One-to-One Meetings: Your Most Effective Leadership Tool
By: Wendy Scott
Tags: Employee Engagement, Leadership, Management And Leadership, Workplace, Coaching

4. How to set up one-to-ones in your team

If your organization does not currently carry out one-to-ones, your team members may not know what they are. Take some time to explain what a one-to-one meeting is.

One-to-one meetings are regular, private meetings with your team members to discuss productivity, goals, development, issues, and personal concerns

Make sure that you explain to the team that one-to-ones are an informal, two-way chat about work and how your team is feeling.

Once everyone knows what a one-to-one meeting is, set up regular meetings in your work calendar.

The best way to get your team to prepare is to design a simple form and ask the team to complete it in advance.

The headings for the form could be:

Tasks completed over the last week

Tasks planned for next week

Roadblocks (what might prevent projects moving forward)

Resources required

Discussion about development or training

Note that the form will only have the work-related topics, it is up to you to ask how your direct reports are doing at the beginning and end of the meeting.

You may find that for the first meeting, your team member has not prepared. To circumvent this you could send out a reminder before the first meeting, asking your team to complete the form you have provided. It can take a while for people to get used to the process.

5. Bonus tips from my personal experience of doing one-to-ones

As you may have gathered, I’m a huge fan of one-to-ones.

Here are some of my tips arising from doing one-to-ones with my teams:

Explain to the team what you are doing and why, before you begin. Team members have told me that they loved the one-to-ones, but they were initially confused because they did not understand the point of them.

Take care to prepare a one-to-one form that works for your team and suits your style. Put it somewhere accessible on the work computer, or you will have people not preparing because they couldn’t find the form.

Always re-book canceled one-to-ones. The team grows to rely on them.

Insist that your team reply to calendar invites and if they cannot make a one-to-one, they must let you know.

Make a note of the actions that your direct report has agreed to do. Note your actions too.

Diarize actions that you have agreed to do from the one-to-one.

Diarize actions that your direct reports have agreed to so that you can check on progress.

Whenever I sent an email asking a team member to do something, I filed it in an archive file under their name. Before the one-to-one, I looked in their file and listed all the things I’d asked them to do, ready to discuss in the one-to-one. This way, nothing gets forgotten.

Always book a meeting room for your one-to-ones. If someone is in your meeting room and you can’t ask them to leave, go to a coffee shop.

One-to-ones work on Zoom. You can easily share the one-to-one form.

If you have direct reports who are leaders themselves, check that they are doing their one-to-ones with their team. I had a section in the one-to-one form where the managers gave a summary of their team’s activities.

Some of your team will be happy with a half an hour meeting, some may take longer. People have different needs for social contact and you must adjust to suit your team. Always allow ample time, so your team does not feel rushed.

Have a section at the end of the one-to-one form with development goals and goals from the performance appraisal system. Have your direct report copy and paste the goals onto the form and check on progress regularly.