The Empathetic Leader: Fifteen Minutes of Happiness

As a leader, you are only as successful as your staff allows you to be.? In other words, if they are not performing well, it reflects poorly on you.? Yet too many managers invest too little time in their staff.? They are too busy meeting with senior leadership or customers or vendors.? They are in project meetings and budget meetings and strategy meetings.? They de-prioritize meeting with their staff and that is a big mistake, particularly when the time investment, if done wisely, is so low.

That’s why we recommend that you have a 15-minute, one-on-one meeting, at least every other week with each of your direct reports.? The topic of the meeting is them, their happiness, and their workload.

That recommendation probably set off alarm bells among a lot of you.? You have too many direct reports to invest that much time!? Well, if that’s true, you, uh, have too many direct reports.?

You should not have more than six direct reports.? You won’t be able to give them the proper attention otherwise.? We won’t go down the rabbit hole of organizational reporting structure right now (fodder for a future post).? Just realize that you can still have a fairly flat structure and support a lot of staff while limiting every manager to six direct reports or less.? In fact, you can support an almost 1300 person organization with just four levels (I’ll let you do the math).? That’s supervisor, manager, director, VP.? That’s pretty flat for an org that big.? Nice and neat and ensures everyone in the org feels they have regular access to their boss.

The number works well, too, for your fifteen-minute meetings.? With six (or less) direct reports, you can do a 15-minute meeting every other day (MWF) with a direct report.? That is not a large time commitment.? If you don’t have 15 minutes every two weeks for your direct reports, you’re a lousy manager.? Do better.? Oh, and don’t schedule the meetings only to regularly cancel them.? That is almost worse.? It sends the message that meeting with your staff is something you try to avoid.

Now, of course you go on holidays.? Of course you have off-sites.? Of course you have weeks of travel.? All we’re suggesting is that you do everything you can to work these meetings in, even if they are by phone once in a while.? Employees LOVE it when their manager finds a way to make a meeting with them happen regardless of circumstances.? Nothing makes them feel more important.

So What’s the Plan?

·???????? You are going to invest fifteen minutes every other day to meet one on one with a different member of your staff.

·???????? You are going to ensure that you meet with each staff member at least once every two weeks.

·???????? You are going to ask them three questions ahead of the meeting:? How happy are you?? How is your workload?? How prepared do you feel to do the tasks assigned to you?? You can do this via email.? We used power platform to write a script that automatically populated a spreadsheet.? You’ll come up with something good (and private and secure), I’m sure.

·???????? Ask the questions on a scale of 1-5 where 1 stinks and 5 is great.? Or pick your own scale.? Just be consistent.

·???????? Keep track of the scores over time (again, stored securely and privately), so you can see improvements and flag issues.

·???????? A dedicated meeting is best but you can add it to your regular cadence.? If you already have a tactical meeting every other week, you don’t have to add another necessarily.? Just put the happiness portion up front because you’ll probably find the things that are making them unhappy are the items you’ll be discussing in your meeting.

What do you discuss?

·???????? Happiness, first of all.? This will reveal any number of things: disfunction in the team, communication breakdowns, too frequent priority shifting, etc.? It might also reveal that the person is dealing with a personal issue that is impacting their performance.? All of it is an opportunity to make things easier and better for your employee and that equals better performance and efficiency.

·???????? You’ll also discuss workload.? Again, this can expose problems within the team or give you fodder to request more headcount.? It also gives you a chance to clarify their priorities because too much work often is code for they don’t know what is most important.

·???????? Discuss their preparedness to deliver.? Sometimes this is really what makes the workload feel too heavy.? They don’t know the best way to handle a task so they are doing it in some inefficient way.? Or they simply don’t know how to do it so they are spending a good chunk of time educating themselves.? Both are opportunities to make an employee more effective both in the short and long term.

·???????? Remember, this is THEIR meeting, not yours, so pretty much anything is on the table.? Let them talk about anything they want, ask any question they want.? Nothing is out of bounds (privacy and HR related issues are the exception).? That doesn’t mean you have to answer the question.? You can say ‘I don’t know the answer’.? You can say ‘I can’t share that information at the moment’.? But give as much as you can.

·???????? Review past happiness scores and compare them so you can see that, wow, you were much happier two weeks ago.? What happened?? Or, hey, look at how far you’ve come!? You were miserable when we first started talking, now you’re regularly happy.? Let’s do more of what we’ve been doing!

·???????? This is not a tactical meeting.? You’re not there to assign work.? However, if they want to discuss their current project, let them.? Just do so in the context of the happiness/workload/preparedness discussion.? Maybe they don’t feel prepared and want your advice.? Maybe they feel overwhelmed and need help or an extension to their timeline.? Maybe they love the current project and want to do cartwheels around the room.? Or maybe they hate it and are looking for an explanation on why it’s important.? This is your chance to encourage and explain.

·???????? You can give bad news.? If they are unhappy that they are not being given more responsibility, explain why they are not.? Help them to understand what they need to do to be trusted with more.? This is a happiness meeting.? Transparency and honesty may make an employee less happy in the short run, but it gives them the opportunity to succeed and feel happier in the long run.

·???????? Keep the meeting to fifteen minutes.? Get to the point.? You’re busy and you expect them to be out delivering.? And because you are meeting every other week, you can pick up the discussion next time.? If it is really pressing, sure, extend the meeting or schedule another but do your best to respect the time limit.

Look, you will not make everyone happy.? Not every meeting will go well.? There will be things outside of your control that cannot be changed.? That includes the performance of the employee.? At the end of the day, they are responsible for their own actions and therefore responsible for their own happiness.? If they are not happy working within the constraints necessary to run your team or your business that might mean they would be happier working somewhere else.? That’s OK.? People switch jobs.? Just do your best with what you have.

But start now.? The barrier to entry here is low.? All it takes in a recurring meeting a spreadsheet to increase the happiness and, hopefully, the productivity and efficiency of your teams.

If you would like help, just shoot me an email at [email protected].? Good luck!