How To Discipline Your Team With The “Conversation Recap”

I was meeting with a client recently and he had some questions on how to share feedback with his team…especially the more personal and "critical" kind. It's not easy, but I developed my own technique that helps:

• Deliver the feedback, constructively
• Includes a documented and time-stamped message about what happened (so it doesn't happen again)
• It's polite, respectful and to the point.

I call it the "Conversation Recap" It's a simple follow-up email I started years ago and now LIFT Enrichment, the 8-figure service based company I've been running for 15 years, uses this technique all the time.   In fact, if one of my managers presents a problem with any of their team, the first thing I will ask is "Ok, can you show me the previous Conversation Recaps?" If there are no "Conversation Recaps," then I ask why there is no documented paper trail of the conversations addressing this issue (because by the time it gets to me…it's happened a number of times) What I like about the Conversation Recap is that it's quick and easy. Let's say I have some feedback I need to give back to one of my team members.  An example was how one of my managers waited a few days to tell me about a high-level internal team issue that should have been brought to my attention the minute it happened. When she told me about what happened, I immediately asked why I wasn't notified earlier…and her response was that she wanted to get more details and have a conversation with the individual team member beforehand. I told her that since this was a high-level issue, we would now have to go back to that team member and have the SAME conversation with me on the zoom call.   It would have been better to just have the zoom chat all together the first time. We acknowledged how this issue was high-level and in the future I had to be notified immediately, by call or a quick WA.  She understood and right when the call is done I went to gmail and wrote the subject line:  "Conversation Recap" Then it just said:   "Hi (name),  Here's a recap of what we discussed. I listed out a few bullet points. And hit send. That's it! Now, if I ever need to review a recap I had with someone on the team, I just put "Conversation Recap" into my email search and their name and I can see each recap.  95% of the time, I never see the issue happen again, but if it the same issues happens multiple times, then serious action (including firing) might have to happen. The email time stamps what happened, and perfectly addresses the solution to move forward. For Conversation Recaps, I will often ask to be cc'd on recaps that are high-level…but most go without me needing to be cc'd.   Try out this technique next time you need to share some important matter with an individual team member. My team and I have sent a number of recaps including topics such as:

• What's appropriate to wear in zoom meetings
• How the "tone" of a team member was overly harsh towards another member
• What warrants contacting the CEO or not

And I'm sure new issues will pop up…but for now we are expert at most issues being one-time occurrences. Want to scale your business from 7 to 8 figures, just live I've done?  I run an 8-figure service company with a staff of 300 people that teaches 18,000 kids a week how to cook healthy foods…and it only takes me 8-hours a month.  Here's the link to hop on a consultation call to see how I can help you grow