1:1s Are Your Must-Do Meetings

1:1s Are Your Must-Do Meetings

1:1 conversations are your single best opportunity to listen, really listen, to the people on your team to make sure you understand their perspective on what’s working and what’s not working. These meetings also provide an opportunity to get to know your direct reports, to move up on the “care personally” dimension of the Radical Candor framework.

Remember: this is not the place to dump all of the criticism you’ve been saving up. That should come in those two- to three- minute impromptu conversations!

The purpose of a 1:1 meeting is to listen and clarify, to understand what direction each person working for you wants to head in, and what is blocking them.

Make Your 1:1s Count

Here are a few ways to make sure you and your reports get the most out of these 1:1 meetings:

Mindset

Your mindset will go a long way in determining how well the 1:1s go.

I found that when I quit thinking of them as meetings and began treating them as if I were having lunch or coffee with somebody I was eager to get to know better, they ended up yielding much better conversations.

If scheduling them over a meal helps, make them periodic lunches.

If you and your direct report like to walk and there’s a good place to take a walk near the office, make them walking meetings.

If you are a morning person, schedule them in the morning.

If you are a person who has an energy dip at 2 p.m., don’t schedule them at 2 p.m.

You have a lot of meetings, so you can optimize the 1:1 time and location for your energy.

Just don’t be a jerk about it. You may like to wake up at 5 a.m. and go to the gym. Don’t expect the people who work for you to meet you there.

Frequency

Time doesn’t scale, but it’s also vital to relationships.

1:1s should be a natural bottleneck that determines how many direct reports a boss can have.

Listening is hard work, and I don’t have an endless capacity for it every day. So I like to limit myself to five direct reports.

Show up!

Probably the most important advice for 1:1s is just to show up.

No matter what fires erupt in your day, do not cancel your 1:1s.

Your direct report’s agenda, not yours

When your direct reports own and set the agenda for their 1:1s, they’re more productive because they allow you to listen to what matters to them.

Questions to Ask—and Signals to Watch For

Asking questions can help you listen more attentively. Here are some good questions for 1:1’s that show you are listening, that you care and want to help. These can also help to identify the gaps between what people are doing, what they think they ought to be doing, and what they want to be doing:

• “Why?”
• “How can I help?”
• “What can I do or stop doing that would make this easier?”
• “What wakes you up at night?”
• “What are you working on that you don’t want to work on?”
• “Do you not want to work on it because you aren’t interested or because you think it’s not important?”
• “What can you do to stop working on it?”
• “What are you not working on that you do want to work on?”
• “Why are you not working on it?”
• “What can you do to start working on it?”
• “How do you feel about the priorities of the teams you’re dependent on?”
• “What are they working on that seems unimportant or even counterproductive?”
• “What are they not doing that you wish they would do?”
• “Have you talked to these other teams directly about your concerns? If not, why not?” (Important note: the goal here is to encourage people to raise the issue directly with each other, not to solve the problem for them.) 

Encourage new ideas in the 1:1.

Jony Ive, Apple’s Chief Design Officer, said “new ideas are fragile.” Think about that before a 1:1. This meeting should be a safe place for people to nurture new ideas. Here are some questions that you can use to nurture new ideas by pushing people to be clearer:

• “What do you need to develop that idea further so that it’s ready to discuss with the broader team? How can I help?”
• “I think you’re on to something, but it’s still not clear to me. Can you try explaining it again?”

• “Let’s wrestle some more with it, OK?”

• “I understand what you mean, but I don’t think others will. How can you explain it so it will be easier for them to understand?”

• “I don’t think ‘so-and-so’ will understand this. Can you explain it again to make it clearer, specifically for them?”
• “Is the prob lem really that they are too stupid to understand, or is it that you are not explaining it clearly enough?”

Signs you’ll get from 1:1s that you’re failing as a boss

1:1s are valuable meetings for your direct reports to share their thinking with you and to decide what direction to proceed with their work. They are also valuable meetings for you, because these meetings are where you’ll get your first early warning signs that you are failing as a boss. Here are some sure signals:

• Cancellations. If people who report to you cancel 1:1s too often, it’s a sign your partnership is not fruitful for them, or that you’re using it inappropriately to dispose of criticism you’ve been stockpiling.

• Updates. If people just give you updates that could simply be emailed to you, encourage them to use the time more constructively.

• Good news only. If you hear only good news, it’s a sign people don’t feel comfortable coming to you with their problems, or they think you won’t or can’t help. In these cases, you need to ask explicitly for the bad news. Don’t let the issue drop till you hear some.

• No criticism. If they never criticize you, you’re not good enough at getting guidance from your team. Remember that phrase: “What could I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me?”

• No agenda. If they consistently come with no topics to discuss, it might mean that they are overwhelmed, that they don’t understand the purpose of the meeting, or that they don’t consider it useful. Be direct but polite: “This is your time, but you don’t seem to come with much to talk about. Can you tell me why?”