How Do You Know What’s Really Going on in Your Team?

I was asked a pretty insightful question this week. I was doing Q&A with Minnesota Technology Association’s ACE Leadership cohort. We were discussing a wide range of leadership topics when one of the participants asked this interesting question:

How do you know what’s really going on in your team? Do you use dashboards or status reports? What’s your method?

I sat back in my chair for a moment to gather my thoughts.

It occurred to me that this is a personal leadership style sort of question. There’s really no specific right or wrong answer. If you asked a dozen different executive leaders, you’d get a dozen different answers.

Before I answer the question, I’d first like to validate the importance of it. Regardless of how you answer it, you need a really good answer. It’s critical that leaders can have confidence in what’s going on within their team. Blind spots are a huge liability and are potentially derailing. At the same time, once you reach the executive level, your team is too big. You can’t possibly get involved in everything. So, how do you know, what’s really going on?

Here’s my answer to that question. This is what works for me:

#1 I meet weekly with my direct reports. Yep, weekly. And I don’t cancel them unless one of us is on PTO. I’ve checked with other executives, and that’s a higher frequency than most, but I like it. I like being able to stay on top of hot issues. I don’t want too much time to pass between check-ins. Even if nothing major is going on, I want to keep these super-important relationships as healthy as possible. I rely heavily on my direct reports, so we need high trust and frequent synchronization.

We also have a weekly team meeting that rarely gets canceled. I make it a priority. We talk about relevant topics and get on the same page.

Also, we have established norms of frequent asynchronous communication via persistent chat, both 1:1 and as a leadership team. Anything real-time gets communicated right away.

That’s great, Zach, but what if your direct reports hide something important, or what if they are oblivious to what’s really going on?

I have a few hedges against that:

#2 I hire really competent leaders. They aren’t perfect, but they are really good. I set an example, and they follow it.

#3 I listen to my customers. Occasionally, but not often, I hear about a problem from my customers before I hear about it from my team. It’s rare, but it happens. I’d rather hear about it that way, than from my boss, or not at all.

#4 I do skip level meetings. Once per quarter or so, I attend the meetings that my direct reports run with their leadership teams. I don’t do that to check up on my direct reports, but I do it to build relationships with the next layer of leadership. I want to make myself accessible to them, and that’s only possible if there’s a relationship established already.

#5 I read the employee engagement survey results. You know those surveys that most companies do about how employees feel about working at your company? I take those very seriously. They provide excellent signal intelligence on how people feel at the ground level. Most importantly, it alerts me to “hot spots” that require some attention to fix leadership or cultural issues within the department.

One additional way I make myself available to employees is a very old concept called an open door policy. I wrote a whole article on that. In short, I make myself available to employees if they approach me. If someone wants to meet with me, the answer is always yes. I do my best to make myself approachable.

#6 I read our financial reports. I know how we are doing compared to the budget. I’ve got a large, complex organization with a lot of cost centers. I work with my leaders and finance partners to keep a constant watch on how we are performing financially. Before I joined CHS 9 years ago, I worked for financial institutions for 16 years, so this really got ingrained in me. I wrote more about that here.

That’s my playbook.

I’ve developed that over time. I watch over the things that matter most to me. My direct reports, their leaders, our customers, our employees, and our financials.

That may seem like a lot, but it’s actually a vital few things.

I’ll give you a few examples of things I don’t watch quite as closely. Remember the second part of the original question: “Do you use dashboards or status reports?” My answer: not really. I’m not a huge consumer of project status reports, KPI dashboards, and the like. I know a lot of executives who really dig on that, but I’m not one of them. Here’s why: For the most part, I delegate a lot of that. I’m not against status reporting. I think they are pretty important for some, but that person is usually someone to whom I’ve delegated authority. So, I trust that they are looking at the dashboards and giving me a heads-up if something goes awry. Hopefully, those same people invite me to the party when things go great, so I can cheer on their success.

Some of my readers are probably thinking, wow, Zach, this is the wrong answer. Don’t you get a lot of ugly surprises? Actually, no I don’t. And that’s how I know it’s working. But I can certainly admit that it works for me, and might not work for you. This sort of thing is highly variable based on leadership style.

I hope this insight helps. Go forth and lead. I hope you don’t have any ugly surprises this week. If you do, it might be time to reflect on your methods.

Read this article on my blog site or listen to it on my podcast🎙️