The Researched Power of 1 on 1 Check Ins

My Business On Purpose

Hey! Ever feel disconnected from your team? Either you don't feel like you're getting them, or they don't feel like they're getting you, or vice versa.

One of the biggest issues that we see when we're working with business owners, or frankly, just when we're working with people, we're human beings. Whereas tasks don't talk back. There's no emotion there. When we're dealing with people, ourselves. We've got emotions, we've got variations. Things happen in our lives, and it causes us to do different things.

And for years, we at Business On Purpose have been pushing the 1 on 1 Check In. And with this check in, a variety of different elements can come out through these discussions. And one of the biggest pieces of pushback we'll get is this one piece that says, “Yeah, but Scott, we talk all day long, like, we don't need to do this. We're always talking. We're texting, we're talking on the phone. We're looking at different things.”

I ran across a book, and it helped to understand this hunch that we had that individual, 1 on 1, undistracted check ins could be an incredibly powerful tool, not only for leadership, but effective. Just day to day management. So it's in the book called “The Effective Manager”, and it's written by Mark Horstman, Kate Braun, and Sarah Sentes. And you can find it anywhere. Just look it online. The Effective Manager.

What I really like about the book is they actually did statistical research around managerial status and a variety of tools that they leveraged in order to find growth, both in managers and more often in people. And so as it comes to small business, we can learn a lot from this. And so I want you to take this excuse that we get a lot. “Yeah, but Scott, we talk all day long”, and I want you to think about this.

What they found in the book is that the average length of time that managers talked in this what we call non necessary meeting with the directs, that, quote, they talk to all day long. 28 minutes. That's it. 28 minutes. So, when you say that you talk all day long with your team, what you really mean is we spent about 28 minutes together, but it's 30 seconds here, a minute and a half there, three minutes there.

Is that how you want to build a relationship and a connection? Is that how you would build a relationship with the people that you love outside of work, your spouse, your kids? No. No. We've got to have continuity in what we do. And to allow the demon to roar even more. What I found from Cal Newport was the average length of time that we spend checking email is 5.6 hours.

So, this is what the normal week looks like. Most likely, this is what your week looks like. 28 minutes talking all day long, or the average day, 5.68 hours of chat checking email. And if we're really honest, we spend the remaining two-ish hours putting out fires. When do we ever get to work on the business? When do we ever get to lead? Because we're not leading when we're talking all day long. We're not leading when we're checking email. And we're certainly not leading when we're putting out fires.

So, we reoriented to the day and thought about, what is an RPM day look like? You might be thinking, what is RPM? Repetition, Predictability, and Meaning. So, we don't void repetition and predictability out and leave it meaningless? No, we want to bring meaning into that. How do we do that?

What if you replaced your talking all day long with a 1 on 1 check in with your direct reports? What if you replaced 5.6 hours of checking email and replaced it with following your CEO owner scorecard, or your job role and your weekly schedule? What if you replaced putting out fires and instead started to work ON the business, articulating vision, mission values, recasting all of that, building out fiscal dashboards, subdividing bank accounts, long term planning, goal setting, past, present, future financials, all the things that we talk about at Business On Purpose.

What if you replaced putting out fires with working on the business? So, there was a fascinating study put out. So, I want to reinforce the power of the 1 on 1 check in that one little element of 28 minutes a day instead of talking all day long, that you can talk once in a focused atmosphere with your direct report.

So here was the study by Horstman, Braun, and Sentes. And what they did is they put 700 managers in a study and they measured the success of the manager by two things. Number one is their key result for whatever vertical they're in. You know, if you're in sales, close deals, if you're in operations, finished schedules, whatever it might be. So, whatever that key result was, and then number two, was the retention of the team. In fact, they argue in the book that those are really the only two things that matter from a management standpoint, the key result and the retention of the team that produces those results. They put 400 of those managers in what they call the control group. If you got a background in scientific studies, you would understand what this is. The control group, the 400 managers, didn't do anything different. They basically got a placebo pill and they would just continue to operate and to manage as they've always managed. So, they had 300 other managers that were in the test group to where they actually had them do 1 on 1 check ins.

Now, the test was set to run for 30 months. 400 managers not doing 1 on 1 individual check ins with direct reports. 300 managers proactively doing 1 on 1 check ins with their direct reports and only their direct reports. Nobody down from that. After 19 months, they had to stop the study. Why? It's because there was ethical consideration.

See, what they found there were 43 total managers who had received promotion at month 18. Why did they stop the study? Because 42 of those were from the test group. 42 of the 43 managers that had been promoted were in the blinded test group who were actively implementing 1 on 1s. What that meant was there was only one promoted manager who was in the control group not implementing the 1 on 1s.

See, ethically, they were holding people back from promotion because they weren't allowing them to do the 1 on 1s because they were in the control group. And so there was an interesting couple of outlays with this. Number one is the frequency of the 1 on 1 check ins. What does that look like? Well, those that did their 1 on 1 check ins weekly had the largest improvement.

Those who did it biweekly saw a 50-ish percent improvement compared to the weekly. So, they saw a significant improvement. It just wasn't what the weekly were. Now, I want you to look at this. Those who did nothing at all, they were in the control group, saw a slight improvement in results just by taking the placebo pill. They call that the placebo effect.

But this is what really grabbed my attention. Those who did the check ins, so they were in that test group of 300. They did the check ins, but they only did them once a month, actually saw a decrease in results and retention. So, they saw worse performance than the control group, who did nothing at all. So, what it means is that we have not only got to do 1 on 1 check ins where we're not just talking all day long, but we're having meaningful interaction over and over and over again. And then those that scheduled the check ins saw a four times improvement over those who did not schedule the check inside, but still had those there.

So, here's some best practices that I thought to be really, really helpful. Number one, schedule your check ins to go back over there. It's a huge predictor of success versus unscheduled check ins. Hold them weekly, a max of 30 minutes, a minimum of about 20 minutes. This 10/10/10 means the first ten minutes they get to feed you back and I'm going to give you some questions I think will be helpful. The second ten minutes are your time to feed them back and then the remaining ten minutes for anything that you want. Some people would cut that final ten minutes out and really just focus on the first ten and the second ten. And then you meet only with your direct reports. And only your direct reports. Nobody else.

Well, how do I stay close to the others? By leading your direct reports so that they stay close to the others. And then the fifth is what we always say. In fact, it's one of our core values, is to write it down, take written notes. Now, if you're part of the BOP community, you already have these check in questions in this final statement here at the end. Here's what I see, here's what I need from you. But if you're not part of the BOP family, this is a simple set of checking questions that you can go in and begin to ask to get the conversation started. And you can block out 20 to 30 minutes with a direct report, preferably weekly, if not every other weekly. But what we're finding out is monthly actually has an adverse effect.

So, what if you come back and say, “Well, Scott, I don't have time to do this.” I would come back and tell you, as a coach, “I wonder why you don't have time to do this.” It's because you're living in this day to day of where you're talking all day. You're checking the devil of email most of your day, and you're spending the rest of it constantly putting out fires. Well, if you do that, then what you're going to do is subset yourself to chaos. So, let's make sure not to do that. Let's go to mybusinessonpurpose.com/contact. Reach out. We want to help you with this and provide you with resources. That's mybusinessonpurpose.com/contact to see how we might be able to help you at Business On Purpose.