Regardless of whether you're a people leader or an individual contributor, one to ones are some of the most important meetings that you regularly attend. For individual contributors these are your opportunity to get ungated access to your people leader and if you’re the people leader then one to ones are your best tool for building trust and relationships with your team.
I personally find the one to ones I conduct the highlight of my week, they're one of the key tools in my leadership toolbox. Productive one to ones are essential ingredients in many aspects of leadership such as mentorship, relationship building and trust building. But how do you ensure the one to ones you conduct are productive? I think there are a few key factors that help one to ones be productive:
It may be obvious but to be a good person leader you must care about the team members you lead and one to ones are a great opportunity to show you care about them and their wellbeing. As long as care is at the heart of whatever you do then you'll find a way of giving your team member great one to ones.
If you're reading this, I'm going to assume you're a person leader AND you do care about the people you lead hence want to give them productive and meaningful one to ones. Here are some tips that could help you do this:
I find 1 hour for each team member per fortnight is a good cadence. For new starters I recommend making them weekly to make sure the team member is settling in and to give you time to create their success plan (Find out more about success plans below).
The primary goal should always be to support the team member but often you need to first discover what support the team member needs and figure out how this support can be given in a manner that helps the team member grow.
The secondary goal is to give and request feedback. You'll often need to pass on feedback to the team member for something but if there is time I also like to request feedback from the team member on my performance as a leader, more on this later.
One to ones should not be a work update, there are project catch ups for this. Nor are they performance reviews, there should be a separate process in place for these. Ones to ones are about the team member’s well being.
I find it helps to have roughly the same structure to each one to one so that both parties get used to it and can concentrate on using the time productively rather than learning a new routine each meeting. I have a couple of topics that I revisit:
1. Actions from last one to one
2. Life outside of work
After this check in, I then always ask if there is anything the team member would like to discuss. If there is then we'll go through that. If there's something I need to go through with the team member I'll also reserve some time at the end of the session. If the team member doesn't have anything they want to go through, I'll chat through some of my back up topics:
3. Wins & Sucks
4. Team environment
5. Feedback
6. Career & Goals
I won't cover all of these in a single one to one as we normally end up discussing something that takes up the time but I do try to ensure we visit the careers and goals chat at least in every third session.
I have a question bank that I can dip into during my one to ones but often the conversation flows and finds its own path.
I have a list of questions I use when to get feedback on my capability as a person leader. These all came from Kim's Scott's excellent book Radical Candor or from training I did with her Radical Candor group. If there is time then I may ask one or two of these questions:
As one to ones are owned by the team member it's them who get to decide what content and structure, yes there are topics that I always check on but if the team member wants to discuss something then this is the priority.
One of the team members I lead likes to go through their work in their one to ones and we often brainstorm on approaches and possible. Another prefers these conversations to be in separate work review sessions which we have regularly. Another team member is more focused on their growth and we often talk about the competencies and behaviours of senior designers.
Some of the team members I have one to ones with are quite structured and will prepare an agenda, some prefer a looser structure. As I'm a structure nerd I always share a one to one template with new starters but it's down to them if they choose to use it or not. One thing I do ask though is that if a team member wants detailed feedback on something then let me know a few days beforehand so I can prep rather than giving off the cuff feedback.
I know some people don’t want to know about their team members’ lives outside of work but home life will affect work life and so I don't believe you can wholly separate the two aspects of a person's life. Hence I always ask how things are going outside of work. Part of providing psychological safety for your team means they can bring their whole self to work and if they're doing that then you have to care for their whole self not just the value they bring to your business.
In a weird way I find the person leader to team member relationship quite similar to being a parent. By this I mean that I’m not trying to be my teammates' best friend but I do want what's best for them. Most of the time this is pretty easy but sometimes it means I need to have some robust conversations and provide feedback that could potentially be upsetting. For these scenarios I feel it's important your team perceive you as a leader not just one of the gang. I think this aids mentorship and helps them process your feedback in a more productive manner.
I think it's important to have goals to help you improve and grow and the magic thing about goals is simply by writing them down they're much more likely to be achieved. To bring this to life all the team members I lead have a success plan and it's something we check in fairly regularly.
To start with, whenever we hire a new team member there is a success profile in their job description. This outlines what we expect the new hire to be capable of at the three month, six month and twelve month marks. These form the initial goals in the team member's success plan. But, having seven or eight goals on your todo list isn't productive so we choose one or two to focus on, when these are achieved then they're marked as complete and we choose new focus goals.
I encourage team members to keep their goals up to date and change them if they feel they're no longer relevant.
Sometimes we create plans for how the team member can achieve a goal. This outlines the work the team member will do by themselves, the things I can help with, the things other members of the organisation might help with and then things we may need outside help with. This help might be in the form of mentorship or by attending an external training course.
In my organisation we do twice yearly performance reviews and part of these are setting development goals for the next six months, these too get added to a team member's success plan so that we always have an up to date list of goals with one or two focus goals that the team member is working on.
Here some quick fire tips to help you polish your performance in one to ones:
Like everything, these strategies for effective one to ones represent my current thinking and are constantly evolving based on my experiences. As I continue to grow as a leader I’ll continue to evolve as will my practice so I’ll try to keep this page up to date to reflect my current recommendations.
Please feel free to contact me if you’d like to discuss conducting one to ones or perhaps give me some feedback on what you've just read.
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Jules Munford
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Email: julian.munford@googlemail.com
Twitter: @julesmunford
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