How to Run Productive 1:1 Meetings with Your Team – Live Coaching with Kris | S04E08

Foreign.

Hey.

Hey.

Welcome to another edition of Leadership is Feminine.

I'm Chris Plackey and I'm excited to.

Bring you another live coaching conversation with one of our listeners. This one was really interesting from my perspective because the woman that you'll hear me talking with has a really great team. Things are going really well. And what I loved about our conversation is, first of all, that's possible, and second of all, that everyone still needs to think about how they're developing themselves as a leader so that they can improve the overall results of their team and their business. And in the case of this listener, we have someone who's ready, really ready to start thinking about designing that next level of leadership in her business. So what, what happens when you know that it's time to start thinking about bringing in executive leaders, that higher level leader? And what does that invite you to think about as a woman running your own business? So, without further ado, let's get started.

All right, well, I'm super excited. We're going to have our next podcast listener talk about her question for the day. So welcome. I'm so glad that you're here.

I'm happy to be here.

And what, pray tell, is the question you'd like to talk about today?

So, just to give you a little bit of background, I'm a psychologist and I own a psychology clinic. And so I have a number of psychologists that work for me. And then I have two staff members that do my administrative work. And I don't meet with them often enough, I think. And historically I have met with them semi regularly and I found that we would just kind of go off on tangents and our meetings were not productive. And so I fall out of the habit of having the meetings, which I think are important. And so I think I need more help in, you know, how do I run these meetings? What, what would be the best outcomes for the meetings? That sort of thing.

Okay, perfect. It's a great question and really, really common. Honestly, it's like, okay, I wanna meet with them, but what do we talk about? And then it feels like we're just wasting time and we're chatting or like, yeah, so let me just, if you don't mind indulging me, I'm just gonna ask you a few questions that's gonna help us kind of get to a better answer. So you have psychologists who work for you. Why do you have psychology clinic? Why don't you just work on your own?

I, I think I'm a natural leader. I love leading people and I love Supporting people and having, you know, a supportive and well run workplace where there is structure but also flexibility. And, you know, I know there's a lot of psychologists out there that they just don't want to run their own business. And I love running my business, so I feel like if we can match up and then also help heal people, you know, so many people need support and guidance and psychological help right now. So I love the idea of helping more people.

Okay. And when you bring people in, do you kind of coalesce them around a philosophy as it relates to psychology or are you really running sort of a building with different sort of people who do their practice as they want?

The psychologists that I hire are independent contractors and so I am in Canada, so it'd be the equivalent of 1099. They are able to kind of run their practices as they see fit. But in general, we are a PTSD specialty clinic. We work with a lot of first responders. We offer EMDR therapy. And so we have some, know, general things that we all do, but we all kind of have our own sort of special magic in how we do that.

Okay, cool. I had a therapist several years ago who was so awesome. That was her specialty. And she was a firefighter in her previous life. And then she got trained and so she worked mostly with. Again, I live in Northern California where we have, you know, horrible fires. And anyway, she. She was super cool to work with, important work. So the reason I'm asking you is when. So knowing that you have independent contractors is good to know because that relationship is a little different than an employee. Right. It doesn't mean we would have less expectations. It doesn't mean any of that. Like you can have expectations for people who work with and for you. Right. So these are sort of a hybrid of that.

Can I pause and clarify one part of my question?

Yeah.

I actually meet with my psychologist regularly.

Okay.

I don't use as much. So my psychologist, I feel like that's going really smoothly.

Okay.

And actually the admin staff as well, I have very good systems and processes and so not a lot of things come up. But I know probably things are coming up that I don't even know about that I could help them through. And so that is more of my.

Oh, I'm so glad you clarified. So let me ask you this then. Do the people who are in your admin roles have job descriptions?

They do, but I could clarify them better. They've been kind of cobbled together. My one office manager, she's been with me since 2016. I think she's amazing and she does such a great job. But over the years things have shifted and changed a lot and so I probably need to bring it all together and be a little bit more clear. But they do have job descriptions. Yes. Yeah.

Okay, so. And that's really common. Right. We find people that are amazing, they gel with us on a values. Right. That's why these relationships work out so well because we sort of can have the same goals, we have the same intention of the work that we're creating in the world, the purpose of the work. And so then if you say to your office manager, hey, can you start doing this too? She's says sure. And it just starts to be like a thing which all works out great until.

Something in her life changes and she's moving to Ireland or something. Right. And then you have to replace the role and you haven't really identified it. You've built it around a person. Right.

We do have an operations manual and so she does the majority of the work and then it was becoming too much for her so we hired another person. And so the manual has helped her to be trained and so I.

That's great.

Yeah. Everything's like fairly.

You're doing a great job. I think the thing about the one on ones is you kind of get to decide. Right. So there's really a few reasons why we do them. The first one is at the beginning of a relationship with a team member. It's training, it's onboarding, it's connecting, it's helping them learn things, it's connect and making sure they're following through. Right. We also can do one on ones with people because we want to, they have like a fast paced job and we want to make sure that on a weekly or, or bimonthly, never say those things.

Right.

Semi monthly basis, we're making sure that they're on track, they're trending towards any projects, any benchmarks. A lot of admin roles are quite reactive. So it's like did the billing go out? Are the patients getting scheduled on time? There's a reacting to whatever's happening with the client that then drives the admin's work. Rather than some people have a salesperson as example has a role that has to create and initiate. Right. And in those cases we're going to follow through with them in a one on one on how they're trending towards a goal. Right. I would imagine admin, at least with the clients I've coached who have similar businesses, it's more making sure Things are processed, procedures are followed, nothing's falling through the cracks.

Right.

And so we want.

Well, they do, yeah, yeah.

That's why we do want to have a one on one. Right. And I would just say if you don't have it, you want to kind of look at, you know, what are those, to use a health care analogy. Right. What are the vital signs of your business? So if anything, if any one of these vital signs dips too low, it could be perilous for the company. Right. So it could be like compliance, regulatory billing, you know, things that would have a significant impact on your business's ability to thrive. And for whatever of those that your admin team is responsible for, I would make sure you have a very clear dashboard and a reporting structure. It sounds like you have a lot of systems in place, which is great. And we just want to make sure we're really looking at like, is our AR where it should be. All the pieces that I know you're looking at, because those are the little sneaky things that all of a sudden we can realize there's a pile of unpaid clients and significant in terms of revenue. And so if you don't have sort of a vital few. Right. With each role, then let's get that in place. And it may be honestly that you just need to meet with them once a month.

Yeah, you don't have to meet. It doesn't feel like it has to be very often at this point. We used to meet more often, just.

Yeah.

You know, in a more flowy way. I probably should have structured it more in the beginning maybe.

Yeah, it doesn't seem to not be working right. Like, I think there's, there's things we think we're supposed to do because we're supposed to do them and we don't find purpose. And then there's things we want to really look at and say, oh, okay, I could improve that. And where I always see clients, especially where you are, where your business is doing well, you feel really good about what you've created. There's always opportunity for growth. And my preference is a team meeting every week, always. What are we doing? How many patients are coming? What are the obstacles? Are we anticipating? Do we have any events coming up? Is there anything happening with the team, the psychology team that we should be talking about, even if it's a half hour? Because what that does is it creates team.

It doesn't have to be with your independent contractors, but with your staff.

Then maybe you have private calls or meetings with them individually once a month. And that's where you're looking at their role, their responsibilities, their dashboard. Right. Their vital few. And the other thing I would recommend, since you guys are so established with one another, is sort of to decide if you would like to offer them some development.

Okay. Some growth. A lot of times a one on one can be five minutes of like a briefing of their stats, if you will. Right. And then it could be, you know, what do you want to do? What's your goal? Like what are you striving for? Maybe it's not even a work thing. And what could you do as a leader in their life, as a mentor in their life to help them to stimulate new learning, to stimulate new experiences? Because when in how to CEO, we teach something called the employee continuum. And that's my way of saying we really have three directions we take with people. Everyone we hire, we sort of all, they all stay in the first. They're all together like coaching and training, coaching and training, coaching and training, right. Everybody's kind of there. But then we start to identify that we have people who are like rock stars and they really want to grow and they really want to do amazing things. Right? So those employees we coach for growth, for ascendancy, for opportunity. Maybe someday you don't want to work, you don't want to meet with patients, you'd like to have somebody who could kind of be the stand in executive in your practice and you maybe only work a day, a week or something. Maybe there's someone in there that you could to groom for that. Then there's people who, they don't really want to grow, they love what they do, they're just happy. So those people we coach for engagement and retention and that's where we really explore their interests. And what, as a business owner, what kind of resources do you have available to support that for them? Right. Is it education, is it training, is it a coach? Sometimes. Right. A lot of my clients hire coaches for their team members because it's great learning for them, it's great support. And then the other direction, of course, is people who are not performing. And that's when we really apply the management principles that we teach. Right. And how to CEO. And that's not coaching. That's really like, oh, I gave you everything I could and you're not taking the wheel. So now we got to really take the wheel this way. So it sounds like you, you know, with your staff, you, you at least have people right now who are engaged, they're happy. So I would find ways to be an Employer that is sort of stepping up your relationship with them in other ways and see if they're interested. And that's also something you can bring to that one on one.

Okay. I love that I'm not doing the team meeting every week.

Yeah.

So yeah, just to touch base. It sounds like helpful.

And think about like maybe even for your first time you do it, just ask them, what should we talk about as the, as a triad. Right. You said there's two of them and one of you. Yeah. What should the three of us talk about on a Monday morning for a half hour? Like what should we be covering together? And it could be a 15 minute huddle or it could be a half an hour meeting. But in my experience, as long as the meetings have value, most people like that and admin especially because you know, that's their connection to the business. Whereas your contractors, they may not be looking for that. Right. They come in, they do their thing, they go home. And that's okay. That's totally.

I actually, I run an office hours every week with my contractors and so we connect and often it's just like what's going on in your life right now, that sort of thing. So I could do that with my admin too.

Totally.

Yeah.

I love that. Just to open door sort of office hours.

Yeah.

Because my brain always goes to. Okay, well what does this look like when your business is twice the size if you want it to be. And then we think about, okay, there's going to need to be some dashboard measures that anybody could use to reflect on how well your business is performing.

Okay. Yeah. I really have been reflecting on joining how to CEO and I think that would be really helpful for me. So I have some dashboard measures that I keep track of for myself, but I don't really share them with my team that much and I think that would be helpful just to.

Well, that's that transition of like solopreneur entrepreneur to really moving into sort of CEO. And it's not. We all go through it, it's normal. Right. I actually have a client who was on a call yesterday and she has a mental health practice. She's a MFT and she's got like 18 people who work for her.

Right.

And do provide therapy. And she's in that, she's in that phase.

Because she doesn't want to do as much practice and so. And it's always a little bit harder when I talk to people who can't imagine that. But eventually it seems like most practitioners get to a place where they're like, okay, I love what I do. I love what my business is able to do. I don't know that I want to do it as much. And so then we have to build it, which I would rather you start doing that now, even if you may not want to be in a different role in your company for another three, four years. That's okay.

Yeah, I've already started that process. So I only see clients every other week. And opposite week I do business related tasks. And it's a beautiful balance.

Yeah, that sounds very simple.

Yeah, yeah, it works for me. It just keeps me clear.

I like it.

You know, one thing that I think would be really helpful with this meeting is I find I often talk to my staff if something's gone wrong. Right. And I feel terrible about that, that most of the time I think they're doing an amazing job. And yet, you know, you don't tend to just email like, hey, you're doing a great job most of the time. Good, good work. But if I was meeting with them, I would probably communicate that better.

Yeah.

So that's something I felt not good about for a long time. That, you know, I appreciate them so much, but I don't necessarily tell them that enough.

Yeah, that's. It's funny. I was coaching a woman, this was years ago and we used to do, when I would work with companies, we would do 360 surveys, which are feedback surveys that go to everyone that you work with if you're in a leadership role. One of the feedback consistencies was not acknowledging and giving feedback on performance in a good way. And so I said to her, I'm like, well, why don't you just make a note on your calendar that once a week you'll identify someone on the team. And she had a really relatively large team. Right. And I said, but you'll identify someone on the team who's gone above and beyond, like done something super cool or consistently cool. Right. And once a week you acknowledge that in an email. Forget. She said, do I have to do it every week? Can I do it every month? Right. And it was just so funny because there's something really awkward for people about that. And part of it is remembering. And also it is interesting. Like it is weird that we sort of. It doesn't occur to us. And so, yeah, I would agree with you. If you, whether it's the one on one or even you just bake in like once a month, I'm gonna kind of make a big deal out of something that happened. It really does go a Long way. And in my life, we've always talked about giving positive feedback as cookies, not crumbs. I don't know if you've ever heard that expression.

I'll use my kids as an example. Right now we're in the process of packing up this house because we're going to move. And it's awful trying to move. They're older, they're 17, and so they're really able to do things. When we moved before, that was an impossibility. They've been doing a really good job at getting their rooms packed and all these things. Right. And so I've been really working to remember to say, hey, thank you so much for how well you took care of this closet. Like, I love how you pulled the sweatshirts down and you put everything in a bin and now it's all clean. Listen. Right. And it's so. It's very substantial versus, hey, great job.

Yeah, yeah, it does. When.

Because when you add detail, it really shows that you paid attention.

Yeah.

And it is. I mean, you're a psychologist. You know that.

Right.

Like that people want to know that they matter and that they are seen and they want that experience in an authentic way.

Yeah.

So however that feels good to you, I would absolutely encourage you to do that. Yeah. It's great insight. Yeah. Okay, so a meeting, short meeting. Talk to them, ask them what they think would be valuable. A little mini. Maybe start some dashboardy, numbery progress numbers that you're going to look at. It can be the business measures. It's just which ones do they touch most likely. Right. Or more likely or more consistently. And then decide how frequently you think you need to connect with them. And if you want to start to integrate a little personal development into that experience.

Okay.

Yeah. You're coaching them and focusing on engagement and retention. Not necessarily performance. Because performance isn't an issue.

No, not really.

Which, when that's happening, we say a little prey.

Can you just say thank you for having a team right now where there's no drama.

Yes.

Especially right now. Yeah.

There's a lot of drama in the world and in the work world. Yeah. I feel very fortunate.

Yeah.

I have, you know, and I think that's probably what's stopped me from joining how to CEO. I'm like, there's nothing on fire right now, but, you know, really, I should join and prevent things from starting on fire.

Well, and prepare. I think that the thing about. I was just having this conversation with myself before our call, and.

I was kind of ranting in my brain, I'LL be honest. And I think you might actually appreciate this in the industry and field that you're in, because I believe that there are certain roles we play in our lives that for whatever reason.

There'S this collective belief that you should just be good at it. Like parenting.

Right.

Like in my mind we need some training to be good parents. Like, I don't know about anybody else, but oh heavens, it's been a go. Right. I mean if it weren't for people who'd come before me and honestly doing some of my own training, I would have failed miserably as a parent. And the same thing to me is true about managing teams. It. And I think that it's irresponsible to run a company if you haven't actually learned how to manage people. And I don't mean that like judgmentally. I just think there's so much you could do so much better if you knew more. Right.

So I fall into that.

Yes.

Role. Right.

Yes.

You know, I know how to be a therapist, but I don't necessarily haven't trained how to be a manager. Hobble together some skills. But yeah.

And you have natural leadership tendency and insight and under. You understand human behavior which, listen, that's like half the job right there.

Right.

But yeah, I mean, but the fact that we expect ourselves to sort of just be able to do it is also. I said, I think for a lot of people setting people up to fail, like don't let's. How about we just not expect it? How about we just recognize, oh yeah, there's probably more I could learn here and do better. And I always think for someone like you, like you're very well poised to grow. This is when you should kind of be thinking about that if everything's kind of rolling.

Yeah. That's really where I'm at right now is I want to expand and grow.

Yeah.

This is a good foundation to do that with. I think it's perfect timing so we don't have to be in pain.

Before we ask for help.

Good point.

Right. We can just be a little bit like how maybe I should plan ahead. Yeah.

Preventative.

Preventative.

Yeah. But I'm so glad that you asked this question today because I know a lot of people ask us in our program about what is a one on one and why do I need to do them. And they're kind of boring. Sometimes people even who've been doing them a long time, they get stale. So how do we shake things up? And you know, small team, that can happen too. So I think it's an awesome question and very relevant. And yeah, hopefully you've got a few things you can play with today.

That's super helpful. Thank you so much.

Yeah, it's so nice to meet you. And I'll hope I'll see you in how to CEO here sometime soon. We have a lot of exciting changes coming up here at Chris Plackey Coaching Group, and I don't want you to miss out. From leaving social media to offering live interactions only to people on our email list, I want to make sure you don't miss out. Head on over to Chrisplackie.com and drop your name and email in our little box there. And that way you'll get all the updates well before everybody else, and even updates that nobody else will know about. See you there.