’t have to be rigid structure and rigidity, in my opinion, are two different things. Structures are a framework that can help provide guidance and help keep everybody on the same page and on track. Rigidity is saying, “Oh, it’s been five minutes. We have to stop talking about that, right? Now, we have to move on to those next thing is going to be the exact same every time.” Well, that’s helpful in manufacturing if you need things to go a certain way under a certain timeline to get an expected result. But in human relationships, and dynamics, that feels great, right?
Kathy (host):
Yeah. It doesn’t work.
Debbie (guest):
Yeah. It’s not for building relationships. You can say, “Hey, we’re putting this agenda in place. And we think these components don’t take about this long. But you can still have some flexibility, and it can still be human.’
Kathy (host):
I think the benefits to the employee are the keyword here. Do you have any examples of what can someone use as a benefit to the employee for these structured meetings, as they’re trying to explain to them, “Hey, this is where we’re going to implement?” What are some of the examples that they can give them?
Debbie (guest):
Well, the first one that came to mind is saving time. That might not be considered a benefit. But if employees are already struggling with feeling busy and overwhelmed, you can go from having a conversation that lasts for an hour, to one that’s equally as productive. We don’t want to take shortcuts just to save time. But if it’s equally productive in a half-hour, because you’ve implemented some of these things we’ve talked about, and that saves the employee a half hour to actually be able to take a lunch break, or to work on something that is stressful, otherwise, if they had to do it in a different timeframe or to get out of work on time and not have to stay late. Saved time is a big benefit. I think it’s just respectful, too. You’re showing respect. You’re showing this benefit, and I think those would be things I would explain in we want to be respectful of your time. We want you to have the time you need to work on priorities. We’re going to shorten these meetings, but we’re going to make them equally as productive. To me, that seems like a good benefit. That’s an example of a benefit that doesn’t cost you anything.
Kathy (host):
What would be the benefit of if you’ve never done these one-on-one meetings before. But now you’re starting to implement what would be the benefit to the employee in that case?
Debbie (guest):
I think allowing the employee, again, a safe place and some structure to provide their input and ask for what they need. That also is a benefit. If they did not have a container to put those things in before and you give them a container, then they now know what to do with I’m so excited about this when I just had an I have the opportunity once a week to share good or bad, or “Boy, I’m really struggling and I can’t catch my boss’s time to talk well.” There’s a structured time and now know you know when to do that.
Debbie (guest):
It also can reduce interruptions and the kind of onesies here and there. Those are also benefits to having this protected time. And a little bit more structured time for these types of conversations. And then thinking about one of the key reasons, in my opinion, to do one to ones regularly is it is for the employee, as much as it’s for the manager to make sure things are on track is for the employee for their growth and development. When you’re asking questions like, “What, where are you stuck, what do you need from me? Is there any training? Is there anything you need or want to learn next?” You can have conversations, not just once a year about growth and development. That’s great, too.
Kathy (host):
Yeah, I love those examples. Thank you. Thank you so much for that, like my wheels were spinning as you were talking. We talked about having the structure as you’re trying to implement this. But let’s say that you have been in business for a while that and you’ve been doing this one-on-one meeting, and your team has grown significantly. You went from, let’s say, from 10 people all the way to 50 people. So having those one-to-one meetings, becomes a little bit more challenging, because if you have 50 people under you, even if you give them 30 minutes, that’s 25 hours.
Debbie (guest):
Yep. It’s not doable.
Kathy (host):
Then you will spend a lot of time in a week at a meeting. But let’s say that you do it over a couple of weeks, and once a month that you touch base with every employee, you’re still in meetings a lot. How do you structure one-on-one meetings when you have a larger team?
Debbie (guest):
Yeah. When you have a larger team, and as companies grow often, so does the org chart. When you go from having five employees to having 50? My guess is and if this isn’t happening, maybe it needs to, that 50 direct reports are a lot, right. If you can think about those employees, and those employees getting the support that they need, getting the time with a supervisor or manager that they need, that is a lot for one person. It could be that it’s an opportunity to think through, “Are these employees, and can they be grouped in teams?”
Debbie (guest):
And are those logical teams like all of these employees do the same thing, and is there a logical team leader for that team. If you took those 50 employees and made five groups of 10, as an example, and each one had a team leader who doesn’t have to have the title of manager or director of or anything super official, but even team leads, then you have the 10 employees bubbling things up to the one team lead. You’ve got five team leads in this example. And you do one-to-ones with those five team leads, making yourself available to the fifth team when they really need to have what in the larger corporate world is called a skip-level conversation, where you’re skipping your immediate manager and you’re going one level up or maybe it’s quarterly, you’re doing shorter touch bases with everybody, but on the weekly basis they’re reporting into and checking in with their team lead or supervisor. That might be something that starts to happen naturally when a company is growing. And in your example, having gone from 5 to 50, there might need to be, another layer in there. You don’t have 50 direct reports.
Kathy (host):
Yeah, and that’s what I’ve seen in bigger companies and in my corporate environment as well, what I was there was that we would have the skip level, it’s not just with the one level, it was the second level as well. We would have quarterly meetings, or sometimes we would have a six-month. It kind of gives a nice touch because you still get to be connected with the employees, or there are a couple of levels below you. If there’s an issue, you have a personal connection with them.
Debbie (guest):
Right.
Kathy (host):
Debbie, this has been absolutely amazing. Thank you so much. You give us so many practical tips. But I always have this question for every single guest that comes on this show. And people know this by now, if someone has, let’s say that they have issues with team productivity, and they have no idea where to start and what to do, what is something that they can do in the next week to get them closer to having a productive team, something very actionable?
Debbie (guest):
Somebody is struggling with team productivity. I’m going to kind of tie this into the one-to-ones that we just talked about. I would say something that they could do in the next week, is to really consider each individual team member’s role and come up with a couple of questions that they could ask in a one-to-one individual to get out the individual’s productivity because that’s going to impact team productivity. I think the one-to-ones if that’s already happening, that would be my practical tip is to create a short agenda and implement one-on-ones and I think when you do that, you’re gonna see a great impact on team productivity as well as individual productivity.
Kathy (host):
Debbie, where can people find you?
Debbie (guest):
Yeah, so on on the World Wide Web. The website is itssimplyplaced.com. I-T-S-S-I-M-P-L-Y-P-L-A-C-E-D.com. Also, @simplyplaced on most of the social media channels and do blog posts regularly and send a newsletter out with tips on organization and productivity at work, if anyone’s interested in that, too.
Kathy (host):
Yeah, and we’re gonna put all the links in the show notes too. Go ahead and check those out. Thank you so much, Debbie, for being on the show. I absolutely love this conversation.
Debbie (guest):
Great. Thanks for having me, Kathy.
Kathy (host):
Thanks so much for joining us. I hope that today’s episode of Help! My Business is Growing has not only shown you the value of one-on-one meetings but has also given you tips on how you can make them productive.
Kathy (host):
Next week, we discuss the hot point in every CEO’s agenda, hiring the right people to ensure your business achieves successful and sustainable growth.
Kathy (host):
Also, if you love this episode, you can find all the timestamps, show notes, blog posts, and links on the website newcastlefinance.us/podcast. And before I go, as always, I do have a favor to ask, if you listen to this on Apple Podcasts, if you could please go to the show and tap the number of stars that you think that the show deserves. Because it really helps other people find it. Thanks so much. Until next time.
Debbie is a sought-after Productivity Consultant, trainer, and the founder/CEO of Simply Placed, helping busy women who feel overwhelmed and overloaded prioritize what matters, plan their time, and produce valuable results with confidence and ease.
She is also the author of “Six-Word Lessons to Be More Productive” and co-author of “1 Habit for a Thriving Home Office”.
