What to Talk About and How to Do It
Learn what to talk about in your one-on-ones and the best ways to run the meeting.
We'll cover the following...
With the initial one-on-ones handled by the contracting exercise, you have a clear structure for those initial meetings. However, what about the next meeting and every meeting after that, forever more?
I tend to use some simple repeating patterns for content. First off, it’s essential that you prepare. I have a recurring to-do list item that repeats on the day of each direct report’s one-on-one to remind me to spend some time before the meeting putting the agenda in order. If I haven’t already noted down some items to talk about, I’ll have a think and pre-fill the agenda with some items. These can be anything from:
- Observations from the past week, either about their work or the team’s: These can be good or bad observations or even just areas where I’d like to probe a bit to find out more.
- A deep dive into a project or piece of architecture that they’re working on
- Updates that will be interesting for my staff, such as what has gone on recently in any other meetings that I’m part of or anything my own manager has told me, such as relevant things discussed at the last board meeting.
- Coaching: We’ll learn more about coaching in the How to Win Friends and Influence People chapter. You can help your staff pick through their own problems.
However, even if you have fantastic content to cover every week, you can still get your one-on-ones very wrong if you don’t approach them in the correct way.
It’s their meeting, not yours
Despite the fact that your one-on-ones are your best chance to positively impact your staff each week, the paradoxical stance that you must adopt is that ...