Managing is a relationship business. You’re building and strengthening relationships between peers, representatives from other departments, leadership, and most importantly, your people. And while growing these relationships is a constant effort, one of the pillars of doing so comes during the 1×1 meeting.
Meeting with one’s manager can elicit a range of emotions in any employee, at any level of performance or stage of their career. By including deliberate structure and content to a 1×1, you can alleviate much of the emotional dread that can come from meeting with one’s manager, as well as calm any of your own nerves around running regular employee meetings.
First, let’s cover some notes on structure:
- It’s called a One on One for a reason: it should be you and your employee. Not you and a handful of employees, or you and a few managers with the employee. Outside some occasional managerial observations of your own work, or some agreed-upon1And I do mean agreed-upon. You shouldn’t surprise your employee with some other person at their 1×1 as they arrive. Gain agreement and approval with them about guests at the meeting beforehand, not as it starts or as they join. They should be able to say No, or you’re not seeking their approval, only their notification. observations by peers or trainees to demonstrate via example, the meeting should be you and your employee without distractions or uninvited guests.
- Schedule ahead of time. This shouldn’t be done on a whim between other things, or in 20 free minutes you found in a day. Schedule the meeting at least a few days in advance. A week is better. Both you and your employee should have more than enough time to prepare for the meeting and be ready to best utilize that time to both your benefit.
- Set aside enough time. I find an hour is the sweet spot, where you’ll have enough time to cover all of the topics you want to go through as well as provide ample time for your employee to cover any topics they may have, as well as having some general conversation sprinkled in there. You might finish early, you may (hopefully rarely) go long, but around an hour as a target gives the right sort of expectation for how much to invest in the meeting and how many topics to go over.
With general structure sorted, let’s talk content. Here’s generally how I try to organize my 1x1s:
- First, start with a greeting. It may be a month2Hopefully not, but things happen! Ideally, you’ve got a check-in or two sprinkled throughout the month to touch base on goals or other topics, but at a minimum, you should have this time with each other to reconnect. since you last talked individually with each other. Be polite, say hello! A little smalltalk to grease the skids into a conversation is usually helpful, if only to remind each other you’re talking to people and not job titles or roles.
- As part of this initial greeting, take the time to see if there’s anything pressing that your employee needs. Often, once you get into the weeds of a planned conversation, their needs can get lost in that shuffle or forgotten while other topics take the fore. I find it’s helpful to ask up front if there’s anything the employee might need or whether there are any open issues they have that you need to weigh in on or close the loop on. Get those needs at least queued if not addressed and resolved, to ensure they don’t hang over the rest of the conversation.
- Review the previous month’s goal3Hopefully just the one! and discuss whether it was fully achieved, partially achieved, or might need to be readdressed. Did they successfully complete the actions required? Did the implementation of that goal have an effect on the outcome we were hoping to influence? If not, what new goal might we want to look at to affect that outcome?
- Review the current status and performance. How are they performing on their Key Performance Indicators? Are there specific callouts to make? Great calls or surveys to highlight? Opportunities implied in the data? Take a look alongside the advisor and discuss what you see from your vantage point. You’re the expert, be sure to provide the benefit of your expertise to not only point at a number but discuss the actions that led to that outcome and how it might further be influenced.
- Ideally, listen to a call/review a chat/read an email or two. Depending on how your employee is supporting, there are opportunities to review examples of their work alongside them, asking probing questions about the choices made, highlighting strong aspects of the interaction, and discussing opportunities. I tend to recommend having a call or two queued up ahead of time that you’re ready to discuss, to ensure you’ve curated your thoughts about the performance, but there’s something to be said for the serendipity of reviewing a random interaction as well!
- Set a new goal for the new month. I’m not going to rehash all of my thoughts on what makes a good goal, but be certain you’re picking the right goal for the individual, instead of setting a bulk goal that doesn’t reflect that individual’s opportunities for growth.
- Demonstrate the goal. Have a discussion about how to implement the goal and have the employee demonstrate the goal with you during the meeting, to best ensure they understand what is expected of them before they leave the meeting. I also like to have the employee repeat the goal back to me, to confirm they clearly understand the expectation placed on them before concluding.
- Finally, close strong, Set an expectation for the rest of month and any upcoming events, meetings, or other notes that you’ll want to confirm. Remind the employee of any last take aways, and if possible, set the next meeting date and time, so that you both agree on the next time you’ll get together.
By developing and following a considered and inclusive structure to your regular 1×1 meetings, you can take a lot of the unintentional worry and uncertainty out of individual employee meetings and reinforce a pattern of continual growth and development. And in so doing, develop a beneficial relationship between you and your employee that flourishes far beyond the structure of a 1×1.
Notes:
- 1And I do mean agreed-upon. You shouldn’t surprise your employee with some other person at their 1×1 as they arrive. Gain agreement and approval with them about guests at the meeting beforehand, not as it starts or as they join. They should be able to say No, or you’re not seeking their approval, only their notification.
- 2Hopefully not, but things happen! Ideally, you’ve got a check-in or two sprinkled throughout the month to touch base on goals or other topics, but at a minimum, you should have this time with each other to reconnect.
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