Jason Lauritsen - The Check-In Method™

We like to push boundaries with The Bosshole® Chronicles and Jason Lauritsen is not afraid to do just that.  So glad to have Jason on the show because he speaks of simple, yet powerful steps managers must take to elevate their role as people developers.  Lots of resources in the show notes!

Click HERE for Jason's website

Here are the links that Jason discussed in the episode:

• https://www.cultivayo.com/the-check-in-bootcamp-for-HR
• https://www.cultivayo.com/18-great-questions

Click HERE for Jason's LinkedIn profile

Click HERE for Jason's book - Unlocking High Performance

Click HERE for Jason's book - Social Gravity

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Transcript

0:00:05 - John
The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode. 

0:00:28 - Sara
Welcome back to the Bosshole Chronicles. This is Sara Best, your co-host, and I'm joined today oh, by the way, the Bosshole Chronicles, where we never want to waste a good opportunity to learn from a bad boss and we want to do everything we can to educate and equip bosses and managers to not be bossholes. Joined today, as always, by the most amazing and awesome John Broer, my partner. Hey, John, how are you? 

0:00:54 - John
I'm good, Sara. That's very kind of you to say and too generous. It's a great day and great to be on another episode with you. 

0:01:01 - Sara
Thank you. This is a subject matter episode today. We are hearing from a pretty amazing expert today and I just have to say, not just the only thunder from you, John, because you get to introduce our guest, but just in our pre-conversation. Here's what I took away A non-bosshole, like an anti-bosshole person, a management fixer, and I consider him a very provocative thought leader in the kind of stuff we need to be thinking about to manage talent today. It's very different, so I'm very eager to jump into this episode. John. I'll let you introduce our guest. 

0:01:40 - John
All right. Thanks, Sara. And joining us today, our subject matter expert is Jason Lauritson. Jason, first and foremost, welcome. It's so good to have you here, delighted to be with you. So let me give you all just a little bit of a glimpse into Jason's credentials and his background. We actually got connected through a mutual connection Dr Matt Poepsel and all of you. If you go back, you'll hear Dr Matt's episode on talent optimization amazing information there. But what I think you're going to find so refreshing about Jason much to what Sara was saying is that this is somebody that's not afraid to break from the conventional and challenge the conventional, which absolutely needs to happen more these days. 

Jason is a keynote speaker. He's a trainer and an author. By the way, check the show notes. All of his links will be in there, including the links to his books. His management methodology is called the check-in and it empowers leaders to build strong, caring relationships with their people to improve performance and retention. The check-in method is informed by decades of experience as an entrepreneur, corporate executive and employee engagement researcher. Jason's teaching have been described as a secret weapon by leaders who strive to create a more engaging and human work experience for their people. And who doesn't want to do that. 

As I said, Jason has two books. They are entitled. Number one is Unlocking High Performance how to Use Performance Management to Engage and Empower Employees to Reach their Full Potential and I like this one. I think this is called social gravity Harnessing the natural laws of relationships. So, like I said, go to the show notes. You're going to see a lot of stuff about Jason there. But, Jason, it's great to have you here, and one of the things I'm most excited about is just the fact that you're not afraid to go against the grain. Is that a fair assessment? You're not afraid at all to challenge the status quo. 

0:03:40 - Jason
I'm pretty sure that's my mom would agree with you. 

0:03:43 - Sara
She still has. 

0:03:44 - Jason
PTSD for me as a teenager, and I'm pretty sure my wife would also agree. So yeah, I think that's true. I was just actually having a conversation yesterday with someone with an HR leader and I was saying, like you know, I was an unconventional HR leader because I was an HR executive who is allergic to policies and allergic to protocols and stuff that doesn't make sense. So I think that's fair. I think that's fair. 

0:04:08 - John
And let's start out with that, because a few weeks ago, when you and I had a chance to talk more and do a little bit of a setup for the podcast, the one thing I took away is there is a lot of noise out there around. 

We're all about bosshole prevention and helping managers stay out of the bosshole zone. What we love to hear, and we're going to hear from you very specifically, what are some of the things that you offer to help managers stay away or stay out of the bosshole zone. But there is so much crap and so much noise out there that I think it's hard for people to get their bearings or managers or supervisors or executives to understand. How do I help my people the most? Because if my managers aren't at the top of their game or really truly understand what their mission is, I'm just going to be cycling through them and never going to really hit on what's necessary. So I'd love for our listeners just to get a sense of sort of your I don't want to say frustration, but how you see sort of the commonality of crap that's out there. 

0:05:08 - Jason
Yeah, commonality of crap. 

We could have a whole podcast probably just titled that and maybe stumbled onto something here today, john, I think that For me the frustration, I think, was always I mean, it started for me pretty early on coming into as an employee. I know that when I, like I, still think about those early days of being an employee I was a sales guy early in my career and just this, the stuff that they would do, or the stuff they would ask me to do, and the way my managers would treat me or the decisions they would make, made no sense. I mean they just, I just and I'm I mean I think I'm a reasonably intelligent person. But it's like how, how is this good for me? How is this good for helping me accomplish what I'm supposed to be accomplishing? 

And then you get into management and they tell you things that don't, that are counterintuitive. You go into, you know, if you're lucky enough to get management training, you hear things like don't get too close to your people, right, and you're like what, like why? And what I learned is like well, because someday, probably not too long in the distant future, we're going to ask you to do some really terrible things to those people, and it's easier to do that if you don't really know them or care about them much, right. And so then we're surprised when our employee engagement surveys come back and tell us that our people don't feel cared for, connected or valued. It's like it's all so painful to watch, and so I think there's still a lot of that and I think the challenge and where I've dedicated a lot of my work and in fact, when I wrote Unlocking High Performance, there's two chapters in there that were really a big unlock for me. I mean it was something I had been working on for a long time, but I wrote these two chapters to help other people. 

It's really a history of management and it was sort of helping people understand that a big reason that we are stuck where we are today and why it's so hard to manage people in a way that feels really good, is because we inherited a legacy of management that was created very literally 130, 40 years ago, you know, to help human beings behave more like machines inside of production facilities, right, I mean, that was the era of industrialization and we never really changed the model that much. 

And so today we still and you still see it in organizations we still manage people as if they're, you know, machines that just are there to produce output, and the reality that we see through all of the research we have about engagement and satisfaction and how people experience work shows us that people actually experience work like a relationship. They want to be valued and trusted and cared for and appreciated and accepted Like that's. Work is a relationship for the employee, and until managers understand that, until leaders understand that, until HR leaders start to treat and view work as a relationship, we're shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. That's what a lot of our work around management has been for the last 20 or 30 years. That's why we haven't made more progress. 

0:08:34 - Sara
I understand you have a pretty firm take and position on quiet quitting. Does that fit in here? Can we talk about that for a minute? 

0:08:42 - Jason
It does. It does Because I love the conversation about quiet quitting. I'm grateful for it and I have been really irritated by the a lot of the narrative or rhetoric around it, because I hear generally I hear one of three things, and actually, john, I think when we talked like it was one of the things that sort of happened in our conversation. I hear one of three things about quiet quitting. When it comes up and this usually comes from people that are either leaders or an HR or consultants trying to do HR stuff right or whatever they say flippantly well, it's not very quiet if they're talking about it on social media. Number two, they'll say, well, they're not actually quitting, so why are they calling it quiet quitting? 

And then number three, and this is my favorite. They're like oh, there's an I roll. And it's usually like why are we renaming something that already exists, like we've had this for years? We call it disengagement or mailing it in or quitting in place. Here's the problem. 

Here's the problem is that the difference this time is that the phrase quiet quitting was invented by an employee. It was an employee went to TikTok to talk about that. He is done with hustle culture. He's done with it. He's done with sort of being expected to like work at burnout rates with no reward and no end in sight and no appreciation and so and having no life. And so I'm done. I'm just going to scale it back, I'm going to do the minimum that's required of me and I'm going to reclaim my life. I'm going to quiet quit, I'm going to quiet. That's, that's where it came from. And people were like yes, yes, yes, yes, and these were employees. So this wasn't HR renaming it. The difference, the difference here is that in the past, right, all of those other labels mailing it in, quitting in place, I don't know what the there's a whole bunch of them. Sure, you know, we gave it a formal name in HR we call it disengaged. These were all judgy blaming terms that we assigned to the employee. 

It was us looking at them saying that damned employee is mailing it in, that damned employee isn't doing enough, they're broken. We should fix that. This is the employee saying no, no, no, no, I've had enough. And the part of it that I think is so interesting. So let's, I think, if we reframe. So number one, if you like, we gotta pay attention, because quiet quitting is a call for help, it's a wake up call. 

Employees are saying I like this isn't working for me and so they're not gonna give you the signal to quit. I mean and here's the thing that's dangerous, so let's break it down. What do they really mean when they say quiet quitting Cause I think it's actually exactly the right phrase. Let's start with quitting. Right, they're saying quiet quitting because quitting, in their mind, is they're saying I am on the verge of burnout, I can't sustain this workload, right, I've had to give up everything outside of work that matters to me, or it's suffering, right, all of these consequences and I have decided that, instead of doing that, I'm only going to meet the expectations of my job or the amount I need to do so I don't get fired. And in their mind, they think that is quitting. That's a problem Number one. Number two quiet. 

What quiet means in this case isn't that I'm not gonna talk about it. It means that I don't feel that it's safe to talk to the people who could actually do something about it. Right, I don't have the safety, I don't have the support. I've tried to talk about it in the past, nobody seems to care. And so here we are. I'm quiet. Quitting Makes perfect sense. Quiet quitting is a failure of management period, and this is a moment we should be paying attention, we should be listening. Quiet quitters are not the problem here. It's an invitation for us to elevate as managers, as HR. Let's fix the core problem, let's get about that, and that's actually what the check-in method can help you do. So I think the conversation will arc to a place that that's actually part of the solution. 

0:13:02 - John
The yeah, absolutely. But before we get there, one of the things, Jason, that you shared with me a couple of weeks ago, which I thought was very enlightening, was, within, quiet, quitting, people are deciding they're not going to fall victim to the hustle culture, which I think is an interesting term, and I'd like to explore that just a little bit. But I'm gonna do what's expected. Okay, I'm gonna do what is required in my job, meet my expectations and then go live my life. And you said and I think this is really interesting I'd love a company full of those people. I'd love a company full of people that would meet the expectations, if that's what we've established, and isn't that exactly what we are paying them to do? And then, where does this elevation come from? So I thought that was a really interesting perspective. Where did the hustle culture come from? I mean, is that a carryover from, I don't know, I mean the crazy 80s and 90s, where I know I was new in the business world, or what. 

0:14:07 - Jason
Maybe, maybe. I think it is part of that, I think it's more so. I mean, I think the millennials were the first to kind of really do this. I wish my Gen X generation would have been, but we were just busy, like we just flying to the bird. Right, we're gonna do what we need to do figure out how to play the game and make it work. Right, the generation, the millennials, and now the Gen Z. The thing that I love about them is they're willing to say the quiet part out loud. So I'm not sure that hustle culture is necessarily a new sort of a new phenomenon, I think it's a phenomenon that's existed for decades. 

I think they're just. They have the audacity to say this is stupid, this is not worth it. And the funny thing is they've been living in a world where we talk about things like work-life balance and wellbeing and then they're being piled a workload that's big enough for two people and they're being expected like yeah, do that and then you can have all the balance you want. 

0:15:07 - John
Right. 

0:15:08 - Jason
And they're like this is not okay and they're willing to say it's not okay. And they have social media. So if you're screwing them over at work, if it's not working at work, guess what they can go. Put you on blast to social media and most companies and leaders aren't even paying attention. 

That's true, and tell us a new story, and so I think you're right and I think the biggest problem, back to the point about about the you know again. So what they're saying is I'm going to do enough to keep my job. Now, two things about that. Number one is if them doing enough to keep their job is a problem for you, then you are terrible at performance management. 

You have Good point. Yeah, you have unclear goals, you are not communicating with them, you're not managing with accountability all of that kind of thing, and so that's a problem. If they are meeting goals right and you still have a problem with that, then you have a broken culture issue, right, because what you're expecting of them is now it's a free labor situation, which is actually. I need to be careful about this. But this goes back to your first point. 

I've dedicated my entire career to employee engagement but, one of the things I think is so dangerous about engagement is that Gallup, back in the early days, defined engagement as discretionary effort, and I think that's completely wrong, because what is discretionary effort? Discretionary effort is work that I didn't have to pay for as your employer, right? So we have this whole culture of engagement built on getting free labor out of people, and this is what this is what the Gen Zers are saying, like what I'm not gonna do that, what you pay me to do a job, and now you're pissed at me that I won't give you free labor on top of that at the expense of my personal life and other stuff that I wanna do, like no. 

0:17:07 - Sara
Right. 

0:17:08 - Jason
And so, of course, no. And the beauty of it is, when you go look at, what I would encourage anybody to do is go find a, go find an article about quiet quitting somewhere, or go to TikTok and search for some of these quiet quitting videos and then read the comments Because, like this struck a nerve for people. I mean you'll hear like man, I didn't know that's what this was. I've been quiet quitting for 20 years, yeah, yeah. 

0:17:36 - Sara
I mean, it's not a new thing. 

0:17:38 - Jason
It's just like let's do something about it this time. 

0:17:41 - John
Right, right. 

0:17:42 - Jason
Let's fix it. 

0:17:44 - John
And before we get to the check-in method because I really, absolutely want our listeners to learn more about that and I wanna dig into that I think about the young professionals Well, what I consider right now, in their late 20s, early 30s, who look back at their parents, who were in that hustle culture and who, I mean, worked and worked and worked and in a lot of cases, their employers crapped on them and they go. Why would I wanna do that? I mean, you're a great example of what I absolutely don't want in a career. I get that. I absolutely get that for sure. 

0:18:20 - Jason
I was just gonna say. 

I mean, I think there's a pragmatism to all of this too, like right there's two sides to it, because there's the side that and it's the same conversation we're supposed to be, we should be having about DEI. It's the same conversation we should be having about well-being. Right, that there's. The element of the system needs to change and quite quitting is yet another, like it's just a signal. The system of work is broken in many, many, many places and the system needs to be fixed. Now, if you're in the system and you want to move ahead or around in that system, you still got to. I mean, you've got to understand the rules of the game. 

And so that's where like I, you know it's sort of like what do we need to do to fix the system? Let's get about that work Now. If I'm advising my kids or some other young professional that's navigating the system right now, I've got to also educate them about the practical tradeoffs of how things are being evaluated. So there are consequences to quiet quitting in today's workplace. So if you choose to quiet quit, that is your prerogative to do that. But you also don't get to then be upset that you're in this hustle culture that rewards hustle and you're not getting promoted. 

0:19:37 - Sara
Right, that's that is. 

0:19:39 - Jason
And the thing that's so sad about this is it would be OK if we would just make it explicit, if these leaders would just say it's OK, you can make whatever choices you want. Right, it's OK to say I, if you just are going to come in, meet the expectations of your role, go home like we're good with that. We'll pay to do that. All day, every day. 

The promotions are going to go to the people that are going above and beyond that is how we're going to evaluate those that are going to move up and get more opportunity because they're willing to invest whatever, whatever, whatever. And then that allows the employee to make a choice opt in, opt out. But I think they're frustrated now because there is no opt in, opt out. 

0:20:19 - Sara
Right, I don't know about the listeners, but I know spending time with you. You're the kind of person Jason, you feel like we've known you a long time and it's super comfortable. I just want to say this is such a great conversation, you're the kind of person, you're easy to listen to and maybe it's just because it's resonating You're. You're putting into words, maybe, what some of the dissonance is that I felt, but just want to say very cool, you're very cool, thank you. Yeah, you bet. So it seems to me that you know a direct, you know prescription for helping organizations create a healthier culture and pay attention to this stuff is, in fact, the methodology that you developed, called the check-in or it's. These are tools, this is a system and a format that managers can use to deepen that relationship and focus on that relationship. 

0:21:11 - Jason
It is not by any, you know, not by any accident that that is the case. It's been 20 years in the making right, Looking at the dysfunction, living in the dysfunction, studying this function and then studying also the organizations that are getting it right. Yeah, which is what? 

unlocking high performance was all about, and then having this sort of aha moment that it's like, oh, it's so, like it's so simple and so fundamental. When you start to understand that work is a relationship, things start to shift. You start to think and see things completely different. And then you need the tools. You need to understand it. And I think, john I don't remember if I shared this with with you, but I think for me this all started the check-in, what would the sort of the initial kernel of the check-in method that I teach started clear back when I was it was one of my first corporate HR jobs. I had been hired as I'd been a recruiter, an external headhunter, I had run a team, I actually owned my own small company and then that I'd left there and was looking for another role. I got hired as a recruiting manager for my first ever corporate HR job. I knew nothing about corporate politics. 

Back to the conversation we were having about earlier about me being I was a bit of a bull in a China shop early in my in my twenties. I was, I was, I was shot out of a cannon and so and I'd been in sales, and so I come into corporate HR and I get dropped into this team and I had an underperforming team. I started just doing what I needed to do to fix it. Like my customers were my internal managers that we were supporting Right, the team prior to me had been or the manager prior to me that team had been performing A-rate. So we started fixing that. But I'm having one-on-one. My boss was was not a boss-all, was a an anti-boss-all but and she and I would have one-on-ones every week and every week in that in those one-on-ones in the early days there would be some version of one of my peers. 

One of my peers had gone to her to complain about my behavior somehow, something I was doing that was not appropriate or not working for them or whatever, and every week she would give me this feedback and I would take this feedback and I would sort of be puzzled by it and I'd be like, okay, and I'll try to do better. And then the next week, something and something and something and something, all. Meanwhile I'm getting my job done right, my performance numbers are good, but I keep getting this feedback and it got to be pretty frustrating. And finally one day I had like I just had had enough of it, I guess, and she's like another one of my peers had complained about me again and I finally said I'm like. 

I said what do you want from me? Like, what do you want from me? I don't understand, and it's a bigger conversation than that. But, like, what happened was that prompt cracked open a single conversation that changed everything, for whatever reason she hadn't been. We both knew we needed to have this conversation, but for whatever reason, we couldn't get there. She couldn't get there, I don't, probably because she didn't want to deal with the conflict with me, because I was paying the ass. 

Let's be honest and so but we had this conversation and we got really clear Both of us needed to make some adjustments. I definitely needed to change some things In my understanding. She needed to change how she was thinking about it and seeing it. Everything changed, like my relationship with her changed, my performance on my job changed. My performance with my peers changed One conversation, and this is the thing that I like. I think that has always been with me, because when I think back about then, the next 25 years of my career or whatever it's been, I look around and I see that everywhere Our inability to have these conversations that really matter is at the heart of why we can't get this right, and I think that's even well-intentioned people end up behaving like bossholes because they can't have the conversations that really matter, and that's what the check-in method is all about, and so that's what we try to teach people and help them is how to show up in a way to have those conversations and give them the tools. 

0:25:27 - John
So take us into that a bit, give us a little bit more of the mechanics, because to me, those are transformational conversations. Those are the ones where you kind of realize, oh, I mean, that's a self-awareness moment. That's where, like, okay, I understand my need for adaptation. Maybe it's maturity, growing up, wisdom, whatever you call it, but those are transformational. And, yeah, just give our listeners an idea of how this can actually happen, because we want them to go get your book, get your resources and learn more about this. 

0:26:02 - Jason
Sure, Well. So I'm gonna give you kind of just a quick overview of the check-in method and then I'll dive into a very specific tool that people can take and start using, like literally as soon as they're done listening to the podcast, to start opening up better conversations. So the check-in method there's five. We have the five C's of the check-in method. We have some alliteration here. So the first is cultivation, and cultivation is a mindset shift and this was one of the things that, to be the kind of manager that gets into these kinds of conversations, you have to shift your mindset kind of what we were talking about earlier from being one that you think of your job as getting the most output from your people to thinking more of your role as a manager as more of like a farmer or a gardener, where your job is to facilitate growth. You'll recognize that people are naturally wired for growth and performance and if they're not, then that means they're not getting something they need or they're facing an obstacle that we can. That's our job right Meeting needs, removing obstacles. So cultivation is the mindset shift. 

Then we have connection, which is what you would expect. It's building authentic human connection with your people. Then there's clarity, which is really making sure that people are crystal clear in the what and the how of work so that there is no uncertainty, is the enemy of engagement. Uncertainty kills engagement, uncertainty kills relationships, and so clarity is the antidote there. Then there's care, which is really the work we roll up our sleeves. People need to know that you care about them as human beings. But then there's also the work of management, which is caring for your people, which is not to be confused with being nice all the time or only doing things to keep people happy. It's about holding them accountable and having high expectations of them so that they can become what they're capable of. But then the real work, when we sort of really get into it and get our hands dirty, is the fifth C, and that is conversation. That's the heart of it, that's the tip of the spear, if you will, the check-in conversation. This is the tool that I can give you today. You ready? 

0:28:19 - John
Yeah. 

0:28:19 - Jason
All right, Four steps to the check-in conversation. So we've all heard about check-in conversations. We've been told to have them at work. That's been one of those things that's been talked about a lot over the last few years, particularly during the pandemic when people were distributed. You need to check in more. You need to check in more. The problem is so many of those check-ins are ineffective. They're not being done well. So, because what happens is number one, a lot of managers will do a check-in, something like so how are you coming on that project? Is that a check-in? 

0:28:54 - Sara
No no. 

0:28:55 - Jason
That is micromanagement. 

0:28:57 - John
That's what that is. 

0:28:58 - Jason
Because if you've set clear expectations on when that project is to be done and they know that you're there to support them, then you saying how are you coming on that project? Is you saying I don't really trust that you're working on it and I need you to prove to me that you are. So micromanagement, don't do that. 

0:29:13 - Sara
That is not a check-in. 

0:29:15 - Jason
So better step would be well, let's check in on the human. So then, best intention, we go ask a question like this how are you? Now? When we say, how are you, what do we get? 

0:29:26 - Sara
Fine, Good Fine. 

0:29:27 - Jason
Good yeah, busy, which is like don't talk to me. Yeah Right, so good intention, but a bad question. So step one of a great check-in conversation is you need a great question and you can actually start with a pretty simple. Even the question that I just asked, how are you, slight change, becomes a great question, from a bad question to a great question. A great question elicits information that invites a follow-up question. So that's what a great question is. So here's what a great question sounds like. Sara, how are you today? Scale from one to 10. 10 being couldn't be better, one being couldn't be worse. 

0:30:06 - Sara
Nice. 

0:30:07 - Jason
And you're going to say what? 

0:30:09 - Sara
Eight and a half. 

0:30:10 - Jason
Eight and a half. That is amazing. So step two is ask the follow-up question. So, Sara, if you and I are having a check-in, I'm going to say eight and a half is actually on the higher end than where I am. So I would love to hear about what's going on. Like what is it that's going well? Give me a few highlights of what's been going well lately. You're going to start telling me some stuff right, yeah. 

You'd be like well, my kids are, well, I get to have this great conversation on my podcast, whatever. Yeah, Exactly, and now I'm learning about you. This is an opportunity to build connection. I'm learning. So those are the easy ones, those are good, but let's say you say I'm a five. Now, by the way, for those that are listening right now, you don't have to do this at work. What I actually would recommend is start at home Practice on your kids, practice on your spouse. Great idea, Because when your kids jump in the car after school, what do you say? How was school today? Good, fine, you're like OK, one to 10. How was school today? My kids now know and they'll be like eh, it was a five. 

Ok, great Five, what's going? Well, talk to me about what's the good stuff. Give me the good stuff first. So, like well, I got to like PE was fun, we were playing this, but lunch was terrible. Or lunch and I got to see my friends at lunch. And then I'm like, ok, well, what's the gap between five and 10? Like, what could have gone better or what would have gone better to get you closer to an eight or a nine? Well, lunch sucked and we had a pop quiz in this class and I don't know that I did very well Like think all the information that just came out Right. 

Now we can have a real conversation. If somebody says two Right, that's a cry for help. Right, you drop everything, right, okay, what's going on? Is there something? What can you talk about? Is there something? Is it something that you can talk about or that you're comfortable talking about? It's like, well, you know, this is going on, whatever. 

0:32:03 - John
Right. 

0:32:04 - Jason
So you ask a great question. A great question invites the follow-up. Then you ask the follow-up. Two questions, 20 seconds. You're into something meaningful. 

0:32:14 - John
Right. 

0:32:14 - Jason
Right away, you're cutting to what actually matters. Then the third thing, really important shut up, oh. 

0:32:23 - Sara
I love this. 

0:32:24 - Jason
Listen, listen intently, because if you've asked a great question and then you're asking the follow-up questions, they're giving you everything you need. Yeah, they'll tell you where they're struggling, they'll tell you where they're winning, they'll tell you what obstacles they're facing. They'll tell you whatever you hear is the stuff that matters. That's what matters that day. And then number four is provide support, provide encouragement, provide a way to help or find a way to help, and sometimes it is just encouragement, isn't it? 

0:32:54 - John
I mean, you may not be able to solve it and that's not necessarily your mission, but you're there to receive and understand and hear what's happening. 

0:33:05 - Jason
And sometimes it's celebrate, sometimes it's appreciate, sometimes it's all of those things Like, if Sara rolls in and she's at an eight and a half, I'm just going to let her talk about all the amazing stuff she's doing, and then guess what, as a manager, if I'm paying attention, that was my invitation then to say that's amazing, you are crushing it, I am so happy that you are on my team, or I'm so happy for you. It sounds like things are great. You must be so proud of your daughter, whatever the context was. And so there's lots of great questions, and I mean that's one. I think that's the money question. You can start. That works in all contexts. I call that the well-being check-in is using. How are you scale from one to 10? But if you can use it for performance, you can ask. There's all sorts of great questions, right? A state interview done well is a great check-in. Like John, if you were ever to leave the organization, what do you think would cause you to leave? 

0:34:15 - John
Whatever? 

0:34:15 - Jason
you say after that yeah, that's meaningful yeah. If you can't find a follow-up question to that, then you are not paying attention. And, by the way, they're going to tell you the thing that is most important to them and you better get on that. You better be paying attention. So this work, the thing is, it's not complicated, it's very meaningful, and the thing is, when you learn the check-in method, you learn how to be a great manager. This way, you will innately become a better friend, a better parent, a better partner a better spouse a better neighbor, Because it's human skills. 

This is relationship skills. That's all this is. And think about if you'd have better conversations or more meaningful conversations with the people that mattered the most to you in your life. You should treat the people at work the same way you would treat those people. Everything can change. 

0:35:09 - John
And with a contrast to how we started, where a generation, multiple generations, were taught don't get too close to your people. This is flipping it all the way around. 

0:35:20 - Sara
And because work is relationship, I think our listeners, if they're managers and people leaders, should put those four steps on a little sticky note or note card and just bring it with them until it becomes naturally a part of how they engage in the conversation. I definitely believe people can lead from any pattern You're a persuader, I'm a persuader, john, you're a captain. There are other people who are more private and introspective. As managers and leaders, they're less dominant, slower paced, whatever. But this is a formula that if you practice it, it just would become very natural. 

And I would not be afraid. I would encourage people like write these little suckers down, write these four things down, and even if you have to tell your person, I'm practicing some new skills, I want to do a better job of relating with you and making this time that we have together more impactful. So just bear with me. I'm like got my note card this first question. But all that to say what amazing tools. 

0:36:24 - John
And go into the show notes and look at all of Jason's resources. I mean, access them. That's why they're there. I've looked at some of the videos on his LinkedIn profile. They're great. 

And, Jason, I love what you say about I mean, it's just, it's simple, but it has to be intentional. You just can't be lazy. Don't be lazy about the relationships of the people around you. You know, two of the things that we talk about keeping managers out of the bosshole zone is that if organizations don't realize that the number one role of a manager is to develop other people, that's they should. That's, the number one role is to develop other people. But how do you do that without dialogue? How do you do that without creating some level of relationship? 

And then I just had a conversation with a group of managers and I asked them I said how often are you meeting? What's your cadence of checking in with your direct reports? And a couple of them said I don't have that. And I said well, you know one. You should be thinking about why you don't have that. But one of the other reasons was this gentleman said I have 16 direct reports. He said I can't possibly get to everybody and I said well, that's a structural problem, because I don't think anybody should have 16 direct reports. However, it's not an excuse, but it is a pretty significant barrier to being able to really cultivate those relationships. So I think there are a lot of things that organizations can do to keep managers out of the boss whole zone, but the managers that are listening right now yes to Sara's point just dig into what Jason is talking about and start to use these right away. 

0:37:57 - Jason
And, john, let's make it a prerequisite to the number one role that you're saying. The managers have to develop people. I think that even before that, as a manager, is to make sure people feel seen and valued. 

0:38:13 - Sara
Yes, for sure. 

0:38:15 - Jason
That has to come. I mean that has to be as human beings. When I think about it, a lot of my training, I talk when I'm training. I can't separate the human from work, and so I tell stories about work. But I also tell a lot of stories about my family and my interactions with other people outside of work, because it's all relationships and I think about as a parent with my kids. 

And when I talk to parents it's like what is our number one job as a parent with our children? And most parents will say to make sure they feel unconditionally loved. Because when you feel unconditionally loved, it sets you free. It sets you free to take risks, it sets you free to grow. It sets you free to sort of grow and become different things. And I think that lesson is still true. That's true at work. Imagine that's what inclusion is really about. Fundamentally is that I can show up to work and feel seen and valued and accepted as I am Before I do a damn thing today. I'm already valued, I'm already seen, I'm already accepted. And boy, now we're going to make some magic because I don't got to worry about any of that. 

0:39:33 - Sara
Yes, and because of all those things, even if I make a mistake or I challenge the status quo or I come up with an outside the box idea, they're still going to feel the same way about me. That's right, that is psychological safety that's so good. 

0:39:48 - John
Jason man, this is awesome. I just knew. I knew that when we talked this was going to be one of those episodes. We'd love you to come back sometime I mean whatever the occasion may be just to chat more and start to challenge the status quo. But this has been such a pleasure, and is there anything you want to share with our listeners, anything on the horizon coming up for you that people should be aware of? 

0:40:12 - Jason
We've got well, two things that are exciting. One is a free thing that I'm going to actually give to you. For those that are motivated, We'll put a link in the notes where you can download. We have a cheat sheet that is 18 great check-in questions. 

0:40:28 - John
So it's just that way. 

0:40:31 - Jason
I'm going to take even some of the work out of the front of it. You know, just pick one and have that. So that's number one. You'll have that. The other is we have the HR Bootcamp. It's the check-in bootcamp for HR leaders. That's coming up. So in your organization, or if you are an HR leader and you want to get kind of a download of this, of our methodology, so you can take it back and use it to coach your managers and leaders, we have a cohort of that coming up as well, and so I'll put a link for you to go check that out if you'd like as well. That's coming up in early December. 

0:41:00 - John
That's awesome and thank you for your generous offer there. We'll put it in the show notes. Everybody look for that and absolutely check out the work that Jason is doing. Jason, thanks again, man, it's been a pleasure. 

0:41:12 - Jason
Thanks for having me. This was fun. I'll do it anytime. I'll come back anytime you invite me, awesome. 

0:41:16 - Sara
Well, and keep up the management fixing the bosshole intervention that you're doing. It's really good stuff, Jason, Thank you, thank you. Yeah, but we'll see you next time on the Bosshole Chronicles. 

0:41:30 - John
We'd like to thank our guests today on the Bosshole Chronicles and if you have a Bosshole Chronicles story of your own, please email us at mystory@thebossholechronicles.comcom. Once again, mystory@thebossholechronicles.com, we'll see you again soon.