He doesn’t just keep tabs on his employees by watching the big picture, like whether they’re meeting quarterly goals or departmental objectives. He looks for little cues like attendance because “people that aren’t happy at work tend to be sick,” he says.
He also walks around the support center as well as various restaurant locations to simply ask employees how it’s going. Start with, “How long have you worked here? Do you like it?”
“If you will honestly listen to people and you will honestly ask them what you want to know, I’d say 80 percent of the people will tell you what’s on their mind,” Sanders says. “If they think you’re actually going to listen to them, you’re actually going to hear their comments, they’ll tell you.”
So in addition to the black-and-white metric of whether or not employees are meeting goals, Sanders also observes nuances that don’t surface on a monthly report.
“I’ve got the formal thing of [whether] your department is meeting goals or not,” Sanders says. “And I’ve got the informal thing of, ‘Gee, everyone that works for you seems to feel like you don’t communicate. Tell me why they feel that way.’”
He pays close attention to his direct reports, as well. In addition to their four-hour executive team meeting every two weeks, he meets with each one individually for an hour every month. The one-on-one is their chance to tell Sanders how they’re tracking against their goals, so they set the agenda and run the meeting.
The key is to never skip those appointments. That shows employees you carve out time because you’re interested in their progress.
Even when Sanders isn’t specifically gathering feedback, he watches for discrepancies during his everyday duties.
“When I see something I don’t think is right, my point is to rapidly make the time to take the person aside and say, ‘You know, in that meeting, I don’t think you handled that the way I want it handled.’ I don’t wait to give corrective direction. The sooner you get feedback the better, and the more direct the better. Don’t ignore the obvious. If there’s a problem, jump on it.”
What matters is not just when you attack issues but where you attack them.
“You don’t talk about it in front of other people. You say, ‘Look, I need to talk to you as soon as you get a chance down in my office.’ So it’s got to be private,” says Sanders, who even takes employees to lunch if they prefer correction outside of the office.
Beyond the time and place elements, you should tailor your approach with whatever type of management style your reports prefer. Some employees respond better to no-frills reprimands — like, “Look, you screwed this up. Do it this way next time and we’ll all be happy,” he says. And others need to be eased into criticism with encouragement first by saying, “You’re doing a great job on these 10 things, but thing No. 11 here, we need to work on.”
You need to know what employees respond to. And it’s as easy as asking, “Look, how do you like to be managed?” says Sanders, who doesn’t believe in the one-style-fits-all approach. “Do you want me to be in your face, or do you want me to take you to lunch and tell you the Pollyanna side of the story?”
“Everybody knows how they like to be managed, and most of them will tell you if you ask them.”
