WE HAVE worked with organizational leaders at all levels in their companies, and they often have the same mindset: “If we do daily standups, shouldn’t our team be aligned and productive?” While daily standups are helpful for a lot of reasons, they’re designed to be quick updates and don’t cover the big picture priorities.
So if something feels “off” within your team, it’s time to change how you’re managing it. At Petra Coach, we introduced Two-Week Top Task Meetings—aka, Two- Weekers—and everything changed. Then we had our clients implement these meetings and things changed for them, too. It turns out that productivity is a lot less about people’s effort levels and a lot more about implementing the right support mechanisms within an organization.
WHAT IS A TWO-WEEKER?
Designed to be 45–60 minutes long, Two-Weekers are regular meetings between team leaders and each person on their teams. These one-on-one meetings follow a unique structure that is meant to help teams stay focused, maintain alignment, and improve communication. Two- Weekers are the secret sauce to transforming your team’s performance. Here’s what they look like:
- Start each meeting by confirming the date and time of the next two-week meeting. This reaffirms to both the team member and the leader that there is a mutual commitment to these meetings.
- Catch up on personal and professional highs and lows that happened since the last meeting. This gives you a chance to center the conversation on development, make personal connections, and offer support to your team members.
- Review the individual’s quarterly priorities. Score each priority with a red, yellow, or green status to get real about how things are going. This honest conversation helps drive course corrections and highlights roadblocks.
- Revisit the top tasks from the last two-week meetings. Were these tasks completed? How did they go? Was anything learned?
- Create the top tasks that should be worked on between this meeting and the next. Every team member should have 2–3 top tasks to focus on in two-week increments. This helps with prioritization, drowning out the noise of other happenings and putting the most important things at the forefront of your employees’ minds.
HOW IS A TWO-WEEKER DIFFERENT FROM OTHER REGULAR MEETINGS?
Managers are often walking a tightrope between delegation and micromanagement. We don’t want our team members to feel like we don’t trust them, but we also want to make sure that things are getting done well. Two-Weekers provide a platform that allows managers to feel connected to what’s happening in their teams while empowering their team members to take ownership of key priorities.
With bigger, chunkier tasks, sometimes weekly touchpoints are actually too frequent to be valuable. We’ve all seen how fast a week can go, and when the day-to-day grind gets in the way of making progress on big projects, it can be
disheartening to show up to a weekly meeting without an update. But with two weeks to find time for strategic priorities, there’s more of a chance to actually move the needle on top tasks.
TWO-WEEKERS EMPOWER LEADERS, TOO
As a team leader myself, I’ve found that Two-Weekers completely changed the tone of how I collaborate with my team. Not only am I able to better understand how each person thinks, communicates, and prioritizes, but I’m in a position to challenge them to bring solutions to the table instead of giving them the answers. This helps me feel like something is being taken from my plate while ensuring my team feels like they are trusted to manage big, important tasks.
When leaders and team members establish a unified tone of shared improvement rather than criticism, they both enter a growth mindset. Once a growth mindset is achieved on both sides, they can support each other to become the best team players possible. Two- Weekers benefit everyone.
TWO-WEEKER DO’S AND DON’TS
The effectiveness of these meetings stems from how they are approached and prioritized by all parties involved. Leaders often fall into the trap of moving meetings with their own team members first because it’s often seen as “more convenient,” but my approach is the opposite. I do everything in my power to not move these meetings because I want to set the tone that they’re a priority—because they are!
When I take a step back and let my team members drive these meetings, it reinforces the idea that they are leading the charge with their two-week priorities, further solidifying the idea that they own important initiatives but are supported at every juncture. I spend a lot of time listening, answering questions when asked, and probing my teams for how they’d like me to help. I’m not there to prescribe answers but rather to let them chart the path ahead.
TWO-WEEKERS CHANGE EVERYTHING
With the two-week meeting dynamic in full force, my team’s performance conversations have completely transformed. Instead of getting annual feedback in performance reviews, they’re getting feedback 25+ times per year, giving them a chance to course-correct and develop in this setting. When it finally clicks for
your team members that their futures are in their hands, everything starts to change. Productivity goes up, collaboration becomes second nature, and employee satisfaction shoots through the roof.
Your team may lack productivity now, and it’s probably your fault. Don’t panic; in a matter of weeks, that could completely change. Are you willing to put in the work? I’ll check back in two weeks.
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