You'll never believe this - It worked! ;)

Had to post that...  :)

Received this email from a top performer and team member today:

"First of all, I've been meaning to write you for a week now and just say a couple of things.  Mainly thank you!  I would never have been able to make as smooth a transition into <our team> without you.  You got me up to speed, helped inspire new ideas and plans, and kept me on task with everything we hoped to accomplish with test.  I am so grateful to you, Scott!  This is not the end of the road for our working relationship by any means, but with this transition I had to tell you that I think you're great! :)"

I am a Team Lead, not a manager; a regular employee leading a bunch of contractors; with a manager who is only just starting to manage us and a peer that is the contract manager of the contractors on our whole team. I have been doing O3s with my team for about 18 months now and they work great. I also have a :15 minute daily scrum call and a team meeting on Friday mid-morning (no scrum that day). Feedback is going slower than I want mostly because I need to make the time for it (no, it's not a lot of time, I know...). I even did my first negative feedback to a top performer a few weeks ago. It took me a couple days to ramp up to it, and it was "nothing"!

I have had to relinquish direct control of two members of my team this year, the above commenter being one of them, so I could focus on more of the core tasks that my manager wants me to focus on. No more O3s and they don't participate in the regular calls, though we still interact act with them on the larger team. I intend to schedule some peer O3s with them for :15 every couple weeks just to catch up and see how things are going. I'm also hoping to do the same thing with a few more of my peers on our larger team in the coming months, too. Mostly to focus on building relationships with them better.

Just wanted to share my background and success story with everyone else!

- Scott M.