Finding Fulfillment for Your Team
The people who work in your business are your lifeblood. They aren’t just doing the work; they are fulfilling the purpose and mission of your company. If you’re doing it right, they’re also living your companies values and demonstrating them to the world.
They’re the face of your business.
Whether it’s on the phone making a sales call or over email handling a shipping issue, they are your business. When they’re providing support for your customer or building that new product, they are your business. With every article they write, email they send, call that they make…
They are your business.
Even knowing all that, it’s easy to get so busy doing business that we don’t take care of our business. We don’t take care of our people. We leave them to work day in and day out, and we don’t properly check-in with them to make sure they’re okay.
Not just okay, fulfilled.
Do they…
- love the work they’re doing?
- believe the work they’re doing matters?
- know the work they’re doing is having an impact on what matters?
These are the questions of fulfillment. Do all three need to be answered with an enthusiastic yes in order to claim fulfillment? Not necessarily, but all three of these questions need to be asked and a path forward be discovered.
Fulfillment isn’t found at some destination. Fulfillment is contentment in the journey. It is the leader’s responsibility to help their people discover their own path, and, once discovered, to help align it with the mission of the business. If that can’t be done, then a good leader will help their people find a place where their path is aligned.
The question becomes, “how do you measure your people’s level of fulfillment?” If every person were the same, the answer would be easy, but they’re not. Which means we need to use multiple methods. In this article, I would like to share some of the methods we’re using right now to accomplish just that.
Quarterly Check-Ups
Early on in my own running of a company, I identified 3 characteristics that I look at in a great team member. Those are attitude, aptitude, and appetite. While I don’t use those same words today, they are still the ones I use to determine general fitness within the business and their role.
Much like your annual check-up at the doctor, the quarterly check-ups are meant to take a look at everyone in the company to see if we are all healthy, or if there are areas that need our attention.
These check-ups are driven by the relationship between a manager and their direct reports. They evaluate themselves and each other with the intention of having larger conversations that make all parties better.
I’ll be writing up a longer post detailing our specific system in the very near future, so be sure to subscribe to our newsletter so you won’t miss it.
Quarterly eNPS Surveys
NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is a way of evaluating your product or service by asking your customer one simple question. “How likely would you recommend us to a friend or colleague?”
eNPS is the same thing, only for our internal business. It asks our team, “How likely are you to recommend us as a place to work?” This is a scale between 1 and 10 and we also allow them to leave comments.
The whole things takes less than 2 minutes to fill out and is completely anonymous.
While this little survey doesn’t tell us specifically who may or may not be unhappy or unfulfilled with us, it does help us take our own temperature. Through it we often find areas we need to strengthen or where we can capitalize on our strengths.
Monthly Pulse Surveys
These are very similar to our eNPS in that they are anonymous and ask only one question with optional comments.
They are slightly more frequent, and there are only five possible answers. The main difference is we give each number a specific meaning and the question is more inward focused.
While eNPS asks how likely you would be to recommend someone outside of our company to join us, our pulse question asks, “How happy are you with your work?”
The possible answers are:
- “Ecstatic! I couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else.”
- “Very happy. I enjoy my work and feel I have purpose.”
- “Pretty happy. My work is challenging, but I’m making progress.”
- “A little unhappy. I’m struggling to get momentum.”
- “Extremely unhappy! My work feels meaningless; this is hell.”
The other difference is how they are weighted. With eNPS only people with a 7 or higher are considered a promoter of our business. With the pulse only the bottom two answers are considered “unhappy” or “unfulfilled.”
Since team fulfillment is the most important thing for us, these lower scores are huge red flags.
Let me also be clear that happiness and fulfillment are not the same things, but happiness is definitely an indicator of how fulfilled someone might be so it’s a metric we want to track.
Weekly 1on1s
These are by far the most important part of our process: regular face to face conversations with our team. Not just about the work, but about their lives and goals.
We recommend these meetings be weekly, but not all of our team has them that frequently. Some of it is based on the individual schedules and natural cadences of the team. But they are still short frequent talks.
Here is our article on unlocking the potential of your 1 on 1s.
Regular Automatic Check-Ins
These are my favorite. For automatic check-ins, there isn’t a single question or timeframe. These could be anything and at any interval. I’ll give you an example of a few questions we ask. Keep in mind that these automatic check-ins are completely public domain. Everyone in the company can see everyone else’s answers.
- Weekly: What will you be working on this week? – Gives everyone a chance to talk about their work and what’s on their radar. It’s not meant to be a complete list or even a commitment. It’s just a way to share where they are at as they kick off the week.
- Daily: “What have you worked on today?” – Again, a way to talk about your day and work. It’s a great place to share what you’ve accomplished or where you are stuck and solicit help from others.
- Also Daily: “Be a Cheerleader. Any shoutouts/high-fives today?” – Encourage someone else. Tell them what a great job they are doing or catch them living our values strongly. Perhaps my favorite of them all.
Those are just a few. We ask people to post pictures of themselves, what books, music, movies, or television are they consuming. Some questions are weekly and others just once a month.
We don’t expect everyone to answer every question every time; we let team members engage when it makes sense for them.
Now let’s dive in to what I learn from the answers to all these questions.
- I learn about our team in general. That’s always healthy. I know who loves art and dance. Who gardens and cooks. I’ve learn the types of books different team members like.
- When someone never answers all or certain questions that it could be a sign of something bigger. Not always, but something to investigate just in case.
- I’ve helped people get unstuck from a problem they had that I possibly never would have been made aware of otherwise.
- New things about our products or the struggles of our customers have been discovered.
- I’ve learned about frustrations that the team was experiencing.
I’m not the only one. Everyone on the team learns the above too. Automatic check-ins are fantastic ways for the team to engage with each other asynchronously when it’s convenient for them.
Day-to-day work is a whirlwind beating at the doors of your business. If you let it, it will blow through your every day, stealing your attention away from the very people who have joined you to face it. Without your determination, they will become burned out, or burned up, and unable to find the very fulfillment they desire.
That doesn’t have to be your story. You can rise above the minutia of the day-to-day and put some very simple practices in place to stay engaged with your team. The amount of insight you will glean will help you create a workplace where people thrive and not merely survive.