Co-Founder and Advisor at FlexTeam and Chief Experience Officer at Liquid.
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As more companies switch to remote work, it becomes ever more critical to intentionally connect with our co-workers and employees. While we are all trying to clear our calendars, scheduling weekly one-to-one meetings with every direct report continues to be essential. Even when working with the freelancers and contractors who comprise the liquid workforce, I have found that one-to-one meetings are crucial to a successful working relationship. Consistently great one-to-one meetings are the secret to improving team performance, morale and company culture.
Emotionally intelligent managers know that people need to feel cared for and valued — people are happiest when they are learning, working on challenging projects, given room to make decisions and encouraged to use their judgment to do their job. Your goal in one-to-one meetings is to discover how your direct reports are feeling and growing so that you can improve how you coach/mentor/sponsor/support them.
Managers should have a weekly one-to-one scheduled with each direct report. It is understandable if it needs to be rescheduled in a specific week, or if it doesn’t happen from time to time. But in my experience, managers should aim to have one-to-one meetings at least three out of every four weeks. It’s important to have regular check-ins to prevent larger issues from festering, allow for immediate and regular feedback and promote open communication.
Structure And Prompts
Start your one-to-ones with open-ended questions to help you understand how employees are doing, what is on their minds and how you might be able to help.
Check in on the employee’s current progress. Are there big or small successes to celebrate? How is progress tracking versus goals? What resources does the employee need? Ongoing reviews of progress ensure that nothing on a performance review comes as a surprise.
Every few weeks, be sure to dedicate some time to discuss long-term goals and ambitions. For example, ask employees what they view as the next step in their career path and how they see themselves in their roles. This helps you develop your people so that you can promote from within.
Here are some questions you may want to incorporate into your one-to-one agendas. These questions can help you understand how employees are motivated by their work, self-assess their skills and view their control over their work.
1. Prompts To Understand Purpose/Relatedness
• What are you most proud of?
• Where do you see your job linked to our company’s goals?
• When have your contributions to our company’s overall goals inspired you?
• What can I do to make you feel that your work is meaningful and crucial to our company’s overall goals?
• What feedback is the most meaningful/impactful that you have received?
• What challenges/barriers are you facing, and how can I help remove them?
• What part of your daily activities do you feel wastes your time?
2. Prompts To Grow Mastery/Competence
• What is something you learned this week?
• If you reflect on one piece of work product, where are you most proud of that work?
• What is something you will do differently next time?
• If you were to critique a recent project you completed, what grade would you give yourself? Why?
• Are you celebrating the things you did well?
• Are you avoiding anything you didn't do well?
• How can you become even better at...?
• What can I, as a leader, do to help you to become even better?
3. Prompts To Support Autonomy
• Do you have enough space to perform?
• Are you able to make decisions that help use your experience and move your work forward?
• Are you able to use your experience/expertise to help the company make good decisions?
• Do you have the right level of influence to feel you are having an impact/adding value?
• Are there things we should change so you feel like you have more ownership of your work?
• What types of decisions do you feel comfortable making yourself? When do you hesitate to decide on your own?
As you start to wrap up your one-to-ones, make sure to ask questions that confirm any discussed actions and identify follow-ups for the next meeting. For example:
• What are you committing to between now and the next time we meet?
• What can I help you with between now and the next time we meet?
• Is there anything we didn’t cover that you’d like to discuss next time?
As a manager, it’s your job to create environments and conditions that put employees where their intrinsic motivations are and let them be productive. Committing to regular weekly one-to-one meetings — with employees as well as freelancers — will help you develop your workforce and support their success. Investing this time in discussions with your employees will not only enable them to achieve their goals but is also essential for you to be successful as a leader and manager of people.
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