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I’ve always been a natural leader.

In school I was always the one to take the lead on group projects. Not even always by choice — the other kids would just look to me to organize and lead everything.

But before starting my business, I’d never held a formal management position or led a team in any official capacity.

So everything that I’ve learned about leading and managing teams (for myself and for my clients) has been self-taught. Most of it came through real-time feedback and learning from what worked (or didn’t) in specific situations.

And what I’ve found, after almost a decade of doing this, is that good team processes come down to three key things:

1. they’re simple (and easy to implement)
2. they have a purpose (no busywork just for the sake of it)
3. they’re sustainable (you can stick with them long-term)

But I see business owners overcomplicate this all the time. They implement systems because some guru said they should, or they copy what worked in their old corporate job just because it’s familiar.

Sometimes it helps to see specific examples of simple-yet-effective back-end team processes and what they look like in practice.

So, here are a few of my favorites that we use regularly:

1. Weekly Check Ins.

I’ll be honest, I am not a fan of weekly (or biweekly) team meetings. I’ve tried them, multiple times and in a variety of ways. Too many calls in my calendar makes me feel boxed in.

But I do see the value in having regular touchpoints. Without them, things can start to feel disconnected.

That’s where the weekly check in comes into play.

In our task management system, I created a recurring task that prompts each team member to send me a Monday morning update. It’s a simple bullet-point list where they share: their hours, capacity, energy, priorities for the week, status on current projects/tasks, and any questions they have for me.

It’s incredibly simple and almost entirely hands-off for me.

But it’s also one of my favorite systems because it helps me stay in the loop and address small issues before they become bigger ones — all without a single meeting.

2. Quarterly Check Ins.

For years, I said I liked the idea of quarterly 1:1s to review roles, responsibilities, and feedback.

But I never actually did them. Not once in nine years of managing teams for myself and my clients.

I had the best intentions, but as I mentioned earlier, I really don’t like filling my calendar with meetings. The system sounded good on paper, but it wasn’t simple enough for me to actually follow through with it.

So instead, I created a Google Form with questions like:

What do you love, and what’s working well for you and your role right now? What aspects of your work bring you the most joy and fulfillment right now?

and

What’s not working so well for you, or where could things be improved? Are there any roadblocks or challenges in your current work that we can help resolve?

Each team member gets an automated task to fill it out once per quarter.

It creates space for team members to share feedback, express concerns or challenges, and helps ensure their role still aligns with what they want.

And again, without filling my calendar with a bunch of meetings.

3. Birthday Celebrations.

One of the values I hold most closely is making sure team members feel seen and appreciated as humans, not just as people who get things done.

And one of the simplest and most impactful ways to do that? We celebrate birthdays.

But without a structured, repeatable process, it’s easy to forget a date during busy times or scramble at the last minute to find a gift to send.

To make sure everything’s consistent, here’s what our process looks like:

1. We ask new team members for their birthday through the onboarding questionnaire.
2. Each birthday gets added to the team-wide google calendar (set to repeat annually).
3. One week before their birthday, a task pops up to buy a birthday gift (with notes on: what type of gift, budget, gift message, etc).
4. The day of, I have a reminder to post a birthday message in the team-wide chat.

Small, consistent touchpoints like this are great at strengthening team relationships. It’s low-lift, but high-impact.

So, I encourage you to try implementing one (or all) of these in your business.

They’re easy to set up, require very little ongoing effort, and can make a meaningful difference in streamlining communication — and in making your team feel more appreciated, connected, and invested in your business.