Check-In Conversation Template

Regular, future-focused check-in conversations are essential for sustaining a high performing team. This document provides a structure for your check-in conversations and offers a framework for capturing issues at different levels, while talking about agreed actions and objectives.

Intended audience

We intend to reach for Managers and Leaders who have team members working either on-premises or remotely and need to have a check-in conversation.

Intended purpose

We intend to help you have a structured and meaningful check-in conversation with a team member. In line with our values and priorities, our objectives are:

To show care for the human beings and their well-being
To encourage positive mindset and lifestyle
To offer a feeling of safety
To openly discuss about objectives, tasks, obstacles, and improvement

Tips

Take some time before the Check-In to prepare yourself. For example, try to get in the best mood possible, go through your notes.
Find a quite place, switch off any unnecessary tool, avoid any possible distraction. If you are doing a remote Check-In, try to have a neutral background.
Appreciate the benefits of your silence. While stimulating positive mindset with open questions, it is important to let the team members to have some time to think about their answers.
Try to be patient, don’t rush your questions, give yourself some time to think about what you’ve just heard, and your next question.

Caveats

The conversation is meant to have a natural flow and that’s why the following sections have a specific order.
The questions in each section are only suggestions. We encourage you to prepare your conversation in advance and adapt your questions to the person and the situation you will be facing.
It’s unreasonable to ask anybody to like everybody else; however, building a better relationship with your team members is coachable habit that you can benefit from.
If you’d rather avoid to have the conversation resulting from any of the following questions, you could find some benefit from confidence coaching.

Reflections

Let’s start with the team member’s well-being. Here are some example questions:

How are you doing?: Not just a pleasantry, but an honest questions to gauge the general state (potentially, even physical/mental health) of the team member.
What kind of challenges are you facing?: This question should encourage the team member to open up. We would encourage you not to skip a question like this; on the other hand we would also encourage you to to refrain to get involved, give any solution or advice and, instead, offer coaching or the support of a coach.
How are you handling them (challenges)?: A follow-up question that is meant to encourage a positive mindset. This question can be molded around some of the team member’s strengths as to suggest that they have weapons in their arsenal.
If you could find more confidence/clarity, how would that help you to handle them (challenges)?: The purpose of this question is to understand if your team member could benefit from coaching; the support of a coach could help them to build up the strength to go through difficult times.
What opportunities and positives are you seeing?: Another question with the purpose of encouraging a positive mindset, even in troubled times.
What are you doing to keep yourself fit and healthy?: Mental health and physical health go hand in hand.

Home and Family

In this section we move the conversation to the social well-being (either with family or friends). Here are some example questions:

How are things with family and friends?: Again, not just a pleasantry.
How are you feeling about the balance between your home life and work life?: The ability to balance time/resources/energies between home life and work life is cause of distress for many people.
If you could have more time/resources/energy, how would that help you in the relationship with your family/friends?: The purpose of this question is to, again, understand if coaching could bring some benefits to the team member’s quality of life.

Team

In this section we start to transition to work related topics starting with the communication with the team and the organization. Communication is a cornerstone of an effective team.

How are you staying connected with the organization?: Let’s see if the team member is considering all the communication options to stay effectively connected the organization.
How are you getting on with the team?: The purpose of this question is to pick up possible frictions between members or remote communication issues.
What can we do to enable a more effective communication between you and your team members or the organization at large?: This question can help to get feedback on the various communication options, get suggestions and new options, as well as picking up on other forms of communication problems.

Work and Objectives

This is the section where we actually talk about working. Here are some questions, which should be self explanatory:

Action from the last check-in

How are you doing with the actions we set on the last meeting?
What kind of obstacle have you faced?
How could we have avoided or mitigated that obstacle?
What kind of obstacles are you facing?
How can we overcome these obstacles?
What would be helpful to you to complete the actions in time?

Feedback

What things have been done particularly well?
What can be improved?
What have we learned?
What other feedback/perspective have you received?

Using Strengths

Have you been able to do what you do best in your role?
How can we better use your strengths?

Priorities

What are the priorities for the next weeks?
Has anything changed recently that should prompt a discussion about priorities?

Objectives and personal development Goals

How are you doing with your objectives?
Are all the objective still relevant?
How would you change them?
Are you clear about your (revised) objectives?
Are you confident that you can achieve your objectives in time?

Issues and concerns

What challenges could be there?
How will we address them?

Help and support

What could be helpful to overcome your challenges?
Is there anything practical you need at this time that can help you in your tasks, as far as possible (e.g. equipment)?
What could you offer to other team members to overcome their challenges?