A while back, I worked with one of the best people I’ve ever hired. And we were both stuck.
She was frustrated. I was frustrated. On paper, everything was fine. We had a job description. We talked all the time. But we could not figure out how to make progress together.
Then one day, in the middle of a tense conversation, it hit me. What I thought was the most important part of her job and what she thought was the most important part of her job were two different things.
Here’s the kicker. The thing she thought was most important was a good thing. She just didn’t have the full context of the company to know it wasn’t the right thing to focus on. And that was on me. I had never given her a way to find out.
We had no consistent way of checking in with each other. We were two people rowing in different directions. That does not create alignment, and it does not create momentum.
Around that same time, I was sitting in my EO forum and a good friend of mine, Craig Hettrich, was presenting. Craig is a sharp Traction implementer. He helps business owners roll this stuff out every day. He walked us through a quarterly check-in system, and it hit me like Moses coming down the mountain with the tablets. That dramatic. I knew right away it was the thing we were missing.
We took it back to my companies, made a few changes, and we’ve run it ever since.
I first wrote about this system back in 2023. Two things have changed since then. I just recorded a full video on the framework and the why behind it. And we’ve added a layer of AI that automates almost all of the busywork. So this is the updated playbook: the how-to, plus how we actually run these today.
First, the Format
Here is the template, free. Excel, Google Sheets
It’s a simple spreadsheet. Each tab is one check-in session, which means you build an easy record of every past check-in without trying.
Each session has three columns:
- The elements being evaluated.
- The team member’s self-rating.
- The manager’s rating.
Every rating is on a one to three scale. One means rarely or substandard. Three means all the time or exceptional. Two is more often than not. No giant matrix. No complicated math.
The Order Matters
There’s a right order to fill this out, and it’s intentional.
Before the check-in, the team member rates themselves first. Always first. This process is about their development, not about you and not about the company.
Then the manager rates each element. Best practice: hide the team member’s column before you fill in yours, so their answers don’t sway you.
Now here’s the whole game. The gap between those two columns is the entire conversation. If they rated themselves a three and you put a one, that’s a conversation. A two against a one, that’s a conversation. Two ones lining up, that’s probably a conversation too. You’re hunting for the misalignment between how they see their performance and how you see it.
The Three Sections
The rows break into three sections.
Section One: Core Values
At TBS, our core values are: we’re good humans, we’re relentless, we’re self-aware, we’re exacting, and we’re process-driven. Your company needs its own. (I wrote a separate piece on building core values if you want it.)
Here, both of you rate how well the team member lives those values day to day. Three is all the time. One is rarely.
This is the part I love. It drags core values off the poster on the wall and turns them into a real assessment every 90 days. If you see anything less than threes here, treat it as a smoke signal. A values problem needs to be addressed right away, not filed away.
Section Two: Key Job Elements
These come straight from the job description. Any good job description answers one question: what does success in this role actually look like? The best ones list those answers in priority order.
Pull those same elements into the check-in. The team member rates their performance on a scale of one to three. You do the same. Again, you’re looking for the gap.
Here’s what makes this powerful over time. A job description is a statue. It sits there. But jobs change as the company changes course. The check-in happens every 90 days, so those elements get discussed, adjusted, and tweaked as you go. Over time, the check-in becomes a more honest North Star for the role than the original job description, and it back-feeds an update to that description every year or two.
For one of my key leaders, the four elements are: hit our rolling 12-month net profit number, lead and manage and hold the team accountable, execute the annual company playbook, and resolve cross-functional issues between departments. That’s what he rates himself on, and what I rate him on, every quarter.
Section Three: The Four Questions
This is the section that the original version of this newsletter was missing, and it might be the most important one. Four questions the team member answers about themselves. Not about you. Not about the company. About them.
1. What do you want for your future here, and how can I help you get there?
Employment should help a person reach their own goals through a professional setting. You can’t support that if you don’t know what it is.
2. What is your biggest frustration at work? What makes you want to pull your hair out on the drive in?
Smoke it out so you can fix it together.
3. What keeps you motivated to stay?
This one is sneaky. It usually reveals the opposite too, the thing that would make them leave. You want to know those lines in the sand.
4. Start, stop. Is there anything you want me to start doing, or stop doing?
Sometimes we drive our people nuts and they don’t feel safe saying so. Your job is to build the kind of relationship where they can be brutally honest.
Every one of these serves the team member. If your people feel heard and cared for, they execute. The business side takes care of itself.
Leading Up to the Check-In
A few days out, the manager creates the new tab and asks the team member to fill in their ratings and comments. The team member goes first. The manager then hides that column, adds their own ratings, and leaves comments where needed. Prep is light. Maybe five to 10 minutes for the team member, five for the manager.
The Day of the Check-In
The check-in should never be a surprise. Your team member should already know how they’re doing, because good managers bring things up as they happen. They don’t save them for a meeting.
That frees the check-in to be about three things:
- Alignment. Walk through each value and role together. Talk through the comments. Dig into any item you rated differently and work to understand each other.
- Support. Listen for the roadblocks in the team member’s way, then commit to specific to-dos to clear them.
- Development. The team member sets specific action items for the next 90 days.
The meeting runs about 45 to 90 minutes. Add it up. Roughly two hours every quarter buys you complete alignment with a person. That’s the whole pitch.
The Day After: Where the AI Comes In
In the original system, the day after the check-in the manager wrote a brief email to memorialize the meeting. A short summary, the list of what each side agreed to do, and the next meeting date. It worked. But it was one more thing on a busy manager’s plate, so it was the step that slipped.
So we automated it. Here’s how we actually run check-ins now.
We record the meeting with Fireflies.ai. And before anyone hits record, the team member knows and agrees to it. Full permission, every time. No secret recording, ever. That consent is not a formality. This entire system runs on trust, and you don’t get to keep trust by hiding a microphone.
From that one transcript, AI does the rest:
- It writes a brief summary document for the team member. We hand it to them the next day. Same memo as before, none of the manual work.
- It writes a separate file note for the team member’s HR file. That uploads on its own and becomes a permanent record of the check-in.
- It updates the tracking spreadsheet we use to see who’s been checked in with and when.
One conversation goes in. A team member summary, an HR record, and an updated tracker come out. The manager doesn’t touch a keyboard. We took the most valuable management ritual we have and removed the one excuse people used to skip the follow-through.
Why This Works
Craig’s format is clean, simple, and collaborative. Everything a standard performance review is not.
It keeps your core values front and center, because values are not a list on a wall. They’re a living set of principles you measure yourselves against every quarter.
It catches responsibility drift. It’s common for our first couple of check-ins with a new hire to include an “oh, I totally forgot I was supposed to be doing that” moment. That’s fine. Drift is natural. You just have to fight it on a regular schedule.
And here’s what happened with the team member I told you about at the top. This system changed how we worked together. It was like two lanes of traffic merging into one. We both started to look forward to the meetings. It went from critique to collaboration.
She’s moved on to other things now. But when she left, she told me the check-ins were one of the most impactful parts of her time with us. She said she stopped feeling like two people pulling in different directions. That’s the whole point.
Wrap Up
Pick the person on your team you most need to get aligned with. Put a check-in on the calendar. Start there.
The framework is free. The template is free. And the AI layer is something you can build yourself now, which is a sentence I couldn’t have written when I first published this in 2023.
A shout-out to my friend Craig Hetrich for the format, and for teaching it to me and my EO forum. The man knows what he’s doing.
You and I are both fighting the war on mediocre business. Go run one check-in.
As always, if you’d like to chat about topics like this, I’m here for you: scott@scottmonday.com.
Last week’s YouTube video walks through a quarterly check-in strategy with my team that has completely changed the way we do performance reviews. Check it out!
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I really like this. Thank you for sharing the details; I think this is highly valuable and will begin implementing it.