3Q Check-In System

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome back to the program my longtime friend and colleague, Dr. Jim Henderson. Jim is the creator and head coach of the 3Q Check-in System, and he's the author of the new book, 3Q Check-ins, How to Pay Attention to the People You Can't Afford to Lose.

[00:31] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:33] SPEAKER_01:

Jim, welcome back to Principal Center Radio. Thank you, Justin. Always a privilege. So, Jim, just to kick things off for us, tell us a little bit of the origin story of the 3Q check-in system. Where did this come from, this approach to talking with the people that you work with?

[00:48] SPEAKER_00:

So, Justin, I had a two-year foray into a corporate setting earlier in life where I became aware of corporate language, org charts, direct reports, roles, supervisors, managers, none of which I was familiar with prior to that because I'm a startup person, entrepreneur type of person. And during that time, I became aware that the people who were managing other people uh, we're not actually talking with them very, with any frequency. And it just intrigued me because I had always been so dependent on other people to get my work done because I didn't have budgets and I was always, you know, hustling and all of that. And I thought this is like, and plus this organization had like 400 people, volunteers, they were dependent on serving weekly.

[01:38]

And that was, seemed criminal to me that these people were not being checked in on in any structured way. And I knew that because I went and talked to the directors who the leaders were not talking with, uh, and they didn't feel they had the power to get their attention. So that's where it started. Then later, my son started a restaurant business and he asked me if I would try and implement some of this. And he had 13 restaurants at one point. And so he asked me if I would implement something like this for restaurant workers.

[02:09]

And I've been around the restaurant business long enough to know that they don't do things like meetings. They're really pretty much only in it for the money. No offense to restaurant workers. I don't find that offensive myself. And so they don't want to go to meetings. They want to work.

[02:25]

They want their shifts. They want to make money. And so I figured out what if I had to do a check-in in less than three minutes? What would I ask them? So as a result of those two experiences, came up with three questions that I could ask anyone. That's the 3Q part of the 3Q check-in.

[02:41]

And those questions are, how are you? How are we? How can I help? And out of that then grew a structured approach, which we've been doing now for going on eight years with different organizations. And frankly, testing the efficacy. I never really stopped testing stuff.

[02:58]

So I could tell you that, you know, it's just 100%. I think, well, pretty close, you know, but I like testing stuff. I love iterating. So. That's where we are today.

[03:07] SPEAKER_01:

So how are you? How are we and how can I help? So some some pretty simple questions like it almost could be a one page book. And, you know, and if people did that, I love what you say that, you know, if if you just start with this, you're going to succeed and you're going to get better at it. The longer you stick with it, the more you practice. Like any time I come across something that is so obviously powerful, Why is this so rare?

[03:28]

Why do people not talk to their employees? Why do employees report that they are ignored when so much is on the line? Why are so few people already doing this kind of thing?

[03:40] SPEAKER_00:

So in order to answer that question, which I have, of course, processed with my colleague, Jim Hancock, who I wrote the book with multiple times, and then you just quit asking after a while because now we have data. Now we know in the post-COVID or COVID-ish type context window we're living in now, something happened that we hadn't anticipated, which is people are not coming back to work. They are feeling powerful. We don't know all the reasons. People can come up with reasons. It's just happening.

[04:09]

Okay, it is happening. You know, I heard this quote one time, people with power never think about it. People without power think about it all the time. And so the people in power, in this case, would be execs, managers, don't really have to think about it. Nobody has the actual authority to require them to show up and say, hey, talk with me. And as we know, like half of, we know this data-wise right now, half of all employees right now that you're working with you are contemplating quitting.

[04:41]

Half of them are contemplating quitting. They're thinking about what's a better way I can go. Two thirds of managers do not even want to talk to their direct reports. These are just realities. What we thought, what if we could give managers a tool that was useful, rather than make them feel bad. Tell them they're, you know, they got to improve whatever here, make it basically want to design something so simple that nobody could say no to us, which we think we've accomplished.

[05:09]

Now they can say no, because they don't want to, but they're not gonna say no, because it's hard. Just not hard. You know, so It's a power thing. And I think organizations get lazy, you know, and now the pain is coming in, you know, where they are aware, like, oh, people can leave now. And so now it's like, oh, we have to do something. That's why we subtitled the book, you know, how to listen to the people you can't afford to lose.

[05:36]

Who are those people? Right. Who are the people you can't afford to lose? Think about them. What if that person came in and gave you two weeks notice, like tomorrow? What would happen to you and your organization?

[05:46]

And then how much would it cost you to replace them? People don't like putting a number on that, but there's an actual number. I don't know if people understand this, but what they estimate, people that do data estimate volunteer hours, they estimate them at $25.46 an hour. So in the organization I originally worked with, there were 400 volunteers. So we knew that those people were saving that organization about $2.5 million a year.

[06:12]

In other words, that organization could not have delivered services had those 400 people not showed up. Nonetheless, nobody was checking in with them other than, hey, let's have a pizza party once a quarter.

[06:23] SPEAKER_01:

And there's a wealth of information that could be gained from those conversations, huh?

[06:27] SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Of course, the people in the front lines engage with the customers, the parents, the kids. What are the kids saying? What are the parents saying? What are the grandparents saying? They will tell you if you ask them, but they don't think they have the right to ask you to do that because you're in a one-up position to them.

[06:45]

And when you're in a powerful position, people feel intimidated.

[06:50] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And people will even apologize. Say, hey, I'm really sorry to bother you. I know you're busy. Can I get a minute of your time? And your approach is to say, let's actually be proactive about that.

[07:01]

Let's schedule it. Talk to us about the kind of the frequency of these 3Q check-ins. How often do we need to be checking in with everybody?

[07:08] SPEAKER_00:

So the answer is once a month and for 15 minutes and three questions. Okay, that's the answer. Here's how we get there. First of all, we've been at this like eight years and tested it. Longer periods of time, more questions, which questions, all of that. So we know these questions work.

[07:27]

I heard something the other day, some social scientists were saying, when we have a big problem, we want a big solution. you know, to solve it. But typically solutions come in smaller packages. They come in smaller packages, you know? And so, so this is a, we tested what would happen if we limited it to a 15 minute once a month check-in where you ask these three questions and you literally did not go beyond 15 minutes. And the way you don't do that is because at the final analysis, you check in with a 3Q coach, which would be me or one of my colleagues.

[08:01]

And we then review your check-in notes with you of three, five, seven direct reports once a month. So let's say you have six people. Most people have three to five. And so we're talking about an hour and 15 minutes check-ins and then a half hour with me. So an hour and 45 minutes of your time invested once a month. The question is, is that really too much?

[08:22]

Are you saying you can't organize that for the people who are your most important asset? When I interview people, they say, well, people are our most important asset. And I said, what if I asked you to show me your financial books? I'm not going to do that. I said, well, we'll just pretend you could do it. Could you show me where all the money is right now?

[08:39]

Yes, I could. I'm not going to. I get it. You're not going to. But what if you could? You mean you could show me to the penny or even the dollar where the money is?

[08:48]

Yes, I could. And so what if I asked you to show me your people books? How are you doing with people? Do you have any? I don't have books like that. Why do I have to have that?

[08:58]

Well, they're your most important assets. Apparently more important than money, but maybe not. And clearly you're not going to get to the money without them. So that's what we ended up with. We just found out we could, we did a half an hour. I said, you don't have to do that.

[09:11]

Now we tell people if they're doing the supervisor manager who are primary customers that people were working with, if you could be a small business owner, you could be a principal, you could be managing five, six, seven people. Um, Just meet with those people once a month for 15 minutes and ask them these three questions and take notes. If you're going beyond 15 minutes, two things are happening. It's turning into a planning meeting or therapy. And this is not that. 3Q check-in is not a meeting.

[09:38]

It's almost comical how brief it is because we discovered that most people's favorite memories from conferences are at elevators or at water fountains. And they go away thinking, who is that person I met? So we figured out what if we could actually schedule that moment? So consistency is the game. It's really, you know, I read another thought I had recently was that people are not motivated by ideas. They're motivated by incentives.

[10:15]

And if you say to your employee, your direct report, I need to meet with you once a month for 15 minutes, they literally They'll be shocked. And then they can't say no because you're their supervisor, right? And they go thinking, well, what's this? This is nothing. You do that every month for a year. And we think you can get rid of annual reviews.

[10:32] SPEAKER_01:

So I'm thinking of a couple of different groups of people that often get overlooked in schools. We have a lot of process developed around teachers. We have teacher supervision and evaluation. We have goal setting. We have formal observations. We have informal observations, which is kind of my big thing.

[10:48]

And All of that is centered around teachers, but teachers are only half to three quarters of the employees in any given school. We have custodians, we have office staff, we have teacher's aides, we have special education assistants who work with students more directly. And often, nobody really checks in with them, right? If there's a problem, we might have a meeting. But on just a routine basis, nobody is really responsible for checking in and just kind of seeing how people are, seeing how things are, seeing how we can help. So I'm thinking about who within a school would want to have these meetings other than the principal.

[11:22]

Certainly, that is one of our responsibilities as a principal. But when you said three to five direct reports, I'm sure many of our listeners laughed because often we have 30 or 40 direct reports. But there are other leaders within our schools who absolutely can become involved in this work. So thinking about adopting a 3Q check-in system at the school level. Talk to me a little bit about the conversations that happen among managers who are all doing this within an organization.

[11:51] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, very insightful question. So I work with one manager who asked me, should I do this with my administrative person? Who is like, I don't mean to say nobody, but would not be shocked if nobody talked to her. It would be like, other than her boss talks to her about things to do, right? So my question back is, who is so unimportant that you don't have 15 minutes a month for them? Right, who is that person?

[12:19]

Think of somebody in your system. I've been a janitor. Nobody ever asked me what I thought. Let me just suggest that janitors actually might be closer to the customers in some ways than the teachers and particularly the executives might be because they're hearing stuff. And in today's school environment, that's not a bad thing because they can pick up on signals other people aren't picking up on. And so that's almost critical.

[12:45]

So to your point, if there's nobody's checking in with 30 people, by the way, that's not happening. And so most people have three to five people they're checking in with consistently, maybe seven, if they're good. I have other one of the person does 10, but she's like a three cue machine. Right. And so, um, I would say what you do in that case is you appoint some people to actually do three cues themselves in their categories, whether it's administrative people, that and then it's like an org chart suddenly develops you know there's two groups of people we need to talk to if our business is failing one is the frontline workers and the customers you will always end up talking to these people and the frontline workers are not the teachers are certainly frontline workers but also the operators the people running the plant are the frontline workers as well there's no reason that we shouldn't be talking with them and also if you're worried about these people having other options in their life

[13:41]

walking out the door and suddenly you don't have the janitor or the administrative person like, okay, well, we'll find, I have people who literally can't replace administrators right now. They can't, they can't replace them. You know, I don't know why it's just a thing. So, so at any rate, that's, That has been an interesting observation about how this works. You start to create your own org chart that doesn't exist right now. And incredible loyalty is evoked out of that when people think, oh, you're taking me seriously.

[14:15]

Oh, I can talk to each other? You're going to let me ask these three questions to those people? Yes, please go do that. I don't know what's wrong with that idea.

[14:22] SPEAKER_01:

Well, let's talk about that issue of compensation and pay, because, you know, obviously in schools where we're usually not able to pay as much as we would like, often the private sector is is able to pay more. And we want to hang on to people who want to pay them as much as we can. But we're limited in our flexibility on pay. But one of your favorite sayings of mine is around this idea that paying attention is part of the compensation, part of the salary package in effect. Talk to us about that if you could.

[14:53] SPEAKER_00:

So Joey Reimer said, your attention is not, your attention is part of their salary. It's not a bonus. I mean, just think, Justin, if we had been trained this way somewhere in our development, somebody had taught us this. It isn't like news. We know that because we've been on the non-receiving end of it, right? And so we have an opinion, and then we just get used to it, like, oh, that's not going to happen.

[15:16]

But attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Simone Weil said that. It's the rarest point of development of generosity. So we know this. So money is not the primary incentive. The primary reason people leave jobs is because their managers don't pay attention to them and or...

[15:35]

In some cases, they're mean, they're inappropriate, whatever. Okay, the person, the manager's got problems or the employee has problems. But a lot of this could be solved with the distribution of attention. And it's fascinated me. I devoted the last 20 years of my life primarily trying to understand the impact of attention on human beings. and why it's so effective.

[15:56]

I have this other thing when people like each other, the rules change. You know, if your administrative person who's making whatever it is, $15, $20 an hour, You know, they're going to think twice, if they like you, about leaving. They're going to think twice. And they're going to come to you and say, I'm thinking twice about this. Help me. What can we do?

[16:15]

And you're going to have a little conversation, right? Maybe you can't help them, but they're going to leave respectfully. And they're going to leave, you know, with generosity. So people...

[16:27]

The statistics are simply the fact that most people don't primarily quit their job because of the money. When you're in meaning-making businesses like you are and the people you talk with are and the businesses I've been in primarily, meaning-making, then we don't join that for the money. That is not the fast way to money. It is something where we're trying to get the money to mix with meaning for us. We're trying to get them to match up so that we have a sense of contentment about who we are as a human being and what it is we can deliver without losing our integrity or ethics, whatever it is that guides us. So those are our thoughts about the power of paying attention.

[17:08] SPEAKER_01:

Now, you define schools and nonprofits as businesses. And for a lot of our audience, that will kind of grate on people a little bit. We don't want to be factories. We don't want to be businesses. We're doing something else. In what sense are schools and nonprofits and other types of organizations like businesses?

[17:28]

Why do you say that in the book?

[17:29] SPEAKER_00:

So you can you can go and read the section on volunteers if that language is too harsh for you, because I've worked with thousands of volunteers organizations. A lot of my initial work has been primarily with volunteer organizations that are nonprofits. So all the rules hold true. So I hear in the question, like I find it somewhat offensive that someone would categorize me as being in a business. So I work with other people that are in Christian ministries or other religious groups. They conjure up the same feeling.

[18:04]

They all have staffs. They all have budgets. They're all raising money. Those people are getting paid. And so it's not something I'm willing to fight over. It's just a reality.

[18:17]

Organizations are organizations. So that's all we mean by that. Listen, I'm a meaning maker. I totally align with people that are in a lifestyle that is about helping people grow, change, and develop. So this is not a...

[18:33]

a corporate thing. If I was playing the corporate game, I'd be going to the CEOs and execs. I'm primarily trying to get to the operators and managers. Those people are ignored. They don't do 360 reviews with the administrators or janitors. Right?

[18:47]

They don't do that. They probably, I don't know if they even do it with teachers, but all that resides. And believe me, the people that work for that organization know that. They know that. They say, oh, those people are treated differently than me. The reason they're treated differently is because they paid a lot of money to acquire that position.

[19:02]

And so there's, all this is being reinforced, you know? So I want to develop a system and a process for ordinary people who are doing the work on the ground

[19:16] SPEAKER_01:

to be able to be taken seriously and give managers a tool that doesn't belittle them or feel like they're just not you know you're not as they're not executives so they can't think like this it's baloney and i'm thinking of people i worked with who had you know the lowest paying jobs in the school and the contribution they made and if if i could have paid them 70 or 100 000 a year And if you'd asked me, hey, this person's going to leave unless you pay them $100,000 a year, I would have said yes in a heartbeat if that was an option. We cannot afford to lose some of these people who are honestly underpaid and probably always going to be unless we can work some magic. But this is a way that we can give them the respect they deserve, give them the influence they deserve, give them the time they deserve. Even if it's only once a month, it's absolutely better than nothing and may even be

[20:08]

plenty in some cases. So it's interesting you said that you experimented with increasing the amount of time or increasing the number of questions or increasing the number of check-ins. Why is once a month enough? Because I've been lectured on this by my chemistry professors that more is not always better. When you're mixing the ingredients, don't just overdo it a little bit. You're not making cookies here.

[20:30]

But why is more not necessarily better?

[20:32] SPEAKER_00:

So I think once a month is a new once a week. I think we're overwhelmed psychologically by requirements. Schools are dealing with regulations. I don't even know, but I've heard people talk about it. So it turns out consistency if you do it every month. So in other words, when I do a three key with you, I say, okay, Justin, get out your calendar.

[20:53]

When are we doing this next month? Okay, let's talk. And I, as a manager, am not allowed to cancel that meeting. that check-in. I'm not allowed to cancel without calling you. Hey, can we work this out?

[21:03]

So every month, you know. So after three months, people start to trust you. So the way we start is we do three weeks in a row, 15 minutes once a week. We did once a week. And it's kind of overwhelming for people because they start getting, they're just getting too much information. They feel like, you know, there's the, they're doing therapy.

[21:21]

They're doing, they're just blur, blurring into operational means. We thought, okay, let's keep getting it smaller, smaller. I'm a big fan of small. And so, um, we just kept testing it and we got down to the point where this worked and to your, the people you talk with and lead and listen to you, I will just say you're fortunate. I mean, we've actually tested this for like five, six, seven years. So there's things we know now that we didn't know.

[21:46]

We didn't, sometimes we didn't even know two years ago. And, uh, So that's why the once a month frequency is the idea to beat. It also doesn't overwhelm the manager. The manager is our customer. The client, the employees are our recipients, right? They're getting the attention delivered to them.

[22:05]

But if the manager doesn't like the experience, then it's like, I'm out.

[22:09] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I agree completely that if it's not enjoyable for everyone, it's probably not going to be sustainable, right? If this is like pulling teeth for either party, we're going to find reasons not to do it. So I love the sustainability, the minimum viable dose. You don't want to take more medicine than you need to. You want to take the right amount. And I'm glad you've found that out through a great deal of experimentation.

[22:32]

So Jim, if people want to actually give this a try, obviously they should check out the book, but what does it look like when people start to implement and how do you support people in implementing the 3Q check-in system?

[22:42] SPEAKER_00:

So when people get in touch with me, then we basically do a free trial the first time. There's no cost involved. So if you don't like it after 30 days, you can say not for me. So there's no risk involved other than doing the work. So the way that that works is you do three weeks in a row with your direct reports, 15 minutes once a week. So this is more of an intensive.

[23:05]

And then during that time, you check in with your coach once or twice during that three-week period. At the end of the three weeks, if you say, okay, this is good to go, then you go to once a month. You onboard people. The reason we do that is because people don't trust, they don't trust this is real. Because they've been trained to not anticipate this. So then after that, you go to once a month routine rhythm.

[23:26]

And then once you upload your notes into a system we have, and I look at them, and I do two things. Then we get on a Zoom call once a month for up to 30 minutes. It can be shorter. And say, tell me, I'm going to go over the notes. Tell me why this person said this, this, and this. I'm trying to help you spot problems, brush fires before they become wildfires, and potential.

[23:50]

Why does this person look smart to me? What are you doing about this person? Who knows that they exist? I've helped people hire internally instead of externally by pointing out, I know someone in your organization that you don't know because I actually end up knowing a lot about organizations that they don't know because I'm talking to a bunch of people. you know, and I know, well, this person has training in that. You want to talk to them, that type of thing.

[24:13]

So, so that's the routine, the rhythm, and it just goes on. So we think it's sustainable long-term year after year and that it, and then it grows as more people get involved in it. They can become involved in, you know, doing 3Q check-ins themselves.

[24:31] SPEAKER_01:

So the book is 3Q Check-ins, How to Pay Attention to the People You Can't Afford to Lose. And Jim, if people want to get in touch with you or learn more about your company, where's the best place for them to go online?

[24:43] SPEAKER_00:

Go to Humane Resources, humaneresources.me. Okay. And you'll find a contact us link there, humaneresources.me. Perfect.

[24:55] SPEAKER_01:

We'll put that on the website. And as always, thank you so much. And great to speak with you today. You too.

[25:01] Announcer:

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