Hi Deepa,
Skip level meetings can be done once in a quarter or six months...
How to Conduct a Skip Level Meeting
Skip level meeting. What is that? It's a tool (interview process) for managers to build trust and know their team members, one or more level below. This helps managers to understand the real problems and an opportunity to work on them.
Normally, managers who are managing more than 10 to 12 team members, define two or three project leads, who are directly reporting to them while other team members report to project leads. Due to this hierarchical structure, team members may not find an opportunity to talk to managers to share their views on the project, company or management. To minimize this gap, managers should proactively schedule Skip level meetings with their team members.
Step 1:
Send a meeting invite to your team member (not to direct reportees) - a level or two below. Please do not try to schedule this meeting at 11th hour as s/he may not be ready.
Step 2:
Best duration for this type of meeting is around 30 minutes.
Step 3:
Note that your team member may not have an experience of these types of meetings and may not be aware about the outcome of the same. As you are trying to understand your team members' thoughts about the project, company and also their satisfaction, dissatisfaction etc, explain the purpose of this meeting. Take them into confidence stating that all the discussions will be kept secret and their views won't be revealed.
Step 4:
Be supportive and patient. Motivate your team member to open up and share his/her views/ideas. Please do not take anything personally or do not try to defend any comment.
Step 5:
Be a good listener. Talk less and provoke your team member to talk more. Ask questions like -
1. Can you please eloberate that topic?
2. Oh? I was not aware.
3. Can you help me out to understand?
Step 6:
Focus your questions on areas like -
1. Biographical data
2. Project related views/ideas
3. Organization and management
Step 7:
Always ask open ended questions. Take notes wherever applicable.
Step 8:
Most important is to keep all the information secret. And take action wherever required.
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Regards,
Hari Divakaran