How to Have Better One On One's (Part 2)
Last week we talked about ways to make a better overall One on One meeting. Let’s break it down into the component roles and do some specific call outs here.
Managers
What do you need to know about your team
Good One on Ones mean that you end the meeting and know three things:
How is this person doing—mentally, socially, physically, motivationally
What help do they need to accomplish their current and projected workload?
How are they developing?
Everything you do prior to and during the meeting is in service of those three, key metrics. You should end the meeting having a firm pulse on them, on what they’re doing and on what they need. If you end the meeting without knowing those three things, that is a good indicator that you need to change your approach with this person.
What does, changing your approach, mean?
Remember that you are always managing individually and giving that particular employee the time, the communication style, the feedback, the information they need. You are there to serve them and set them up for success. You conform yourself to their needs.
So, if you end the meeting not knowing how, or if, they’re developing, then start by asking questions of yourself. Look at your notes (you’re taking notes, right?) and figure out why you don’t know if or how they’re developing. Are they closed off? Are they taking steps in a new direction? Is it a communication issue, a transparency issue, a connection issue? Is it a mix of a couple (probably). Sometimes it may not be clear, so, rather than making a positive conclusion, make a subtractive one: I know we’re communicating, so it isn’t that, so the issue may be transparency? Candidness? Directness? Am I asking the right questions? Am I asking questions they feel comfortable answer? And then make an adjustment or two for your next one on one, and ask yourself the same three questions. Did the new approach help? If yes, great. If not, what else can you cross off the list and try next?
More on that below.
Here are some critical Manager Do’s and Don’ts
Do Own the Meeting Invite
If you’re managing a team, or a team of team leaders, chances are your calendar is going to fill up with meetings and one on ones. If you own the invite you can schedule and move easier and people are, in my experience, less likely to try to cancel or double book over a meeting they own. This also lets you put in the agenda and a link to a video chat. You can also name the meetings consistently for ease of digestion and future reading.
Why: Let your current-self protect your future-self from dumb, short term fixes.
Do Focus on the Other Person
The manager is ultimately there to listen, learn and coach. If you’re talking more than 33%, you’re probably talking too much. Ask more questions and let the other person speak.
Why: You and your role are the focus of your own one on one. This person should be the full focus of theirs.
Don’t Have the Same One on One with Everyone
General Management Central Truth #2: Be the manager that each person needs you to be. This is fundamental to good management and therefore fundamental to good one on ones. Each person needs different things out of their one on one and it is up to you to figure out what it is, and to give it to them. What do I mean by this?
“Be the manager that each person needs you to be on that particular day”
Some people need validation that what they’re doing is correct—and feedback if it is not. Some people want to talk about their current projects and work. Some want to vent in their One on One, but they’re good tackling the issues on their own—and some want to vent so that you step in and help. Others want to demonstrate change or growth via lists of information and running down items. Some want to talk about big picture issues and others want to talk about things that only impact them.
And to add further complexity, the same person doesn’t need to have the same type of one on one every week! Generally, over time, you’ll pick up what someone needs out of their one on one and while someone may generally want validation and some big picture, they may not need them in the same dosage every week.
It is art, not science.
You must know your team—and if you’re new to management or new to a particular team or a particular team member, realize that this will take time. Pay attention. Put in the time to learn it. It will serve you and your team.
Why: If you’re still asking this, you’re probably not in the right place.
DO TAKE NOTES
Simple, but effective. It does three things: (1) shows interest and that you’re actively listening, (2), demonstrates that you intend to follow up, or at least remember, the conversation, and (3), it shows you treat this meeting like other meetings. It isn’t an afterthought or a chore: this meeting matters enough that you take notes and document it.
Why: This meeting should matter and you should want to document it. Bonus if you keep these notes or enter them into a personnel document because it will make your life easier during reviews or when you’re looking to promote someone or if you’re looking to terminate someone. Easy and effective.
DO Provide Feedback
I have had reports of a report come to me and say, John [manager] hasn’t given me critical feedback in 6 months and I’m aware I have my issues, so why isn’t he? And the issue isn’t that the manager isn’t aware of the issues, it is that they’re not discussing them.
This can happen for a variety of reasons, but it usually boils down to three:
The manager doesn’t want to have a tough conversation
The manager doesn’t think the person can handle critical feedback
The manager is busy focusing elsewhere and thinks this employee will be “fine” if they’re a lower priority for a period
Let’s get this out of the way first: if you can’t have a direct, difficult conversation with a report about something they’re doing/not doing, get out of managing people. It’s not the role for you. Some people don’t like confrontation, or being critical of others—and that’s fine, but not in a people management role. This doesn’t mean nit picking or being personal or going after every little thing about them: this is specifically about providing difficult feedback to someone about their professional development, work product or interpersonal skills. Your job as a manager is to get the most out of others. You cannot only do that with only honey.
Second, if the person can’t handle critical feedback, then that is the conversation you have to have. Provide some critical feedback, see how they react, and if it goes poorly then the real discussion is about how they struggle with receiving feedback.
As always, feedback needs to come from a place of caring about the other person’s success—and how you provide feedback is as important as what you provide.
Why: Failing to provide feedback is a great way to have to eventually fire someone— and if you think having a conversation about their communication skills is hard, wait til you have to tell them today is going to be their last day.
Don’t Look at Email, Teams, Skype, Slack, etc
This is their time. You should be wholly focused on them for the 30 minutes and giving them the attention they deserve. Looking at your email, or worse, reading and responding to email, during a report’s one on one is a crystalline message of how much you respect their time, development and topics of discussion.
Why: Your actions speak louder than words. If you’re not paying attention it doesn’t matter how many times you talk about how invested in their development you are—because you’re not.
DO COME OUT FROM BEHIND YOUR DESK
Moving out from behind a computer or a desk can make a big difference—though if you’re doing a video call, this obviously won’t work—because it immediately changes the power dynamic of the room and conversation. I chose the top picture here very intentionally: how many people walk into a room like that to have their one on one? The manager is behind their desk, usually in a chair that goes up high, the reporting employee is on the other side in one of those chairs, and that chair is lower than the manager’s chair? Aside from the manager being tempted to look at their computer, it sets up an immediate power dynamic in the room about where everyone stands—or sits— with regards to one another.
If you have a little table in the office, use it. If there is a nearby conference room, use it. If you have neither, managers, come out from behind your desk and sit on the other chair there. This seems minor and hokey, but, truly it will make a difference. You’re physically on the same side as them. You’re not there to lecture them or parent them or treat them as inferior: your role is to make them better and, in turn, they make you look good.
Why: This is about power dynamic and EQ. Changing the power dynamic in the room can drastically alter how willing someone is to share, listen, internalize, emote, discuss or confide. It is so minor and so helpful.
Report
What to get out of your own One on One
What you need and want out of a one on one can and will change on a weekly basis. Ultimately, you want to walk out of the one on one knowing three things:
How am I performing against expectations?
How am I being invested in and mentored?
What is going on in the group, division, business unit & company that is important for me to know?
Some weeks may be focused on the first, and others may be an even split between all three. What you need from a given meeting is the important part—not that you checked the various boxes on a list.
Do Come with a List
Have a list of topics you want to discuss. Write it down prior to the meeting. This isn’t formal—this is merely to quickly remind yourself of the topics you want to hit in the meeting. Oftentimes I keep a list in the top right hand side of my notebook and I’ll add to it throughout the week. If my one on one is on Tuesdays, and I’m thinking of topics or items on Thursday or Friday, I know that if I don’t write them down I will forget at least some of them by the time next week rolls around. It gives me a quick rundown and I can discuss the topics in whatever way makes most sense to me. I’m not beholden to the order in which I wrote down topics.
Why: You will forget things and this will help you. Write it down, put it on your phone, have it on your laptop, whatever works.
Do Prepare to Listen
This seems like a no-brainer, but from experience, I can tell you it is not. If you’re drowning in work or upset about something or having an issue with a teammate, chances are you’re coming on hot and want to unload. Sometimes venting is good—if it is productive. If it is a 30 minute block of you complaining, I would term it a Bitch Session and that is remarkably unhelpful.
Manager Sidebar: Shut that down. Bitch sessions are entirely unproductive and they give the other person the belief that you’re agreeing with them and “on their side” in any dispute with sides. That is dangerous and it does not actually address the underlying issue that led to the bitch session.
If you come to complain, and not discuss, how are you going to learn anything? How are you going to answer your three questions if you’re the only one talking? How are you dealing with your problems and concerns if you’re only complaining about them and not addressing them.
It takes some self-awareness.
This is the most challenging when you either don’t like or respect your manager or when you feel like your manager isn’t prepared or invested in the meeting. Why listen to someone who doesn’t care about your development?!
Because you’re still learning, even, and maybe especially, if the manager is bad at managing or uninvested in you. If you’re not learning about how you’re performing, and you’re not seeing the manager invest in developing you, at least you can probably learn a lot about (a) how not to manager and (b) how things are going in the business overall. There is still a lot to learn. People who talk about themselves a lot reveal a lot about what matters to them, what is worrying them and what is motivating them. Use it as a learning opportunity.
Why: Active listening is how you share, engage, deal with issues and humanize yourself. It takes practice and self-awareness.
Do Provide Critical Upline Feedback
Telling a manager, your manager, something that they’re not doing well—or talking about an unmet need—is a courageous conversation. Bad managers react to criticism with defensiveness, denials and outright shutting down the conversation. Good managers respond with questions and thoughtfulness—and change. No one likes being criticized, but, hopefully, your manager wasn’t able to become a manager without receiving their fair share of critical feedback and they can handle it.
Feedback doesn’t have to be a big todo, and it doesn’t have to be major. Sometimes a quick comment can satisfy by providing a mechanism for change. The feedback can be something the manager is doing with you (Example: You’ve been cancelling or bumping our One on One a lot recently and it’s making me feel like you’re pushing me off as a whole) or it can be something impacting the team (Example: We’ve been under a ton of crunch lately and it is taking its toll on the team, so in the team meeting when you said everyone needs to find another 5 hours every week, I know a lot of the team was really taken aback) or it can even be positive (Example: That email you sent showing the client feedback on the project team was really cool and I’m glad everyone got to see it.).
Manager Sidebar: If you respond to criticism with defensiveness, denial or just shutting down the conversation, you need to do some serious self-reflection. Why did the criticism illicit that kind of response? Why were you not open to discussing your own issues? You can disagree with criticism, but that is different than not hearing it or engaging with it.
A further consideration is that different people will have different take-aways from the same meeting. All three of those example bits of feedback could have come out of the same team meeting. There’s a big project eating the team, but also the client is really happy about it and you shared that with the team in the meeting. Because this project has been so busy you’ve been cancelling one on ones because you’ve been busy with it. All three things can be true.
Motivation and viewpoint are going to inform what someone sees, hears and what they take away.
Finally, i would add that there is a fine line here with criticism. Providing only rosey feedback is not helpful. Throwing turds at your manager all the time and giving them a list of the ways they’re falling down is also not helpful. Balance is important, but more important than that is determining what is actually important. There is only so much one person can realistically change in a given time period. If the occasional meeting cancellation doesn’t bother you, but getting put on a certain type of project all the time does, address the one that really impacts you!
Why: The times I have grown the most as a manager are when I’ve received feedback from my reports—not my manager. Understanding how I messed something up, impacted them, lifted them up or let them down means more to me than my own upline manager’s praise or criticism. Skip level reviews and 360 reviews are precious, incredibly valuable exercises. Embrace critical feedback.
Don’t Miss Your Meeting
When someone misses or is late to their own one on one, it sends the manager a message. If it happens with regularity, it sends a very strong message—either they can’t manage their time, they can’t pay attention to their calendar or they don’t value the meeting. Each of those are bad and you don’t want to have your manager wondering what combination of all three is driving your habitual truancy.
Why: Because, come on. Show up.
Remote Managers & Employees
How to One on One when you’re 1,000 miles away from each other
One on ones are critically important and useful tools for managing your team. They are even more critically important if you have a remote manager or a remote team. Remote workers, at all levels, are susceptible to OOSOOM – Out of Sight, Out of Mind – when it comes to growth, investment, mentorship, enculturation and recognition. One on Ones are a weekly opportunity to push back, claim your space and define who you, how you generate value and why you matter.
Companies that have in-office and remote workers, or even companies who have multiple hubs, are susceptible: We pay attention to what’s in front of us. It is hard to ignore someone at my door. It is easy to ignore someone 2,000 miles away who is calling me on Skype. It is hard to have someone be a participant in the culture of a company when they are not present in it. When they’re not awash in it. When they’re not visibly contributing to it every day. It is easy to minimize and marginalize those people, and exclude them from recognition, celebration and promotions.
The traditional response is that remote workers just need to “try harder” or “do more” to be seen. This is a cop out and unacceptable in 2020. Digital companies make excuses for people clinging to analog thinking. I struggle to see why, Sue works here, acceptably becomes, Sue needs to remind people she works here.
I am speaking from experience. I’ve been remote for 7 years. I’ve never worked in the same office as my boss – and I haven’t even worked in an office in 6 years. I’m tied into my company and know nearly everyone who has been there for any length of time. I make a point of reaching out, doing video calls and general chats with any number of people. But when I let meetings lapse, when I’ve let them be pushed or let them become infrequent, I’ve seen and felt the marginalization.
If you are remote, or you are a manager with remote employees, it is imperative that those One on Ones happen, that they happen via video call and that they regularly involve open discussion and inclusion of taboo topics: office culture and office politics. Remote employees need to know what is going on, how the winds are blowing and what decisions are being made, and by whom.
This doesn’t mean having a big info dump and this does not mean spreading office gossip. Gossip is part of culture, but it is a dangerous part. By participating in office gossip you run the risk of spreading rumors and lies and, especially as a manager, that can be damaging to your credibility and actionable, in a legal sense.
What it does mean is that you slip in things that are going on—maybe work related, maybe not. It can be things someone said, things a group did, a place that people went, a big project that hit, a big project that people thought would hit and that didn’t, a game they attended, whatever defines the culture of the office. Talking about little things — sports, or fantasy sports, can be an easy way to make someone far away feel included. Culture is a big messy stew. Give everyone a bowl and let them eat from the same pot.
This takes a level of intentionality with remote employees that doesn’t exist with in office employees. There’s no running into someone on the way to get coffee when the other person works 1500 miles away. Intentionality is practiced and it isn’t hard. It doesn’t require big changes or learning a whole set of new skills. But it requires awareness and it requires commitment to that awareness and corrective action if and when you straw from that intentionality.
In short, it requires weekly One on Ones. Everyone needs that check in — both the employee and the manager — so ensure you’re doing it, and that you’re doing it well. The goal isn’t to be perfect: the goal is to always be getting better.
Let me know if you have suggestions or things you practice to make your One on One’s more meaningful or helpful.