Enhance Your One-on-One Meetings: Tips for Managers and Personal Growth

One-on-one meetings are a staple of effective management.  It is an opportunity to connect with your direct reports, review their progress, discuss roadblocks or challenges, and set next action steps.

Are you making the most of these meetings?  Here are some tips for optimizing this time with direct reports.  And if you aren’t a manager, these will help you as well as they can apply to your individual work or personal goals.

Schedule a regular time.  Oftentimes I hear from clients that they have “hallway” one-on-one meetings – they walk around the office and touch base with their team.  I recommend a set time – 30 min to an hour – to sit down with each person once a week, or every other week.  This allows it to be regular and very intentional.   It lets them plan for this time with you and cuts down on emails and calls with questions. It shows you are invested in their growth and development and provides a consistent roadmap for their productivity.   Once you set a regular meeting time, keep it.

As an individual, how invested are you in your own growth and development?  Set a regular time for your own meeting to clarify your personal goals and next steps.

Prepare with these questions. As a manager, I created a form that each person filled out and brought with them to their one-on-one meeting.  On it, they had to answer these questions:

• What is the main goal of your position as it relates to the goals of the company?  This answer stayed at the top of the meeting preparation form as a reminder of the main focus of their job.

• What work are you most proud of from the last time we met?  This allows for self-reflection on what is being done right.  As a manager, sometimes items were listed here that I didn’t even know about!  It is a wonderful opportunity to give positive feedback. 

• Share your progress against company goals/benchmarks. This is an area for any metrics towards goals. What gets measured, gets done.

• What challenges/issues are you having? This allows time for solutions and helps remove roadblocks so they can continue moving forward.

• On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being a lot) how is your workload now? This question is important – It shows whether there is an opportunity for them to have added responsibilities or an opportunity for burn out.  If it is a 10, I would often follow it up with the question – What can you not do?  This allows thoughtfulness on what isn’t a priority.

• What are your goals/actions to accomplish before we meet next? I would use these answers as a reference each week to see how they match up with future proud moments or benchmarks accomplished. 

• How can I best support and help you?  As a manager, part of our job is to make their job easier to do.  When you can create a clear pathway for their progress, it shows you are invested in them and their success.  If you are answering these questions for yourself this can translate to What resources or help do I need at this time?

Adding meetings is beneficial if they are productive.  These questions help to keep it focused and efficient, helping either your team, or you, move faster and farther on what needs to be done.  It enhances the well-being of all involved with clear communication, enabling higher employee retention and individual satisfaction.