Effective, regular one-to-one meetings with your team member is one of the most valuable uses of a leader’s time. The problem is that most one-to-one meetings are not effective at all. In fact, most meetings in general are less than effective – I’m betting we can all agree on that. There are a few common practices that are unproductive and some simple changes you can make to increase the effectiveness of your one-to-one meetings 100-fold.
1. Don’t ask how are things going
One of the most common ways I’ve seen managers start their one-to-one meetings is with a friendly general question like, “how are things going this week?” Or, “how are things going with that project?” Or simply, “how is everything going?” These are friendly, open questions, but the problem is that the most common response is “fine,” “good,“ or “all right.“
Instead of asking this sort of question, keep the openness, but direct the question to strengths and opportunities. We teach leaders in our leadership development program to ask their team members to share positive and constructive feedback on their own behaviour.
Ask what the employee sees as positive actions they’ve taken with questions like:
- “Can you tell me about two things but you’re really proud of accomplishing over the past week.”
- “What are a couple of things you’re really excited about regarding that project?”
- “What do you think you did really well on that sales call?”
These sorts of questions draw out what the team member sees as strengths in their work. They help to build confidence and help the manager to understand the employee’s perspective on their performance.
Once you’ve heard the strengths, ask a question about opportunities for improvement or development. For example:
- “What are two things you want to improve on that happened last week?”
- “What do you think you would do differently if you were to manage this project next time?”
- “What would you do differently if you were to have that sales call over again?”
These questions help to redirect behaviour and help the manager to understand where the employee sees their development opportunities.
This simple change in your questioning provides an opportunity for a meaningful conversation and deeper understanding. By directing your questions to the positive and the improvement areas for the employee you’re able to get specific feedback rather than general “everything‘s all right” feedback.
2. Practice empathetic listening
Managers are excellent problem solvers. We have suggestions and direction just waiting on the tips of our tongues to be blurted out when an employee identifies a need. It feels good to help, so we often end up practicing an ineffective form of listening. We hear what the employee says, acknowledge what we hear with a nod, eye contact and maybe a few “umhmm” responses. Then we reply with our own perspective, advice, agreement or suggestions. In your one-to-ones, a more active, empathetic form of listening will help you to increase effectiveness.
Rather than acknowledging and moving right to the responding stage of the conversation, practice questioning to understand more deeply, and confirming your understanding with empathy.
Questioning to understand is simple, but only works well if you’re truly curious and committed to listening. When you’re genuine about understanding, the questions flow easily. Depending on the point the employee is making, you may ask things like:
- “That’s interesting – Can you tell me more about why you enjoyed that process so much?”
- “What was it about that conversation that you really felt you handled well?”
- “What was it about that situation that caused you to react like that?”
- “What do you see as your role in that?”
- And my favourite, the very simple, “Can you tell me more about that?”
When you ask these sorts of questions, you get below the surface and often are able to identify a root cause of a problem or to gain deeper clarity about how your team member thinks and what motivates them.
Once you’ve asked questions, make sure you pause to confirm understanding before jumping into solution-mode. You want to understand the situation, what they were thinking, and how they were feeling. Confirming often sounds formal, but doesn’t have to. Here are some examples:
- It sounds like a (stressful/exciting/emotional/…) situation where you (didn’t feel like you had the time to react positively/felt inspired by…/had trouble pausing to think about the logical steps)…
- So you saw it as…
- I can imagine it must have been really challenging to go through that…
When you confirm with empathy, your team member feels heard. They know you understand. And most importantly, you can start to move forward to solutions or opportunities together, in an effective way.
3. Get out of your office
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