Here’s how to have meaningful conversations with your team [Plus worksheet]
Want to know how your employees actually feel? Try my XC & Me Questionnaire for meaningful, measurable conversations
In 2022, the Great Resignation of 2021 shows no sign of slowing down. Among knowledge workers, there’s a whole slew of reasons cited: burnout, better opportunities, higher pay, changing priorities, and more.
At the same time, companies in my industry — tech — are starved for employees.
So how do we bridge the gap? By making sure that senior leaders know what’s going on at all ranks in the organization.
In this post, I’ll describe the XC & Me Questionnaire I developed for this purpose and share how you can use it to communicate with your team better, get insights into what’s on specific employees’ minds, and track progress and change across your organization.
Some background
As a senior manager, how do you keep in touch with what’s going on in the organization? That’s one of the questions I’ve asked myself throughout my career in tech. What I’ve typically found is that senior managers either: 1) glean information from the managers below them, with pressing things often getting missed; or 2) have personal sync meetings with employees under them, which are good in theory, but barely scratch the surface in terms of content and real insights, given that the employee and the manager barely know each other.
Most regular one-on-one meetings or syncs revolve around some variation of the question “How are things going?” which, politeness aside, doesn’t take the conversation very far. It’s the ultimate small talk. How much should the employee reveal? What can they say (or not say) if they don’t really know you? How much will be perceived as feedback versus whining? In my experience, faced with that question, most people naturally talk about what’s going on at that very moment — the projects they’re working on, the challenges they’re facing, maybe the personal stuff they’re dealing with.
The XC & Me Questionnaire
In my case, years of leading teams and seeking to have more meaningful conversations came together in the form of a questionnaire I developed called the XC & Me Questionnaire. Over the past few years, I’ve used it to make meetings with employees — typically not direct reports, but those who report to them — more effective and impactful, and to actually measure and compare workplace satisfaction.
A note: The XC Questionnaire, as I developed it, is meant to foster and deepen conversation. It’s for managers who are genuinely interested in getting to know their team members, especially those with whom they might not have frequent or regular interaction. It’s done in the context of a check-in conversation and isn’t meant to be printed out as an evaluation and handed to the employee. I’ve found that in addition to giving me more meaningful takeaways, employees appreciate the guidance it provides in terms of what’s on the table and what’s OK to talk about.
The questionnaire centers on asking the employee to assign scores to 10 categories that all begin with C (hence XC): Company, Connection, Challenge, Career Path, Constructive Criticism, Coaching, Compensation, Colleagues, Chiefs, and Code of Practice. (Yes, some of them feel like a stretch, but bear with me.) By breaking it down, we’re able to identify exactly what makes up that “feeling” that employees are experiencing, rather than keeping it vague and cursory.
How it works
To start off, I ask the employee to rank how content or satisfied they are at work on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being perfect). I record this score since we’ll come back to it later.
Next, we go through each of the Cs, with the employee giving a score from 1 to 10 (as they evaluate it). If it’s a 9 or 10, we move on to the next category. If it’s not, I ask them to elaborate on what’s missing and what might make it a 10, which invites longer and deeper conversation around the topic. If the employee has gone through the questionnaire with me in the past, we discuss whether the score has changed since our last conversation and, if so, how and why.
The 10 C’s are as follows:
1. Company — How much do you believe in the company, in its vision, and in its senior management?
2. Connection — Do you feel “connected” to the product we are building? Do you understand the cause (goal) of our product(s) and do you share it? Do you believe in the direction we are taking?
3. Challenge — Do you feel challenged at work? This relates to all aspects: technical, management, etc. Do you feel too challenged?
4. Career — Are you happy with your current role? Do you believe you can “grow” within the company (today or in the future)? Is this being discussed with you?
5. Constructive Criticism — Do you feel that you’re getting appropriate constructive criticism and feedback from your managers and peers (both good and bad) — throughout the year and not just during your annual review?
For managers, do you feel that you’re giving appropriate constructive criticism and feedback throughout the year?
6. Coaching — Are you getting sufficient training or sufficient time to self-learn the material you need to perform your role successfully?
7. Compensation — Are you happy with the compensation the company provides you (salary, bonus, and RSUs)?
(If it’s a perfect 10, no one will blame you if you drop a joke about hanging on to that annual bonus.)
8. Colleagues — Are you happy with your colleagues, both on a professional level and on a social level (people you appreciate technically, but who are also human beings and fun to be with)?
9. Chiefs (or Captains, Commanders, Conductors — aka leaders) — How would you rank your managers (direct and one level above them)?
10. Code of Practice (aka processes and procedures — I dare you, dear reader, to come up with a better C-word for it…) — What do you think of our processes and procedures? Are we efficient? What would you add/remove to make us perform better?
We wrap up with one final category:
Me — How do you feel you are doing at work? What score would you give yourself? Do you feel you are meeting your potential? Are you doing a good job?
How to use it
I keep a spreadsheet where I record the score for each category, including the employee’s initial score and their “Me” score, as well as the average of the 10 C scores to see how they line up.
The spreadsheet converts feelings into numbers, which then reveal patterns across teams — for example, a manager who’s consistently ranked low, a gap between the training employees expect to get and are actually getting, or discontent regarding compensation.
It also reveals patterns over time. It takes time for organizations to change; a quarter isn’t enough. But by having these conversations with employees once a year, I can see how our organization has evolved and is continuing to evolve.
For example, when I joined Gong in January 2020, there were about 40 of us. Two years later, we’re nearly 200, which means we’ve become more “corporate,” and the processes (code of practice) have changed significantly. My spreadsheet reveals how different team members feel about that: some, who have been with the company since the early days, are reckoning with the fact that they no longer know everyone or feel like they’re part of a small, tight-knit group; others are feeling the growing pains and would like to see clearer processes in place, more in line with the larger organization we’ve become.
As I continue to have these conversations and record the scores, I’m confident that the XC & Me Questionnaire will reveal more patterns, and I’m hopeful that they’ll help me, and my colleagues, keep our finger on the pulse of our teams and our company.
If you’re a senior manager, I encourage you to check out the XC & Me Questionnaire and give it a try with your team. I’d also love to hear about other methods you’ve discovered for meaningful conversations, especially during these unprecedented times. Let me know in the comments.
And if you’re looking for a team that cares about how you feel and wants to hear your feedback, we’re hiring!
