What Are Leader Checks?
Leader Checks are a way to check on leaders or personnel that you supervise that demonstrates you trust them, but also to verify that they are performing the way you need them to.
I find these checks are a great way to keep everyone working towards the same goal and not letting anything important fall through the cracks.
I first learned this in the Army and always remember my dad saying it that Russian Proverb. The Army was where I learned how to do it. Running numerous civilian businesses is where I got very good at it.
During a Leader Check you’re taking a report from one of your leaders and you are checking portions of it for accuracy. You are not checking everything but enough to see if a mistake jumps out.
I have so many business consulting horror stories of an owner that didn’t check on their employee and just assumed it was done right. Most of the time the owner wasn’t aware of this concept, but even a few I’ve taught it to get too relaxed on it.
I have been to the point where I didn’t want to do them anymore and thought I could slack off. But it is at that moment that you find you should have done it. These checks help you build trust in your leaders and shows your leaders you care enough to check.
How Do You Perform A Leader Check?
I like to start with a 10% check. If I were to assign out a task, I would then look at the task as a whole and look at an approx. 10% portion of it.
I might choose the portion that is the most important or a cannot fail portion of the task.
As I work my way through the 10% portion of the task, if I don’t find any mistakes, I can assume the task was done correctly
If I find a mistake I will increase my verification. I would first follow the mistake through the task maybe try to find a pattern to help my employee when they do this task again in the future. Once done I would increase my search to 30% and look through some more of the task.
Same as before I would look at the most important parts. The ones that could cost the most time or money.
If I find another one during my 30% check it is time to call in the leader or employee and go through the project with them. This might mean re-training needs to happen or maybe it was rushed. Either way you need to let your leader know the task was done poorly and must be fixed.
As you continue your Leader Checks Program you will want to be sure to change what you check. Your leaders might not mean to be harmful, but they may pick up on what you are checking and then pay closer attention to make sure those particular tasks are done right.
You don’t want them to know what you are checking because you want them to treat the entire project or task as important.
When Should You Perform a Leader Check?
I like to perform these checks on my most important cannot fail tasks. I also will check my leaders on their everyday duties occasionally.
It has to be understood you can’t do this check on ever single task or project, but you have to do it enough to ensure your leaders know you care and you have a good idea of your team skills and capabilities.
Example Leader Check:
Let’s say you tasked out one of your people to inventory your back room. Once they completed their task, I would then randomly pick out 10% of my total SKUs (maybe some SKUs that we use a lot) and then do my own inventory. If during that check your numbers matched theirs you can be done.
If there was a mistake you would want to consider expanding your search. If during the expanded search you continue to find mistakes, then you would want to call you employee in and show them what’s going on.
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f they get mad that you are double checking their work this could be a problematic person and if they are a leader that is upset about it, they might not be the right leader.
A good person or good leader might get frustrated with themselves, but they will also be more than willing to fix their mistake and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
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