You've always got to be doing one-on-ones, you've got to talk to people. I've done this with larger teams as well, but make sure you take the time, and it depends on what your schedule looks like, but carve out, especially with your direct reports, at least once a week. That might be harder for folks with a lot of people, but if that's the case, you have too many people reporting to you. There's actually a real number, they say you should have six to eight folks reporting directly to you. You don't want any formations under that, you don't want a senior designer, and then another designer, you don't want to do that either.

I think you need to be strategic with your reporting structure, because then you just get isolated folks, so there's that problem. So make sure that you do, depending on who the people are on your team, that you're having one-on-ones, and if you're a manager of managers, make sure they're doing the same thing. Make sure that you're evangelizing your type of management to the folks who are managers, and managers under you. You're there, so you're probably doing this already, but note that, part of the challenge with leadership is that you're repeating yourself all the time. You can't do one deck, you can't do one presentation, you can't have one set of drinks with your team and be like "this is the how we work together". You've got to continue to talk about why this is the right way to do it, and and create those opportunities for everyone to input on how we're crafting and moulding the team.

Those one-on-ones, really, they're for your your employee. They're for you to tell them what's happening from the top down. Give them visibility and insight into what's happening, what the client is saying, what's the business saying, what are the things we need to keep on our radar, and then, of course, create space for them to bring up any challenges or problems. It shouldn't just be you receiving, it should be a give-and-take. That creates a better environment, and the more your team sees what you do for them, the more they're going to give for you. At the end of the day, you start to get to a really great place, and this is the lovely place I love to be, is that you get a team where they're doing for you, and you're doing for them, you guys can lean on each other.