Before I joined Rypple I had a great opportunity to manage a team on the call centre floor for a major Telecom. This experience meant a lot to me for a few reasons:

1. I learned a lot about how to lead people (in an environment where people don’t necessarily want to be led)
2. In a team of 25 I was by far the youngest (another barrier to driving the team) ; and,
3. Here’s the kicker – In 2 months the team went from 4th to 1st in Ontario – based solely on metrics

What got me there? Great advice from experienced team leaders who knew the ins and outs of the business.

The very first thing they taught me… Set clear expectations on your first 1:1 (have a connection meeting).

How do you do that? Easy! Set up 20 minutes with each person on your team and chat 1:1 (but make sure you have a battle plan!).

After asking MANY managers about what worked for them I created a battle plan for each of my Connection Meetings:

1. Before the meeting DON’T look at the metrics – The focus of the chat is for you to get to know each other and knowing their metrics might cloud your judgement.
2. Introduce yourself, your background, and your role – It was important for them to know that they could trust my experience and I wanted to establish that, above all else, my job was to help them be great.
3. Establish what you would like the team to accomplish for the business – our goals were pretty simple, we had metrics that we had to meet, but it was important for them to understand their role in the bigger picture and set that expectation early.  They were the front lines, the ones that interacted with our clients, set the tone for the brand, and represented the company.  It was also great to share company goals because they always had ideas about how we could meet them.
4. Understand what they’d like to get from the role personally – people are motivated for different reasons, some were there because they just wanted to make a buck, others were looking at personal growth, while others wanted to use the job as a stepping stone to other roles in the organization. Understanding their motivations helped me understand what drives them to succeed.
5. Lastly, chat about how you can achieve both (business goals and personal goals) -For me it was simple, meet the targets and they can work on projects that help them develop.  It may not be as cut in dry for your team, but still an important point to drive home.  As a coach I often hear about people who leave because (a) they didn’t understand their development path and (b) They didn’t know where they stood in the business until it was too late.

One last piece of advice – write stuff down, document what the goals are of your teams so that when you meet again in a month you are constantly working towards those goals.

Remember at the end of the chat to include time for them to ask questions and chat about regular non-business fun stuff (because at the end of the day you spend too much time at work NOT to have fun).

Illustration by Juan Carlos Solon