You are not managing your team with day to day conversations

Don’t think you are managing your teams when talking about operational tasks daily with them.

The team members with whom I have the deepest conversations are NOT the ones who work in the same office / city as mine, they are actually the ones who are very far, the ones I travel to meet with.

In other words the people with whom we talk the most often are the ones we manage / coach / lead the less. We think we are close to them because we answer their daily issues, questions, we check on them every morning at the coffee machine, but then, because we see them often, we simply forget to sit down with them and work / discuss on long term plans, priorization, coaching sessions…

Everytime I travel I take the time to give full business updates to our local teams, I sit down with some of my colleagues to ask long conversations, to answer all their questions, to discuss their road map, talk about strategy, market changes… I take time for each of them, I don’t rush, I value this time a lot, always one to one. However I don’t do this enough with the teams that are the closest to me… and I know this is not making sense.

This is so important to break the routine with the teams that are close to you, the ones you see every day. You need to break the routine and take them to have a drink, a lunch, a 1to1 quality time just the two of you, and not just a quick talk in a meeting room.

I would say it is almost the same at home, you might have dinner with your partner, a parent, friend every night, still if one day you come home and take him/her for an unexpected dinner/lunch, the conversations will be different.