NOEL:  Hello and welcome to the Tech Done Right Podcast, Table XI's podcast about building better software, careers, companies and communities. I'm Noel Rappin. If you like the podcast and would like to encourage us to continue, please follow us on Twitter at @Tech_Done_Right and leave a review on iTunes. iTunes reviews really do have new listeners find our show. We also have a new newsletter where you can find interesting stories, podcast news and some mini essays from me. You can subscribe at TechDoneRight.io/Newsletter. Thanks.

Today on Tech Done Right we will have a conversation with Dan Hodos, Table XI's Director of Operations and Claire Lew, the CEO of Know Your Company. We talk about management one-on-one meetings, how to create a safe space where you can honestly how your coworkers are doing. We'll have tips about questions to ask, things to avoid and how to use this information to help build career growth in your organization. There are tips here that you can start using in your organization tomorrow, so enjoy. Claire, would you like to introduce yourself to everybody?

CLAIRE:  Sure. Hi everyone. My name is Claire, as Noel said, and I'm the CEO of Know Your Company.

NOEL:  And Dan?

DAN:  Hey, I'm Dan Hodos, I'm the Director of Operations for Table XI. I oversee all of how we do the work: software, design, development, etcetera.

NOEL:  Claire, Know Your Company is all about transparency between the company and the employees and both of you in your jobs wind up having a lot of one-on-one meetings with people who report to you or people who are colleagues to you in a way and that's the kind of thing that we're going to be talking about here. Why are these meetings important and why is it important to be able to have a good one-on-one meeting with somebody else on your team?

CLAIRE:  I feel that one-on-ones are one of the most rare and almost sacred times that you have with an employee to actually get to the bottom of how she or he is feeling. I think in the workplace, you have so much communication going back and forth, whether it's Slack, whether it's email, whether it's client meetings, phone calls, all this back and forth. And yet, even with all that communication, a lot of times what doesn't bubble up is actually how an employee is feeling. I think a one-on-one conversation, face-to-face is one of the few rare times where you actually have the opportunity to do that so that's why I think it's really important.

DAN:  Yeah, I think it's an opportunity to create a really personal connection, something that maybe goes beyond just, "Hey, how's the status of your project?" and more of what are you feeling, how are you and how is that influencing the way you working and the way you're living.  

CLAIRE:  Absolutely. I even remember before becoming CEO of Know Your Company, how I even started the company as I was actually an employee at an early stage e-commerce startup. I remember having one-on-ones in that company and feeling like even though the CEO and I were technically having one-on-one conversations, it still wasn't the right format. He wasn't asking the right questions in the right ways where I felt comfortable voicing a lot of these concerns that I had about the company so I ended up leaving. You know, we work with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of companies where that happens every single day.

NOEL:  It's a sort of truism that people leave managers not jobs, right?

CLAIRE:  Yeah.

DAN:  Yeah, absolutely. One thing you just said Claire, I really feel like it's the onus of the manager -- the person who's in the higher status position -- to create a safe space. We can't leave it up to the employee to just volunteer anything. We need to make an environment where they can volunteer information where we can have the level of candor you would have with talking with a buddy at the bar or out to dinner.

NOEL:  How do you do that? What are some techniques that you can use to create that safe space or maybe what are some things that people do that they may not realize are hindering the ability to create that space?

CLAIRE:  The first thing that we always recommend to the CEOs and managers that we work with is to make empathy your mission when you're having a one-on-one because what happens a lot of times when you do one-on-one is -- I don't think this is the case for you Dan -- a lot of the managers and CEOs we work with, it'll end up becoming like a status report meeting, it'll end up becoming like, "I'm going to like critique the employees performance in my one-on-one. All that is important stuff but they shouldn't actually happen in a one-on-one. Again, like I was saying earlier, it's really invaluable, almost sacred time to really uncover that truth of how that employee is feeling so you can prevent stuff like an employee leaving or an employee getting upset or something like that.

When you make empathy your mission in a one-on-one, the whole conversation changes: you start to listen more, even your body language changes. The reason for why you ask questions change all of a sudden when you even say, "The whole purpose of this one-on-one is for me to just listen and just to understand where you're coming from," that decreases that intimidation that's involved. That's one of the big things that we recommend. I don't know if you've also found that to be true, Dan in the one-on-ones you do.

DAN:  One of the biggest things I try to bring to all my one-on-ones is active listening. It's partially hearing what they're saying but then the other part is trying to internalize how they're acting, what's their body language, are they hesitating, do they feel comfortable and trying to put myself as much as I can in their position as well. The quickest way to build empathy with someone is to try to imagine what is it like to be them and sometimes that's hard. Sometimes, you need to start asking questions, either of them or of others, to get a broader perspective so that you can bring more of yourself and more openness to that meeting.

CLAIRE:  Absolutely and I was thinking just to build off that, Dan the other big thing that we also recommend -- you nailed it -- it's those questions themselves. Those are the things that really, really get to those, sort of, nuggets of truth. For our CEOs and managers, we always recommend asking questions around two different areas. We always say to ask questions to uncover moments of tension and specific moments of energy.

I'm sure this may resonate with you. A lot of times, if you find yourself in a one-on-one, you're kind of sometimes default to asking, "How's it going?" Or, "How have things been, lately?" Sometimes, I don't remember doing that before myself in the past and the problem with that is the answer ends up being, "Fine." Things are fine, right?

NOEL:  Everybody is super conditioned to answer that question with, "Fine."

CLAIRE:  And the reason because of that is because the question isn't around anything specific so what we always recommend is when you ask moments around specific moments of tension, real situations that have happened in the past when someone has felt bored, angry, frustrated, disappointed. Then specific moments of energy, specific moments of when they felt the most motivated or proud or excited. When you ask questions like, "When is the last time you felt frustrated this past year? What can I do to help make things less frustrating for you?" Again, specific moments of tension, specific moments of energy like, "When is the time you felt most motivated in the past two weeks?" People always are able to think about something concrete versus just like, "How is it going? Well..." That's so vague.

NOEL:  What sort of cadence do you recommend for these kinds of meetings? How often do you recommend that this kind of meeting happens?

DAN:  For the most part, I do my one-on-ones every other week for about half an hour. There have been times when I've done more frequently like every week and it really depends on the individual, which is I guess maybe a lot of what I think about one-on-ones is that there's not going to be one right format or a specific formula to doing this well that's going to work for everybody. You have to be a little bit more open to what the specific needs of the individual are and how they best learn and react. Does that make sense?

CLAIRE:  Yeah. Oh my gosh, I so agree Dan and I think one thing that people might actually even be surprised by is when you say that you guys do one-on-ones every other week. I think a lot of people would be like, "Oh, my God. That's so often." There is no way in our 70-person company, with my 12 direct reports that I could be doing one-on-ones every other week. It's interesting a lot of the companies that we work with will do one-on-ones once a quarter or once a month.

However, here's a thing that I want to point out to whoever is listening which is what I love about why you guys do those one-on-one so frequently -- correct me if I'm wrong Dan -- but from what I understand it's because you have paired people up to be responsible for having those conversations so it's not just like the manager having to have one-on-ones with, like I was saying 12 or 15 people. It's one person almost sponsoring, so to speak, the other person. I think that makes it one, manageable and two, it increases the frequency which is always good. The more often the better. I love that. I think the listeners would be curious to hear a little bit more about how you settled on that.

NOEL:  We call it different things at different times but we often call it sponsorship or career mentor and the one-on-ones that you have are not with your manager. It's a little opaque at Table XI sometimes who your manager actually is. Usually in Table XI, that person is your project manager. But for career development or for this kind of personal check in, you've been paired with somebody who's usually more senior than you but it's usually somebody that you feel like you can learn from or somebody who can guide you through the next six months or a year of your career. The expectation is that will change. Somebody might be the right fit for you at one point but then a year later, you may switch around and work with somebody else.

CLAIRE:  As an outsider, as someone who, we work with hundreds of companies, all sorts of shapes, sizes and industries, I feel like what you guys are doing is really unique and it so well aligned, I think in employees' best interests, thinking about not sort of one-on-one is merely to sort of report to and like have someone telling you, "This is how you're doing," but again, it's about building empathy and that can be regardless of seniority or job title. Even Mark, the COO of the company, he has a sponsor. He has someone who is asking him questions, which I find to be really incredible.

DAN:  It's one of the things I like most about Table XI is that sort of commitment to shepherding everybody's career development and professional growth all along. We do this activity called the sticky-note game where the employee and their career mentor and usually someone from the leadership team will sit down and they'll talk about -- for the next six months -- what do you want to learn, how do you want to grow, what does success look like? For your six months in the future and looking back, what would you have accomplished and feel like you'd be really proud about?

Then we talk about that briefly and each individual will write sticky notes in a very specific or very kind of broad topics and we'll do an affinity mapping --

NOEL:  And they're not all work related either. Sometimes, it's personal.

DAN:  Yeah, they can absolutely be personal. They can be social. It doesn't really matter. Then once you have that, that becomes your roadmap for your career mentor to be like, "Now I understand better, for the next six months what you want to be working on."

NOEL:  And also you understand what we are hoping for.

CLAIRE:  Yep.

DAN:  Yeah.

NOEL:  We really see that this is the six-month period where you can really make the leap from being an entry-level person to a mid-level and we would like to see you start developing those skills, that kind of thing.

CLAIRE:  Again, like I was saying, it's pretty novel and I think it has a huge reason to do with why you guys have such an amazing culture. I was just in the offices the other week and you can tell the difference in how people talk to each other in the sense of openness, even just stepping into the office. It's cool to hear about.

NOEL:  One thing that's interesting about the sticky-note game is it becomes an input both into staffing choices because often people are expressing opinions about what they want to work on in the future. It also becomes an input to your one-on-ones with your career mentor and it's frequently the artifact that you start the meetings with. We try not to have it be status check-in-ish but it is kind of like which of these goals still seems important? We sometimes, try to get people to commit to one or two specific concrete steps that they can do in the next two weeks to move them towards one of the goals.

DAN:  I view it as not quite as to-do list but it's almost suggestions, both for the person being mentored and the mentor. I review each of my mentees sticky notes every other week and I say, "What can I do?" Either me personally like maybe I should read this book about practical design discovery and then I can talk to my UX designer sponsee about it or maybe it's, "You know what? I should hook up my junior developer with Noel and have them spend a day pairing on TDD because Noel is going to teach them much better than I ever would."

CLAIRE:  That's really neat. I have a quick thought that I'd love to maybe go back to, Noel, something that you said earlier that I thought was really intriguing that you posed, which is what are the things that you shouldn't do and maybe I'll pose that to Dan and I've got some thoughts to myself but is there anything that you consciously make sure when you're in a one-on-one that you do not do? The big no-no?

DAN:  Yeah. There's a few things that immediately jump to mind. One is I try not to make it any sort of status update. Maybe we'll talk a little bit about the project they're working on but only in the sense to try and dig into like how they're doing and how they're growing on it, not to really get a sense of how the project is doing.

NOEL:  I should say that works for us because we have other mechanisms for getting status updates on projects.

CLAIRE:  Absolutely.

NOEL:  We don't need this meeting to cover that ground.

DAN:  But even if it's a project that I'm on, I think it would be a separate meeting.

CLAIRE:  It goes back to that whole idea that to your point, Dan earlier of wanting the one-on-one to be a safe place and to our philosophy, again it's all about trying to empathize with the employee and say, "The status update. That can be something separate. That can be another meeting or email," etcetera.

DAN:  What's on top of your list, Claire?

CLAIRE:  On top of my list of what you should not do during a one-on-one is get defensive. That is the number one thing. I personally, also try to keep in mind -- I actually think it's my biggest personal flaw -- to have a tendency to get defensive. It's so hard.

NOEL:  Particularly as the manager.

CLAIRE:  Exactly. Particularly as the manager. I think it goes for the employees as well but particularly as the manager because if you're here in this one-on-one and you're asking questions around a moment of tension, like I was saying and you may ask, "When's the last time you felt like you didn't have any control in the company?" And they say something about being micro-managed. It's very easy to take a comment like that personally.

When someone does respond honestly, it's so important that you don't get defensive because the minute you do that, that actually kills open culture. The minute you get defensive you send a message to that employee that, "You know what? I didn't really want to hear that. I asked you but I don't really want to hear it." The minute that happens, that sets the tone and a precedent for every other question you will continue to ask. You're not going to get an honest response because the employee, they read that reaction, they saw the defensiveness and they're going to remember that.

DAN:  Yeah, you lose all the trust that you've been working so hard to build.

CLAIRE:  Exactly, so being really conscious of how you react when someone does give you, sometimes some tough and hard to swallow feedback is really important as a manager and we always recommend a few techniques for doing that. One of them is to not immediately respond. The one-on-one is not a time for you to justify or rebuke a point or try to rebut every comment that's made. To your point, Dan earlier, it's all about active listening. It's about just sitting there for a second, taking notes, digesting and saying, "Thank you. I'm going to come back to that. I'm going to think about what you mentioned." That's one thing. Don't respond right away.

Then the second is the way or the reason why people get defensive. The reason why any manager, CEO, why I get defensive is because you assume that the person has ill-intention. You assume, "They're giving me this feedback because they're trying to be spiteful, because they are unhappy with the project, because they're greedy about responsibility," it's because you insume negative intention. The way to disarm defensiveness, the way to not get defensive is simply to assume positive intent so what you do is you just assume that everything this person is saying is just coming from a real place of concern and whether or not you may agree with it, whether or not it's justified, it doesn't really matter. They're just saying it because they care about the company. Again, they have a legitimate concern so the minute you assume positive intention, that defensiveness starts to melt away.

NOEL:  Their perception of a problem makes it a problem, whether or not you agree that the problem exists, the fact that the other person perceives an issue, it needs to be addressed one way or another.

CLAIRE:  Exactly. There's a great book, I believe it's called Crucial Conversations. I'm sure both of you are familiar with it. It's sort of a classic communications in management read and one of the things they talk about is emotions are facts, whether or not the reason why someone feels angry or mad or upset is justified or right or something you agree, it doesn't matter. The fact that they feel so angry, that's already a fact. That just happened already and you have to find a way to deal with it so sort of accepting that and trying to find the positive intent behind it. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt is how you can not react with a knee jerk reaction of, "Oh, my God. This person's out to get me."

DAN:  Something I thought of, Claire when you're talking about, I really fundamentally believe that if you're talking to someone and if you are thinking of the next thing to say as you're talking, you're not really listening.

CLAIRE:  Yes.

DAN:  I do a lot of improv comedy and I think it comes out of some of my improv background where it's like if you're not in the moment, if you're not really paying full attention, you're missing at it and you're doing a disservice. There's a great book, it's called I think, 'Yes, And'. It's from Kelly Leonard and Tom Yorton, all about lessons from The Second City and the attitude of 'Yes, And' and listening can be transferred out of the comedy world and into the business world and everyday conversations. I think that's a really valuable tip for anybody who's in this position of doing one-on-ones.

CLAIRE:  Absolutely. I think there are even a few small tactical things you can do that you probably already do, Dan to even encourage yourself, to remind yourself what I'm supposed to be listening more than I am talking. One thing we always recommend to folks is whether or not you are a note taker, bring a notebook. Bring something to write something down and just have it in front of you as almost a reminder to yourself and to signal to the other person that I'm here to take notes. I'm here to listen. I'm here to be a sponge and absorb.

NOEL:  Yeah, and I also suggest that you shouldn't come in really with much of an agenda in terms of specific things that you need to say because it's a listening activity.

DAN:  I don't know. I always come in with some things prepared. I don't have an half an hour of conversation prepared but I'll always have one or two things so that I have a conversation starters because I like to prepare and I try to take at least 15 minutes before any of these half an hour meetings to be like, "What's the goal? What do I need to check in on? What conversations have we not revisited in a while?" Just mentally get in the right space to be the most effective as can be.

NOEL:  Mark has taken to posting on our sponsor Slack channel every week, like three or four possible conversation starter questions for people who have one-on-one scheduled that week to use or not use but just as a place to begin.

CLAIRE:  Yeah, that's fantastic. Do you have any favorite questions in particular, Dan that you like to ask?

DAN:  I don't know that I do. I often read the questions from Mark but I don't think... I rarely will use them directly. It's more to just get me thinking about, "We've been focused a lot on acquisition of a new skill, maybe I should switch the focus up for this meeting and talk about what's frustrated you in the company recently or what's something you're really proud of recently," because you don't want to always harp on the same topics.

CLAIRE:  Exactly and I love that you said, frustrated', and that you said, 'proud', like I was saying earlier, a moment of tension and a moment of energy. I think for the CEOs that we've worked with, they always learn at least one new thing if they're asking something really specific around that moment of energy or that moment of tension. What of my favorites that I always like to ask is one of you felt stressed. When was the last time you felt stressed or overworked?

Another one of my favorites is when have you've been annoyed by something because when you're annoyed by something, it doesn't mean you're like outright livid but it doesn't mean that you're happy. It means there is something bothering you and that usually gives way to something a bit more. I always like those two questions around moments of tension, in particular. 

NOEL:  What do you guys do... There's a certain balance that you're trying to strike here between having a natural conversation and asking these slightly artificial questions. What do you do to make that smooth? Is this something that just comes over time? Do you have a technique for making it seem more natural?

CLAIRE:  It's a great question. One thing that we actually always recommend and that I do myself is I do a lot of prep work like Dan. Not in the sense of writing out an agenda but to compensate for what you're talking about, Noel which is you probably have some really key points or questions that you want to pose but like you were saying, you don't want to come across as artificial. I think a huge way to overcome that is to actually write out what you're going to say and to practice that.

The structure that we use a lot of times is we'll start off by saying, "I'm really excited about getting the time to talk with you. From my perspective, the whole purpose of this time is just to hear how you're feeling, to hear how things are going for you but also just for me to just kind of sit here and shut up and listen. It's your time." Someone will probably say, "Okay, cool." Then I'll ask usually one or two questions around the moment of tension, one or two questions around a moment of energy and it actually surprisingly flows well if you're listening to Dan's point, if you're in the moment you're not trying to think about what to say next.

But having that outline, at least practicing those questions or knowing what you want to address, I think helps because if you don't, I think you come across as fake and artificial if you're trying to come up with stuff on the spot too much and you're not really sure what you're looking to ask about. That's sort of my take.

DAN:  That really resonates with me. That sort of like setting the expectation. I try to do this with all the folks I mentor. It's like, "I'm here for you. This is your time and we're going to get out of it what you want but anything I can do for you, that's the goal," and you have to care like super hard.

CLAIRE:  Yes, I love that, Dan.

DAN:  I view the success of the people I'm mentoring as my success. If they're having trouble then I'm having trouble. I think they can see that and feel it because I don't hide anything back.

NOEL:  One little thing that I think we do is we have a conference room that's much more informal. We have a couple conference rooms that look like interrogation rooms and then we have one that's got a couch and actually, it looks a little bit more of like a therapist office. I tend to try and have one-on-ones there if I can just because it is a little bit more casual. I think that kind of environmental cue really makes a difference.

CLAIRE:  Absolutely. I think changing up the location in general is always helpful or getting outside the building. You know, not necessarily going to the most crowded coffee shop where it's awkward to talk or speak up but leaving the building, getting away from, "Wow, all of my coworkers are here. I feel like I can't really be honest," is always helpful.

DAN:  I think going for a walk is a really effective mechanism as well. The things you will hear when you're out moving are very different than when you're sitting.

NOEL:  We should start going up to the roof for them, on our building.

DAN:  Yeah. That would be great.

NOEL:  What do you do with somebody who is remote? Does that change your approach a little bit? Some of these cues are much harder to pick up if you're on Skype or whatever you're doing. How does that affect the one-on-one?

CLAIRE:  That's a great question, Noel. We're actually a remote company ourselves and actually a large portion of our clients are also remote. What we've found to work really well is Google Hangout or Skype, where you do have someone on a video camera, it gets you pretty close. It's not perfect and of course, in person is always going to be superior in terms of the body language reading that Dan was talking about, in terms of also establishing that personal rapport but it gets you pretty far. We do one-on-ones over Google Hangout and I find that, personally the key to it is really the questions that I'm asking.

If I'm not prepared and like I was mentioning earlier, if I don't have the four to six questions sort of tucked in my back pocket, then I'm not going to really get very insightful answers because I didn't spend much time thinking about the questions. You can actually get pretty close from remote to having a great one-on-one as you can in person just via Google Hangout.

I'm actually curious, I would love to hear kind of the more personal side like Dan, what you're talking about, giving a shit and viewing the success of your mentors as your own success. To be frank, that's like a pretty rare perspective to hear from a manager. It's really refreshing and I was curious to hear, how did you get to that viewpoint? Did you have a really terrible boss at some point and that's the reason why? How did you develop that management philosophy? Have you seen it paid off? Why do you think those things?

DAN:  I think it was actually the opposite. I had a wonderful mentor. One of my first jobs out of college was at Rosetta Stone, the Language Learning Company. I think he was the head of development and finance, took me under his wing and said, "We're going to meet every other week or so and we're just going to have time together and we're going to talk about the company and we're going to talk about what you're learning and we're going to talk about challenges you're having," and I think that set the expectation for me that it was so helpful for me and for my career and for my growth that I've always wanted to give that to other people too.

CLAIRE:  That's amazing.

DAN:  I've always wanted to be at companies that have that ethos, that notion of like, "We're all in this together. We're all trying our best. We're all learning together and if we can find ways to make that better or easier or more successful, why wouldn't we do that. It's maybe the most important thing to invest in." I think I put more effort into this and thinking about this than most things just because I've found it to be so important and so rewarding.

CLAIRE:  Absolutely. I think it's so cool to hear and I think I touched on this briefly, I had the almost the opposite source of inspiration. I had a boss who wasn't an evil boss or anything. He wasn't a bad leader by any means but he just didn't know how to create an environment where people felt safe and comfortable giving their opinions. It was a really small company about six people, at early stage startup so, You would think, Claire, come on. Everyone knows each other and everyone's giving feedback. That's got to be the case. You would think?

But even in this six-person company, I felt as though I couldn't be honest about my thoughts on the direction of the company or different roles and responsibilities. At the time, this is maybe like four or five years ago, it was the first time I'd ever worked for someone because I'd started a company before that and then went to take some time off, and then go work for someone so it's the first time I worked for someone so I thought actually at the time, I was like, "You know what? I might just be like a disgruntled millennial right now."

I think maybe I might actually just be thinking this because I've never worked for someone before. I started my own company coming out of college, like this is just the learning curve of working for someone. I thought that for like a year and a half and then I had studied learning and organizational change in college, the study of how people work together in groups and I just started noticing a lot of bottlenecks of communication. I started noticing also just how frustrated this made me feel, oh my gosh. I was frustrated that... I just feel like I can't speak up. My coworkers are feeling similarly and that's when I decided I got to do something about this.

When I Google stuff about this, there's no tool around this at the time, there's no philosophy around this, resource around this, so that's when I decided to quit my job and ended up starting my own consulting practice to help CEOs with those and then ended up starting Know Your Company. I always am very curious as to the inspiration behind why people believe certain paths around management because I think those experiences strongly influence why people think, "One-on-one should be like this," or you don't really need one-on-ones.

DAN:  What's been the most surprising thing to you that you've learned as you've worked on Know Your Company?

CLAIRE:  That's such a good question. So many things, we actually just published something about the top three blind spots that we found CEOs face, gathered from all of the data from Know Your Company customers. It's over 15,000 people who use our product in about 25 different countries and the number one blind spot that we found is fascinating. We found that employees feel stifled in their companies. That's probably the most surprising thing I've learned and that we found 76% of employees feel that they can be contributing to an area outside their current role. They feel like they could be doing more -- 76% which is crazy. Seventy six percent of employees feel they could be contributing in an area outside their current role and that blew me away because most managers and CEOs that I talked to feel that their employees are super busy. They feel that their employees are slammed and they're doing a ton and they're overworked and yet, the statistic shows that employees at the end of the day are actually hungering, they really deeply want more growth, more learning.

NOEL:  That's not even contradictory, somebody could be slammed doing the same thing over and over again. 

CLAIRE:  Yes.

NOEL:  I think that's sort of a stereotype in the industry that you go to a place and you end up doing the same thing over and over again and the only way to get new responsibilities and to be able to do new things is to go someplace else. It's one of the things that we are explicitly fighting against with the way we handle our one-on-ones and the way we do the sticky note game like we're really trying to give people the opportunities for growth within Table XI.

CLAIRE:  That's been one of the biggest blind spots and most surprising insights we found. The second one is the fact that most employees actually think their own company is behind the curve on something, in particular. In Know Your Company, we asked the question directly, "Is there anything in the company that you feel like that we're behind the curve on?" And I believe it's 65% of employees felt that, "Yes, we are behind the curve on something," and yet I would argue do you see 65% percent of your employees actively coming up to you saying, "We're behind the curve on this."

Very similarly, we asked the questions through Know Your Company, "Have you seen something recently and thought to yourself, 'I wish we'd done that,'" and 75% percent of employees said, "Yes, I've seen something from a competitor that I wish we'd done," and again for some reason, we don't hear as often as CEOs and managers with that level of frequency, new ideas, different observations from the front lines of what other companies and things are happening that could be important. The fact that employees think that we're behind the curve, and yet you don't hear it, is a huge opportunity where when you have these one-on-ones, you can ask questions around that. You can ask, "Is there anything that you've seen recently that you thought, 'That'd be really cool if we did that at Table XI or did in our company,'" and that uncovers a ton.

DAN:  There's something really exciting about the idea of creating an environment where people feel they have the ability to bubble up those ideas and then the further ability to explore them. Because if you give the people the chance, they're going to blow your mind. They're going to do such amazing things. You just need to give them some space to do it.

CLAIRE:  Absolutely. We always talk about how almost the best ideas and sources of innovation and improvement, all come from within a company. You don't need to go look outside and do research or look at what everyone else is doing. It's all internal. Your employees themselves have a lot of the answers that you're looking for. As a leadership team, you just have to unlock them by just asking the right questions and creating that safe space. That's the power of one-on-ones.

NOEL:  Do you guys have some recommendations of books or resources that people can look at that will help them learn about the stuff? I know you each mentioned a book before, is there something else that you think people should look at?

CLAIRE:  Yeah, I love the book Crucial Conversations. I think it's my personal tenet and guidepost for a lot of my own philosophy around how to approach and creating a safe space for employees. The other thing that I'd recommend is I do a lot of writing on Medium too on this topic so if anyone's curious on, "What are those top three blind spots she was talking about?" We have a list of those. We have lists of the top nine questions to ask, the top four questions asked by every employee. I have tons of that if you want to check that out on Medium.

Just about early next week, you guys get the scoop. We're about to launch actually a brand new knowledge center. We'll catalog all of this and everything we've learned in the past three years. It will be all of our data, all of our insights around having a good one-on-ones and just creating an open and honest culture in general.

DAN:  I recommended 'Yes, And' before and I think another good one is a book called Drive, it's about the science of motivation and how people pursue mastery, autonomy and purpose and those driving factors to allow them to really achieve their goals.

NOEL:  I think there's a really good video version of that, the thesis of that, like an animated talk.

CLAIRE:  Yes, I love that.

DAN:  I have another thing to recommend. I want to plug taking an improv class. Especially if you're in a city that allows that and there are more and more that have it. Here in Chicago we have iO, there's The Second City, there's the Annoyance. It's fun and goofy and that's maybe a reason enough to do it but I really do think a lot of lessons from improv apply to how to be an active participant in these conversations and how to really empathize with other people.

NOEL:  Tina Fey has a whole section on that in Bossypants, which is probably very, very similar to the Yes, And book but it's the lessons that she took from improv into her career work and in her business role. Claire, if people want to reach you online, where can they?

CLAIRE:  Yes. People can email me at Claire@KnowYourCompany.com or you can find me on Twitter at @CJLew23.

NOEL:  And Dan?

DAN:  Folks can email me at Dan@TableXI.com or they can see me performing at iO Chicago or ComedySports. I'll plug my shows, I'm not above it.

[Laughter]

NOEL:  Speaking of pretext to get information on the recording, yeah.
CLAIRE:  That's so awesome, Dan. I love that recommendation too. I think there are so many parallels between improv and positive communication at work.

NOEL:  Thanks to both of you for coming on. I really appreciate it. Tech Done Right is a production of Table XI and it's hosted by me, Noel Rappin. You can find Table XI on Twitter at @TableXI and me at @NoelRap. The podcast is edited by Mandy Moore and you can reach her on Twitter at @TheRubyRep. Tech Done Right can be found at TechDoneRight.io or downloaded via iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. You can send us feedback or ideas on Twitter at @Tech_Done_Right or subscribe to our newsletter at TechDoneRight.io/Newsletter.

Table XI is a UX design and software development company in Chicago with a 15-year history of building websites, mobile applications and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to story brands. Find us at TableXI.com where you can learn more about working with us or working for us and we'll be back in a couple of weeks with the next episode of Tech Done Right.