6-minute read
One-on-one meetings shape team culture.
If executed well, they are a manager’s secret weapon for building connections and trust, staff retention, and productivity. This uninterrupted time to hear what’s on your team member’s mind, how they solve problems, and where they can use support from you or others is incredibly valuable for creating career pathing, workflow autonomy, and a feeling of belonging.
More than any other process in a manager’s toolkit, the one-on-one meeting makes space for team members to feel valued and heard.
And yet, the fantastic potential of these meetings is often unrealized. Tight or missed deadlines, unexpected delays in project execution – the urgent stuff, often monopolize one-on-one agendas, turning this valuable time into a recitation of to-do lists and recaps about work that is running smoothly. The result of a one-on-one primarily focused on the urgent is that team members often leave those meetings feeling unheard, unsupported, and stressed. Too many of these meetings leave the team demoralized and burned out.
If your one-on-one meetings could use a reset, let this be your month for recapturing the potential of this team-strengthening tool.
Before you change anything, assess your current approach. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Structure:
Do I frequently cancel one-on-ones?
Are the meetings typically a recap of my team members’ to-do list?
Do I lead the meeting?
Do I do most of the talking?
Learnings:
Do I learn something about my team’s critical thinking and problem-solving abilities?
Do we discuss career pathing and project goals?
Do we feel energized at the end of the meeting?
Do we have a clear idea of what happens next?
If you answered more ‘Yes’s in the Structure section and more ‘No’s in the Learnings section, your one-on-one meetings would benefit from a reset.
Divide your reset strategy into three focus areas: Objectives, Mechanics, and Behaviors.
Objectives
Before putting a new process in place, understand the larger goals you want to accomplish. Growing team member executive and technical proficiencies, encouraging collaboration, and creative problem-solving should lead the list.
From there, commit to making these meetings a priority- a must-have, not a nice-to-have. Once scheduled, do your best not to move or cancel.
If you notice that your team comes to you for solutions, prioritize shifting the dynamic to a team member-led, solutions-oriented meeting. For each challenge brought to the meeting, ask them to come prepared with one potential solution.
Finally, your team member, not you, develops the agenda. Both professional development goals and action plans should have space on each agenda. We’ll get more into the agenda in the Mechanics section.
Mechanics
If you are resetting your meeting process, you will also need to be clear about the new expectations. These meetings are the place for your team to shine. To give them that opportunity, there are some things to keep in mind.
–Team members set the agenda with a focus on where they need support from you or others.
-In advance of the meeting, team members should send an up-to-date project management tracker for a discussion about workflow prioritization.
–Allocate half of the meeting to professional development goals, and half to project work. Most of the time, these will organically intersect, but the allocation ensures PD goals are discussed.
–The focus of the meeting is on where support and resources are needed and where you can provide high-level strategic context for the project. This is an area where the team can come up with challenges and potential solutions.
–The meeting ends with a clear recap of next steps and accountability timelines.
Behaviors
If, until now, you’ve led these meetings, here are some suggestions for changing your routine.
–Practice active listening skills by asking open-ended questions rather than asserting solutions. Questions that begin with what, how, when, and where invite conversation and team-generated action plans. Here’s my Active Listening Guide to get you started.
–Practice the 80/20 rule (listen 80%, talk 20%). This is a good prompt for a Post-it note on your desk to help you avoid monopolizing the conversation.
–Shift your team member to a solutions-oriented mindset by asking: What is your first step? How can I support? What does accountability look like?
-Leave no stone unturned. Before the recap of next steps, ask if there is anything that wasn’t discussed that needs attention. Making time for this question ensures nothing is overlooked.
–Periodically ask for feedback on your support and management style to understand if you are being effective in your role.
-Not to be left out – celebrate success!
These may seem like monumental changes, but they will strengthen your team, re-energize conversations, and reinforce their value and contribution. By creating more autonomy, projects flow more smoothly, and you will be able to delegate more complex work that builds skills for your team members and gives you the time to focus on strategic work.
There is magic in team member-led, solutions-oriented one-on-one meetings. Get out of the way and let your team shine.
Another resource: 2022 article I wrote on 1-1 meetings
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