You see it every day- fat cat CEOs sitting on massage tables, relaxing, and burning the money that their hard-working employees bring in, save and manage.  It is a totally disgusting sight.  Sorry. Wrong article.

As a leader, you will be working with tons of different personalities.  Some are easy to manage and figure out how to get peak performance from.  Others are super complex and take years to figure out.  By one thing is constant- to lead effectively, you need to become a master masseuse of egos.

Everyone everywhere wants to feel important.  To get the most out of each person, you need to make sure they do.  That means most of your day is putting out mental fires.  Taking the time to connect with each person, making sure they realize how valued they are to your team and the overall organization.

So how do you do this?  Depending on the number of direct reports that you have, create a “10 Minutes Every Day” culture.  As the title suggests, you need to have an individual 10 minute meeting with each team member every day.  During this time, you need to cover what is going on with their tasks, what is going on with their lives and how to improve performance in both to achieve your team goals. 

Your team members should feel comfortable to bring up issues that are hurting their performance and tell you “how they feel” and “what they think”.

Over time, these sessions will make every part of your job easier.  Performance reviews become obsolete, bonus tracking is a daily occurrence, and everyone should know where they stand with you and inside the team.

When I managed really large teams (16-20 direct reports plus their reports), this took about 3.5 hours of my day.  Considering I was working 10-12 hours a day, spending 25% your time with your team is not outrageous. 

What happened was that my team knew every pitfall that was ahead of them from a corporate standpoint, what they needed to improve upon and where they were exceling.  The calls were punctual, during times that were not invasive since we confirmed the next day’s call based on our mutual schedules and helped build lasting relationships.

Even the toughest personalities to work with eventually liked the open forum of our calls.