Happy Sunday. This week I will continue my incredible, two-week streak of not writing about quiet quitting. I feel like I want to put up one of those signs: “It has been 14 days since we have written about quiet quitting.” I am so proud of myself. This week’s article is unofficially brought to you by ASUS Monitors, linked here shamelessly with my Amazon Affiliate code. If you need a reasonably priced WQHD monitor with a decent refresh rate, choose ASUS. ASUS!
Maybe someday I will have some kind of official sponsor for my blog. If you are interested and want to send me a free T-shirt to wear as I write my thinky thoughts, I am open to that. I might even take a picture of it and share it with everyone. Is this how one gets huge on Only Fans? Okay, okay maybe that is too far. I will slow down.
Let’s talk about one-on-one meetings.
I have a little speech I give to a new team member when they join a team I am managing. I tell them that it is important for their success to have a half hour of my time each week in order to ask questions or raise concerns. I like to tell them that it is their meeting, and if they wanted to spend that time reading their own poetry, or doing karaoke together, then that is what we will do. To be clear, I have not had a lot of takers on poetry readings or karaoke, but people like to know the option is there. It is their meeting.
A one-on-one meeting is an important meeting for many reasons. It is an excellent early warning system in case one of your team is becoming disconnected. It is a great way to ensure your team has everything they need to be happy and successful, and also it is a great venue to make sure that you are conveying important messaging.
Early warning
One of your roles as a leader is to keep your team together and reduce churn. Your one-on-one is a great place to get a heads up that someone is about to depart the organization. In at least one specific case, one of my direct reports told me flat out they were going to resign. They explained why, and I agreed that it made sense. Other times, you can get a sense of people’s satisfaction or stress from how they are talking about their work. You might also observe that people are more “checked out” in their one-on-ones. This is another indicator that someone is unhappy with their role.
I find that people will ask to cancel or defer their one-on-ones under two situations. They will cancel their weekly one-on-one if they do not have any concerns or issues to discuss, and would rather spend that time being productive. This is generally a good thing. As a rule of thumb, it is wise to keep at least one monthly one-on-one just to catch up, even if there is nothing to talk about.
They will also cancel their weekly one-on-one if they have one or more feet out the door.
Clearly one of these is not a good thing. The trick is to figure out which is which.
Happy and successful
Another important part of your one-on-one meeting is ensuring that they are happy with their work and being successful. These are important in equal measure. If someone is happy with their work and not successful, then that requires some work to determine how to make them successful. If they are not happy and they are successful, then there will be a different kind of work needed. I am not necessarily convinced that every person on your team has to be “tattoo-it-to-face” passionate about their everyday job, but they should at least be happy with it. This might mean they are happy with the compensation, they are happy with the team, or happy with what they are learning from their role—Maybe it is all three!
Important messaging
The final part of a one-on-one meeting is to ensure that everyone on the team understands where they are going. This includes career goals, team goals, and company goals. One of the biggest challenges for most leaders is making sure everyone is aware of the overall direction for the company and for their particular organization. You can hold frequent all-hands meetings, write weekly newsletters and even have people memorize and repeat parts of the company mission statement to help make sure they understand the direction they are headed. Sometimes this is not enough. Sometimes you will need to sit down with people and repeat the creed personally to them and give a personalized version of it to help make sure they are getting the message effectively.
There are probably a half a dozen more reasons to hold regular one-on-ones with your team members, and these are just three of the more important ones to me.
Here are some additional things you can do to have effective one-on-ones.
Do not schedule one-on-ones back-to-back. Try to give a 15 to 30 minute buffer after a one-on-one meeting in case it goes long. Rushing to complete a one-on-one meeting can leave a team member feeling frustrated and unheard.
Have the employee schedule it. It is their meeting. After the two of you agree on the time, they should add it to your calendar for a couple of reasons—the first of which is that it helps them psychologically own the meeting. It also helps me to prepare future leaders because I can learn how comfortable they are with managing their calendar.
Keep a shared document where the team member controls the agenda. Add weekly notes to it, and make sure to track action items and follow ups where necessary.
Never cancel a one-on-one with your team member. If you need the time for something else, then ask them for a replacement time slot to reschedule it.
Thank you for reading along today! Please let me know what additional things you like to see in a one-on-one meeting. If you have some cool pointers for effective one-on-one meetings, we would love to see those too.
Looking forward to continuing the conversation next week where I will not shill three hundred dollar affiliate merchandise. I will also continue to not talk about quiet quitting.
