How to Have a Better One on One (Part 1)
Who wants to have better One on Ones?
This should be everyone
One on One’s (1o1) are the core mechanic to people management. You can pulse your team, understand where they are, what challenges they’re facing and exchange critical information in a dedicated, recurring setting. Done well they mitigate or outright prevent crises, allow you to understand and motivate your team and increase retention.
But not all 1o1’s are created equal.
How many times have you had a one on one end and feel like you got exactly nothing out of the experience? How many times has a one ended and you had 5 more things to discuss? How ‘bout when it ends, and you’ve only discussed the items on your manager’s list—or worse, where you only talked about your manager’s dog/cat/kid/family drama?
Hallmarks of bad one on ones—and shockingly common.
The good news is that they’re all fixable.
Most people learn how to have a 1o1 based on how their various managers, across however many roles, have run them. And how did those managers learn to have a One on One? Roughly the same way! It is turtles all the way down!
How do we have better One on Ones? Let’s get intentional. Let’s talk about what works and why it works—and why it doesn’t work.
All of this information is for everyone, but for organizational purposes, I’m going to split this into four categories: Everyone, Managers, Report and Remote. Successful one on one’s require both parties’ engagement.
Due to the length of this topic, i’m going to split it out. This first post will have the Everyone section. The second post will have Managers, Reports and Remote.
Do’s and Don’t: Everyone
Do Have the Meeting
Keep the meeting time sacred and do your best to not push, truncate or reschedule recurring one on one’s. If a meeting must be pushed, ensure that it happens only once and that you don’t serially push it back.
Why: If you don’t meet, you can’t have a one on one, let alone a good one. Also, serial rescheduling sends a clear message of how important this meeting is relative to anything else.
Do Have an Agenda and Stick To It
It doesn’t have to be formal or even shifting, but something in the body of the meeting invite that runs like:
Critical Updates
Current Workload
Development
Anything Else
They’re big, broad topics that invite discussion – but they also invite preparation. If you know you need to provide an update on current workload, then you probably prepare one. If you know you need to talk about pipeline and future availability, then you prepare that, too.
Why: Having an agenda keeps people on task and on topic. If someone is straying into, Let’s talk about my crazy cat Chi-chi for 10 minutes, territory it easier to redirect them to into a discussion about current workload or to inquire about any critical updates than it is to wait to hear the end of that tale.
Do Humanize Yourself
You bring your whole person to work. If you’ve got a sick kid/pet/parent at home and it is stressing you out, or limiting your ability to answer email after hours, then say that! If you’re in a great place and loving this project because it reminds you of something you did in college, say that, too!
One on one’s do not have to take place in an office and getting out of the office is a great way to humanize yourself and connect with the other person. Go for a walk, head to Starbucks and talk while getting a coffee, grab lunch and bring it back to the office – or eat there. This isn’t for everyone and some people need, or just strongly prefer, the structure of an in-office meeting. That’s fine. This is about knowing your team.
People are social creatures—and in the professional context, bring up and show others the things that make you, you.
Why: I’ve discussed this before in Remote Management 101, but people do not socially connect with white boxes filled with text. We connect with faces and voices and things about which others are passionate.
Do Meet In Person or Video, Always
Humanize Yourself, Part Two: If you’re in an office together, meet face to face. If you’re remote from each other, use a video call. This is a critical component to humanizing yourself. Showing interest, concern or humor via facial reaction and non-verbal communication components is exceedingly easy and extremely effective.
Why: Again, check out Remote Management 101 if you haven’t read it. Humanize yourself. No one wants to be managed by a faceless voice.
Do Meet Someplace Private, Always
One on Ones are powerful because they are candid, individual conversations. Both the manager and the report need to be able to speak freely and communicate without fear of a third party getting involved, or even just having private, personal information shared beyond where the person sharing it would like to have it shared. “Private” can mean in an office or a conference room. It can mean a coffee shop a couple blocks away. It can mean walking around the campus.
Why: One on Ones are a prime time for someone to share personal information or an issue they’re having with a colleague — or even to give notice. Having a conversation about any of those topics out in the open is a great way to not actually have that conversation. People can and will clam up and not be forthcoming.
Don’t Waste the Other Person’s Time
This can take many forms, but the big two are to come prepared and don’t ramble on about things that are completely unimportant to the other person. There’s a fine line between talking about your pet’s antics and spending a third of the meeting discussing why they’re the craziest kitty to ever kitteh. This is doubly true for managers—you must be self-aware about this. If either participant in the meeting feels like they get little to nothing out of it, everything else starts to suffer. Why prepare? Why humanize? Why even show up, when this meeting isn’t helpful?
Why: No one actually wants to be managed by Michael Scott. Threat Level Midnight aside, wasting the other person’s time is the quickest way to make the other person devalue the one on one.
Don’t Hijack the Meeting for a Project Update
When someone has a big project that is consuming them there can be a temptation to turn a recurring one on one into a project update meeting. Resist that urge! If you need a project update meeting, schedule one. Otherwise, use this time for the intended purpose. A good compromise here can be to extend the one on one and do the normal one on one first and then transition into the project update.
Why: If someone already has a consuming project this can be one of their few non-project outlets. It gives them room to breathe, vent, digest, whatever. It also helps reinforce with them that the consuming project wont last forever and that they need to be prepared and aware of what’s going on outside of it.
Up next: Specific Do’s and Don’ts for Managers, Reports and Remote Workers