Improving your one on ones
Nov 23, 2022Are your 1-on-1s all about projects?
I get this concern a lot: that manager’s have 1-on-1’s with their folks, but they are all about the projects.
You want to expand your meetings into other areas, but your team members are always talking about their work. You want to help your team with their careers, interpersonal problems, and training. But, this is their meeting, and they choose the topics.
Right?
Work on steering the 1-on-1’s toward those topics you want to help them with and away from the work and project updates.
You can start the meetings with updates, and use the projects to move into the other areas.
First, be sure that you are getting good updates on work and projects elsewhere; either through the project meetings or debrief emails.
Second, remind your folks of the purpose of the 1-on-1 meetings and what you hope to get out of them.
Next, when they do start 1-on-1’s with work, keep it to high level, important updates only.
Then, use the projects to move into the other topics. For example:
You can ask questions about whether this project or their work is what they really want to be doing? Is this how they want their career to look? Were they hoping for different projects?
You can ask about interpersonal relationships and if there are folks on the project team that are easy or difficult to work with. If so, dive deeper into these conversations.
You can ask if there are missing skills within the project teams. What do your folks think needs improvement or support, and work with them on ideas on how to bring in new skills or improve lagging ones.
Overall, practice using ‘thought and feeling’ types of questions and phrases and move away from technical dates and deliverables.
You want to make sure your team is talking about and addressing more than just projects and work, and 1-on-1 meetings are a great time to do that.
Some of you may be surprised, but as you do address all these issues and concerns, the projects and the work will end up being easier and smoother.
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