Regular Team Checkins Matters

You don't have awesome companies that just exist. You have incredible, awesome people that all decide to work in the same place and form an awesome company.

I'm willing to admit that when I first started growing businesses, not only did I not know this, I didn't have a clue, and it damaged my growth and my opportunity consistently. I don't want that to happen to you.

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is the Momentum Podcast, made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers, and creators of all kinds, those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny. We define it. We don't understand defeat, because you only lose if you stop, and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future, and instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world, because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution, and we always will be.

There comes a time in your business career where you realize that the most important thing you can do is build a team and get more done than you can do on your own. I just shared this at Funnel Hacking Live. We get to this place as entrepreneurs where the momentum we can create on our own is no longer enough. We literally feel the constraint of being in forward motion, creating forward progress, but we just can't create enough on our own, so the option very quickly begins to be, build a team, because when an entrepreneur can't do enough, we have to build the team. When a hunter can't hunt on their own, they build the tribe. They gather people together around them, and you start going there all together.

Now, here's the issue with building a team. If you don't have systems in place to nurture your people, to take care of your people, to protect your people, and to grow your people, you're going to have a hard time building your team, maintaining the best people on your team, and creating momentum on demand. Now, here is a simple way that you can make sure that every person on your team at the very minimum is getting the minimum amount of attention that they need. Have regular, weekly check-ins with your team. This is what we do on our team. This is what we do on the teams that we coach. If you look at any org chart on our company or any org chart for any team that we work with, the person directly above you on the org chart is the person that you do your weekly check-ins with.

Today, for me, I do three weekly check-ins in my business. I would meet with [Melanie], who's our director of, our manager of client experience. I meet with [Diana], who is coaching and content, and I meet with [Judita] who's sales and content, and every week, I have their weekly check-ins with them. Here's why. If you sit down with the members of your team on a weekly basis, if every member of your team sits down with another member of your team who's above them on the org chart who's in the chain of command, you can honestly and confidently say that you are taking care of the human beings on your team, that you are nurturing the human capital on your team. If you're not sitting down with them, you can't say that. We do a half-hour weekly check-in.

If you look at that half-hour weekly check-in to a 40-hour workweek, and I know most of the people on my team are probably putting in a little more than 40 hours a week. They check email on the weekend. They get up early. They stay late. Let's just call it 40 hours a week. What we're talking about is an 80-to-1 ratio of time directly for the team member to time that they're giving you for the company, and here's the challenge that I see in most entrepreneurial companies. Teams members have absolutely no scheduled or regular check-in. Here's what happens when you create a regular team check-in on a weekly basis.

One, you can confidently say you're taking care of human capital. When you sit down with each person on your team, here's what we do in our weekly check-ins. We have everybody tell us what's going on for them, what's happening. How much were they able to get done in the goals that we set out for them in the week? How are they doing with the objectives that they have been given by the company? Where do they need help? We let the team member guide the weekly check-in so we know that what they need is being heard, and they're getting the attention that they need so that they can move forward.

Two, when you create regular weekly check-ins, you have focus time for the team member. When you look at somebody working in your organization, if you don't have a regular scheduled weekly check-in, there is no focus time for the team member. What that means is, you're expecting them to come in day after day, hour after hour, work in a way that is creating momentum for you and your business, but without having anyone check in on them, answer their questions, clear constraint, help them create momentum. That is a equation that just long-term doesn't work. If you're not taking care of your team, if you're not supporting them, if you're not sitting down with them and showing them exactly what it is you want and how you want them to work, you're going to experience drift, and there's going to be challenges.

Now three, if you sit down for weekly check-ins with every member of your team, this is a crucial and critically important information gathering opportunity, because each time you talk to people, you can ask them, where are they feeling constrained? Where could they, what could we do to help them create momentum? What can we get out of their way? What are the opportunities they're seeing? What's shocking about most entrepreneurial businesses is that the team isn't given an opportunity to share the opportunities they see, the opportunities for efficiency they see, the challenges that they see, so that those things can get corrected in the business.

Here's what I know about people who go to work in entrepreneurial companies for the most part. People who go to work in smaller businesses are problem solvers. They want an opportunity to show how good they are. They're looking for an opportunity to be able to have a bigger impact to contribute more, to be able to do more, to be able to see their work means something. That is who's attracted to smaller businesses, for the most part. That's who wants to work with people like you and I, and the challenge is, if someone who has that motivation, that drive, that connection to what they do, they want to show how good they are, if they get into a position where they aren't checked on regularly, it's near impossible for them to feel like what they're doing matters. If you're not having regular team check-ins now, this is a massive opportunity for you.

I'll tell you, when I do my team check-ins, they're usually with Melanie, who has a lot of responsibility and manages several people in our company. Typically on a weekly basis, hers are somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour, and when I meet with Diana or Judita on sales and coaching or content and coaching, they're typically 25 minutes to a half hour, and in that time period, I know I can clear out any constraint that they're having and help them. Here's what they know. They know that they have a regular weekly check-in with me. They know that they have a time where they can get my undivided attention and have questions answered and create momentum and move forward like they want to.

Here's why that is so critical for someone in a position like coaching and sales or content and sales. They don't have to get up every morning and find the time to try and get my time or attention. They don't have to do a, "Got a minute," or send me a message, or try and get information or attention from me while we're doing other things, because they know they have focus time with me. What that does is, it creates a habit among your team of saving the issues up so they can talk to you, making sure that if something's not urgent, that they treat it as a system and a process where they can check in with you on the regular weekly check-in.

If you have a small business right now, and it doesn't matter if you have one team member, 10 team members, 100 team members, it doesn't matter. You want to be able to confidently say as a CEO, "Every member of my team is being taken care of on a weekly basis. We are taking care of the human capital, the human assets, we have on our team." As a CEO, you can't stand in front of a room and say that? I want you to understand something. When you can, the level of confidence you will feel in your chest, the level of confidence you will feel when you stick your chest out and say, "The people on my team are being taken care of," is amazing. I want you to be able to do that. I want you to be able to confidently say that.

The way you do this is, you mandate regular weekly check-ins with every member of your team, the person they report to on the org chart. You let the team member drive that interaction. In our coaching products and when we work with our clients, we have very specific things that you cover in these interactions, but if you don't have the entire cadence system in place, that's okay. Just getting together with your team member, letting them drive the interaction, tell you where they need support, get questions answered, and have that time for that one-on-one connection will let them know they are significant. It will create a process through which they get their questions answered, and it will help every member on your team find, get into, and stay in momentum. The people on your team are growing your business for you. Give them some time, and you will be shocked at how much you get back.

If you're ready to start growing your business faster, build the team you've always wanted and make the impact you know you're capable of. Take a minute right now and go to billionairecode.com. Fill out our short application and then book a call with a member of my team. Let it show you how you can plan in a way that your team understands, communicate so that everybody knows where you're going and they get their work done, and how you can build the infrastructure around you so that you can fulfill the opportunity you've created faster than anywhere else. Go to billionairecode.com. Fill out the application. We look forward to connecting with you.