Here are some great tips for making the most of 1-1 meetings.
Don’t cancel them
The easiest way to communicate to an employee that they’re not important is to cancel their 1:1, no matter what the reason. If a conflict comes up, try to reschedule the 1:1 at another time on the same day, and apologise for doing so. Cancelling a 1:1 is worse than never scheduling one at all.
Let them drive (to start)
Don’t start a 1:1 by piling more work on employees. Encourage them to drive the agenda and bring a list of things they’d like your advice on or to discuss. You can try to bring these out by simply asking, “What can I help you with?”
Go fishing
Ask open-ended questions to try to ferret out concerns. They can be questions about a specific project (“How’s project X going?”) or even more broad (“What’s keeping you up at night lately?”).
Be transparent and honest
By encouraging your employees to raise real concerns you’re going to get some tough questions. If you can’t answer them, tell your employee that. If you do choose to answer, answer honestly and err on the side of transparency. If they point out a problem on the team acknowledge it and respond by telling them what you’re doing to fix it. If they think they’re due for a promotion and you don’t, reset their expectations by doing a gap analysis.
Discuss career development
Every few 1:1’s make sure to step away from project discussions and have a higher-level discussion about the employee’s career and satisfaction on the team. These are sometimes called “stay interviews”. Check in on what the employee’s specific goals are and what they think will make them satisfied in their job in the coming months. If their goal is to be promoted, review the different things they need to achieve or demonstrate to move them further down that path.
Ask for course correction
You won’t always get answers, but every couple 1:1’s with an employee ask them, “What could I be doing better as a manager?” You can get some really great guidance this way, and it’s much better to get this feedback throughout the year and act on it than be surprised on it at review time when you hear about it from your own boss.
Give course correction
Performance issues grow over time. Try to spot patterns early and give gentle feedback to reverse performance issues. Strengthen the tone of your feedback the longer the performance issue persists.
Dangle opportunities
Try to come up with a couple personalised ideas for how the employee could really distinguish themselves. Don’t assign these as goals or projects, but mention them as opportunities. See which employees take the bait and go over and above to capitalise on the opportunity, or come up with others on their own. These are the employees that are striving, a key quality in any employee
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