Genuine Concern: Are you capable of “seeing” your team clearly?
I have had the unique opportunity in my almost 30-year career to engage in thousands of check-in meetings. Yes, thousands. Through various leadership professional learning opportunities, I mastered the check-in: establish a cadence, prepare an agenda, share tactical updates, track goals, and assign action items. We got stuff done. About 17 years ago (I am shocked as I write that number down), while engaging with a direct report, Sam (an alias), she changed my whole approach to how I engage with others at work. In my mind, Sam and I had great check-ins and Sam was hitting all her weekly goals. We moved from topic to topic with ease. At the end of each check-in I would say with pride, "This meeting was productive!" A few months in, during one of our weekly check-in meetings, Sam questioned whether I cared about her. She asked me if I saw her as a "number" or as a real person. I was shocked. Of course I did. I told Sam this outright. Sam was not convinced. I knew I needed to change, and I have been trying to improve ever since.
In a check-in meeting, there are really two meetings happening. One meeting is tactical and technical, and the other is hidden beneath the surface, rooted in values, beliefs, experiences, and relationships. For me, Sam was calling out that I was not fully present with her (the hidden part). She articulated that she needed me to show genuine concern for her as a person, including her identity and her perspective. This wasn’t because I intended to be this way or that I did not care about Sam. It was because I honestly did not think it mattered. But to Sam, it did. And it turns out, for many of my direct reports, both then and now, it has mattered a lot.
So, what exactly are we doing in our check-ins? Why do we ignore genuine concern in a check-in? What can we do instead?
What are we doing in our check-in meetings?
In my work with executives across the country, most check-in meetings I observe (or talk about with my coaching clients) look like the leader and the direct report engaging in a variety of activities.
These activities typically include:
Review of priorities (quarterly, annual, etc.)
Review of the weekly goals
Review of any key updates
Time to discuss any items of special interest (problems of practice, leader feedback needed, etc.)
Discussion of any topics from the manager
These leaders prepare by reviewing project statuses beforehand and ask good questions about deliverables and timelines during their meetings.
It’s important to name that two dynamics are showing up in this structure, and both come from the leader. First, the leader has probably built their reputation for excellence based on strong outcomes and were rewarded throughout their career for analysis, decisiveness, and results. Second, the check-in has been framed and taught in most professional learning settings as a tactical instrument. Consequently, most leaders use it to track progress, surface blockers, and stay informed.
Given this type of interaction, leaders and direct reports often lack connection, relationship and genuine concern for one another, and sometimes this dynamic extends across teams. Direct reports consistently offer less in a variety of meetings, the relationship becomes performative, and the transactional nature of the check-in permeates other interactions. Innovation, initiative and productivity stall.
Why do we ignore genuine concern in a check-in?
Showing genuine concern in a check-in means the leader is creating the conditions for a direct report to be fully themselves. For Sam, she needed me to seek to understand how her identity shaped her perspective, modeling authentic sharing while not making the moment about me. Ultimately, Sam was asking me to see her for who she was and greet her with openness and positive regard. That may feel like a tall order.
In order to show up for Sam (and others) in this way, we have to examine our assumptions, notice our reactions, and interrogate our interpretations of others. Many of us were taught throughout our leadership journeys that this type of work was not required, or worse, was seen as weak. This means that even the most accomplished leaders carry unexamined beliefs about the people they lead, beliefs shaped by cultural bias, personal history, and pattern-matching that was never designed to account for individual complexity.
What should you do instead?
One thing is true for all of us: our direct report is a whole person, bringing a specific identity, a set of cultural signifiers, a vocabulary, a worldview, and an interpretive framework to every conversation. If we are not building toward an understanding of who they are and how they think, we are managing a function, not leading a person. We have the best and most frequent chance to do this well during a check in-meeting. The check-in meeting can be an accelerator for any organization because these meetings support both leader and direct report effectiveness and relationship-building. These meetings give both participants (leader and direct report) a consistent time and space to learn more about each other, balance priorities across projects, share feedback, ask probing questions, and share best practices. In order to do this, consider the following:
Balance your focus from tactics to genuine concern. Before the conversation begins, ask yourself what mindsets, beliefs, and assumptions you are carrying into the room about this person in addition to what are the goals, tactics and outcomes we need to achieve for the week. For this reflection, balance performance with tactics. What do you know about their background, their manner of communicating, their cultural frame of reference, and the ways they are both like and unlike you?
Practice active self-monitoring. During the conversation, take note of your internal state. Track what matters to the employee. Ask increasingly specific questions that connect to your understanding of who they are, not just what they are working on. Are you receiving this information about this person without judgment and with genuine positive regard or are you quietly filtering it through a preconceived interpretation?
Reflect on your engagement. After the meeting, consider your reactions to what was shared in the meeting. Did anything provoke you, distract you, or cause you to disengage? Why?
Why does this matter?
A high-performing team is filled with individuals that genuinely care about each other and their work. Leaders of such teams are not just strategic, they relentlessly pursue opportunities for their people to feel seen, affirmed and supported. Their identities, perspectives, and ways of interpreting the world are not just tolerated but actively encouraged. When a direct report believes that their leader understands not just what they do but who they are, innovation, ingenuity, initiative, candor, success, and trust flourish.
The check-in is not a minor administrative ritual. It can become one of the most consequential meetings of a leader’s week when they are willing to show up for the part of it that is hidden. We need to balance both tactics and tasks as well as genuine concern in a check-in. This means asking: Where are we? And asking, in some cases the harder but equally important question: Who are you, and am I actually capable of seeing you clearly?
That second question begins with you.
As always, this section is about unlocking/disrupting your thinking. As you read, think about the ways in which your current models of leadership are serving (or not serving) you well!
The Second Meeting
There is a meeting no one schedules,
no agenda, no invite sent.
It lives beneath the one you're running,
in the pauses, in the bent
of someone's voice when they say fine
but it means something much more.
In the way they sit a little smaller
than they did the week before.
You could run right past it, many do,
chasing goals down to the wire.
Or you could stop and ask the question
that the moment will require:
Not what did you finish,
not what's next but who are you today?
What do you carry to this table?
What do you need to say?
That is the meeting worth showing up for.
That is where the work begins.
Not in the tactics or the targets
but in being let in.
Apply the Learning - A Case Study: The Executive Lens Cannot See
Renee Carter is a Senior Vice President of Operations at a mid-sized logistics company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Renee has been with the company for 11 years and is widely regarded as one of its most effective leaders. Her division consistently meets or exceeds quarterly targets, and she has been recognized 3 times by the CEO for operational excellence. Renee is known for running tight, efficient meetings and for developing leaders who go on to take senior roles across the organization.
Marcus Webb joined Renee's team several months ago as a Director of Supply Chain Strategy. Marcus came highly recommended, with an impressive track record at a competitor and a reputation for creative problem-solving. In his first year, Marcus met every goal on his performance plan. Renee considered him one of her strongest directors. Their weekly check-ins were smooth, efficient, and consistently productive.
At the eighteen-month mark, Marcus submitted his resignation.
The Unraveling
In his exit interview with Human Resources, Marcus was candid. He described Renee as "brilliant and fair" but said he never once felt that she knew who he was. He noted that their weekly check-ins were well-run and goal-focused but that Renee had never asked him about his perspective on the broader direction of the company, never acknowledged the cultural lens he brought to his work as a first-generation Caribbean-American executive, and never seemed curious about what motivated him beyond his deliverables. "I felt like a function," Marcus said. "A very well-managed function."
When HR shared a summary of the exit interview with Renee, she was blindsided. She reflected on her check-ins with Marcus and could not identify a single moment in which she had asked him who he was, what he valued, or how he interpreted the challenges in front of him. She had, by every traditional measure, been an excellent manager. She had not, she now understood, been his leader.
Renee requested a coaching engagement. In her first session, she made a discovery that unsettled her: she had unconsciously equated professionalism with emotional neutrality. She had believed, without ever articulating it, that the workplace was not the appropriate setting for conversations about identity, perspective, or personal meaning. She also recognized that she had simply replicated the leadership she had received. A leadership style that was rigorous, results-oriented, and unfortunately, relationally thin.
The Problem Deepens
Three months after Marcus's departure, Renee hears from a peer something that stops her cold. Two additional directors on her team, both high performers, both recruited competitively by other organizations, have begun quietly exploring external opportunities. HR has no formal data on this yet. Nothing has been filed.
Renee now sits with an urgent and unfamiliar problem. She has the skills to manage outcomes. She does not yet know how to rebuild trust and connection with the people still on her team. She knows that what she did with Marcus, she has likely done with others. She does not know what to do next, or whether anything she does now will be enough.
Her coach has asked her to come to their next session with a plan. Renee opens her laptop and stares at a blank page.
Case Study Questions
Renee has just learned that two of her remaining directors may be considering leaving. Given everything she now knows about herself as a leader, what should she do first, second and third. Why does the order of her actions matter?
Renee's coaching has surfaced her deeply held belief that professionalism requires emotional neutrality. How might this belief show up in her next check-in, even if she is trying to lead differently. What would it take for Renee to interrupt it in the moment?
Renee must now rebuild trust and connection with a team that has experienced her primarily as a tactical manager. What does that rebuilding process look like in practice, and what risks does she face in attempting it?
