Hygiene. It’s maybe not the very first word you associate with your day-to-day management, but, just like hand-washing and flossing your teeth, it’s those simple but important tasks that keep you and your team well.

Things like ...

One-on-one meetings with each direct report.
Regularly providing positive and constructive feedback.
Performance management in the form of reviews, goal setting, and check-ins.
Checking on the mental health and well-being of your team members.
Encouraging your team members to take their PTO and have work-life balance.
Regular team meetings and all company meetings.

Those things we all know we should do, and yet ... don’t always follow through on, especially when things get busy.

What happens when you ignore management hygiene

You know how it is.

Business is good, the team is humming along, and all of a sudden that weekly team meeting seems somewhat less than a good use of everyone’s time.

But there’s a cost to skipping out on your hygiene habits, and it comes sooner than you might think.

Suddenly, you’ve got a team where everyone has different ideas about what’s actually going on. Or you find that your organization is relying solely on grapevine communication to get things done, and start to see all the stressors and mistakes that causes.

The worst part is, it all seems to happen so fast, before you even realize what’s going on.

The good news is, you can learn how to spot it before it becomes an issue if you know the signs.

Keep a lookout for things like office gossip getting out of hand, people doubling up work without meaning to, or, even worse, working on conflicting tasks.

Another sure sign of poor management hygiene is people getting burned out, or not taking their PTO. Any time you hear people starting to say things like, “I can’t take time off, there’s nobody to cover my work,” you should take a look at your hygiene practices.

Similarly, employees starting to feel disengaged is a big warning sign. Once you start hearing, “I don’t know what’s going on with XYZ project, or worse, they hear from another team member, “you didn’t know that such and such happened?” insinuating that you are out of the loop, you need to make some changes.

None of that sounds particularly great ... but it’s all completely preventable.

So what can you do to establish better management hygiene? It all comes down to three pillars:

Regular proactive communication with direct reports in the form of one-on-one’s with a focus on connection, results orientation, and removing barriers
Consistent team meetings, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and where minutes/a recap is shared.
In the book Daring Greatly by Brene’ Brown, she shares that the minutes should include:
Date
Meeting Intention
Attendees
Key Decisions
Tasks
Ownership
Performance management, formal written feedback 1-2 times per year

Sounds simple -- but it helps establish communication consistency, goal orientation, team cohesion, and commitment to processes. (AKA all the things that underpin a great organization.)

Need help? I’m here for you. This is just a tiny taste of what I teach in my Manager Training Series. Find out more about what you’ll learn and how to join the next cohort here.