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Effective 1:1s - Tips for One-on-One Meetings with Your Team
Let the employee own the agenda
It is a simple, symbolic practice that helps them feel ownership and autonomy for their work and their time.
You’re saying, “You tell me what’s important,” and of course you can coach and guide them to help refine over time what’s important.
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Change the setting sometimes
Occasionally, go for a walk and have your 1:1. Occasionally, go get coffee. Go sit in the courtyard. Get lunch or breakfast or dinner. Most often, it’s probably easiest and most efficient to grab or schedule a room and get right into it. Every once in awhile, though, offer to change the setting, as a chance to interact with your team member more as a human being than as just the boss.
It's ok to cancel
If there’s nothing to discuss, it’s ok to cancel. People, too often, view 1:1s as mandatory, but it’s refreshing when you both acknowledge that things are ok for now, or the time may be better spent other ways.
3 high leverage agenda items for your 1:1s
- Results: it is entirely appropriate to include “Progress toward goals” as a standing agenda item in a 1:1. Just don't make the entire meeting about that.
- Career development: Regular investment in growth and development helps everyone.
- Feedback from the employee: The 1:1 is not the place for the manager to give feedback to the employee.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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1:1 meetings
1:1 meetings matter. It is important to nurture that essential employee-manager relationship. But it still not easy to get right.
Under pressures, managers are still juggl...
1:1 category
The goal of an effective 1:1 is not an update from your direct report or for you to lay down some instructions. It's a conversation. It's a chance to hear about your direct reports' ideas for your product, their career goals, and possibly their opinion of their performance.
Keep a list of three potential topics ready for discussion. When they say they have nothing to discuss, you can jumpstart the conversation with one of your items.
Manager's best tool
Your most precious resource is your own time and energy. When you spend it on your team, it helps build healthy relationships.
Your job as a manager isn't to give advice or 'save the day.'' It's to empower your reports to find the answer themselves. If you want to understand what's going on, ask. Let her lead the conversation while you listen and probe.
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One on one meetings
...are held between a team leader and team member.
They are conversations that usually last no longer than 10 to 30 minutes where they discuss what is going well and what needs t...
A recommended agenda
Most effective one on one meetings typically last about 30 minutes:
- 10 minutes for the direct report from the employee;
- 10 minutes for the manager’s remarks and messages, and;
- 10 minutes for the employee and manager to draw a way forward.
Objectives of effective 1:1 meetings
- find out about the employee’s current emotional state.
- track the status of the employee’s performance and how their goals are coming along.
- learn if there are any obstacles in the way to the employee’s goals.
- discuss specific issues – either the employee’s, the manager’s, or both.
- get honest value-added feedback from the employee.
- provide an opportunity for the manager to coach the employee.
- share formal and informal information about the team and company as a whole.
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Why 1:1’s are important
- Making time for an individual says you give a damn about them as a person.
- The 1:1 is the only forum where you can have an honest, private, conversation with each other a...
Set expectations
- If this is a new process you are putting in place at your company/in your team, be transparent about it.
- Be clear that you do this with all employees who work directly for you.
- Book a regular cadence of 1:1s. They should not be ad-hoc. It’s ok to skip one every once and awhile, but having it locked into the calendar is a commitment.
- Decide the best cadence with them (weekly or every other week? 30 minutes or an hour?) and what the format should be.
The agenda
- Topics in a 1:1 should be about professional growth, personal connection and for giving each other feedback. Do not use the meeting to re-hash things from a group meeting, unless there are specific things you took off-line in that meeting or need to provide/get constructive feedback.
- 24 hours or so before the meeting, email the employee a list of what you’d like to cover. Try to do a split between strategic, tactical and personal items and always ask your employee what they want to cover too.
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