5 Secrets for Effective One-on-One Meetings

Do you do 1-on-1s with your direct reports? If not, you really should. In this video, I'll give you 5 secrets for effective 1 on 1s

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SUMMARY

This week’s #FounderFriday is about the secrets I’ve learned to doing effective one on one meetings.

1:1s (pronounced "One on Ones") are an important thing for every manager to do. As One Month grew from two to ten people, I wanted to make sure that people always had a way to communicate their questions or concerns with me. So I started doing weekly 1:1s with everyone on the team.

I've read a lot about 1:1s, and had a good amount of experience over the last two years, and I wanted to share my lessons learned.

**Have a consistent 1:1 structure**

It doesn't have to be the same for each person, but it helps both you and the other person plan and come prepared if they know that there's a consistent structure.

Without a consistent structure, it can be very easy for your 1:1 to devolve into a project update or a conversation about some urgent issue. That's not the point – 1:1s are an opportunity to connect as individuals, and talk about concerns, excitements, and feedback.

One framework that I like to use for 1:1s is Rose, Bud, Thorn.

**Take notes and refer back to them**

You'll often find that similar topics come up over time when talking to someone. You want to be able to identify trends in what people are telling you. *Last time you mentioned that X was an issue, is that still a problem?*

That makes people feel like you're actually listening, and it also allows you to follow up with people and hold them accountable for the things they said they would do.

I take notes on my laptop in Evernote and file them into a folder called 1:1s – [Person's Name]. Other people like to use a pen and a notebook. It doesn't really matter, as long as it works for you.

At first I felt like it was weird to talk to someone and take notes on a computer at the same time, but I just explained to people why I was doing it – that I wouldn't share what they were saying with anyone else, and just wanted to be able to refer back to things they said later. People got used to it very quickly and now it's not even an issue.

**Identify opportunities for action**

Most of takeaways from this process should be to identify individual problems (motivation, happiness, accountability) and team problems (conflict, teammate performance, team performance).

Once you've identified an issue that needs to be dealt with, you have to determine what the followup action should be. If it's an issue that the employee brings up that you think they should be able to figure out, help them through a collaborative problem solving discussion.

Sometimes the discussion ends up focusing on another person or issue. Don't gossip and definitely don't confirm that you agree.You may have to bring the other person into the room to lead a conflict resolution session.

**Work on your active listening**

It's a skill to really get someone to open up and to listen. One framework I use for soliciting feedback comes from Crucial Conversations and it's called AMPP:

Ask
Mirror
Paraphrase
Prime

Also ask a lot of follow-up questions. I find that saying "Tell me more," usually works when you want to hear more.

**Make it easy**

For a while I was stalling on 1:1s because finding all the time to schedule them once a month was becoming a hassle. My current method is to have my assistant schedule them on my behalf, for half an hour.

Another option is to require your direct reports to schedule 1:1s with you, and put the task on them personally.

So that's how you can start doing 1:1s. If you follow these steps, then I guarantee you will become a better leader.

Would love to hear feedback from people who have tried 1:1s. Do you love it or hate it? What have you seen work really well? What doesn't work well? Post in the comments below.

Видео 5 Secrets for Effective One-on-One Meetings канала One Month