1:1s

Meeting one-on-one with your reports is a powerful management tool. So how do you spend that time?

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One of your most powerful tools as a leader are one-on-one meetings with the members of your team. Your company is likely a blur of communications, meetings and calls which all make it easy to get lost in the noise. Having time where it’s just the two of you is critical to build relationships and to filter out the noise. 

Whether you have 1:1s every week (small teams) or every month (large teams), the big question is how you spend that precious time?

Most leaders use it as management time. In the best case this is time to focus on solving hard problems without too many voices. In the worst case, it becomes a rehash of your existing team meetings just with fewer people. Unfortunately, the worst case happens a lot more than the best case. As a result, most 1:1s are wasted time.

If you think about it, many of the standard things you might focus on during a 1:1 are likely a waste of time:

• Status. There are much better ways to convey status. Writing it down is not only more efficient, it ensures you can share it with many people for a fraction of the time. 

• Problem Solving. You almost always need at least a third person to solve an important problem. If you have team meetings, that’s a great time to solve problems. If you don’t have team meetings, maybe you should?

• Communication. Almost anything you can say risks being forgotten unless you write it down. If you’re spending your time in your 1:1s taking notes, it means you should have found a different way to communicate. 

• Feedback. Feedback should be provided as quickly as possible, you shouldn’t hold onto it and wait for a regularly scheduled 1:1 meeting. While feedback should be given one-on-one, those won’t be regularly scheduled meetings.

If all of that is true, then what do you spend 1:1s doing? Listening. 

As a leader, your team is accustomed to listening to you. That makes sense, because you’re in charge! Companies are not democracies and you are the final decision maker, which means your opinion matters a lot. Anytime you talk in any conversation, everyone is going to listen. 

There are precious few times you get to interact with your team as people, outside of your roles at the company. 1:1s are the rare time when you can get to know your team, and understand their fears and hopes when it comes to your business. You do that by listening to them.

As a CEO, I never had an agenda for my 1:1s. I saw the time as belonging to the person I was meeting with, and we would talk about whatever was top of mind for them. Sometimes it was about the business, sometimes not. In all cases my job was to listen first, and then discuss when appropriate. Even then, I would share my opinion or answer questions but very purposefully not make decisions. There is plenty of time for that elsewhere. 

With so few hours in the week, I realize it can sound wasteful to spend 1:1s not managing. If you have 10 direct reports, that’s 5-10 hours of 1:1s every few weeks! That’s a lot of time and you don’t have a lot of time as a leader. 

But consider how much time you save by having stronger relationships with your team. If your team has trust then less communication is necessary. If you understand the perspectives of your team, your communication can be shorter and more direct. If you have solid relationships with your team, you need less process to ensure everyone works together well. 

And you build those relationships by listening. 

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For more on Company Culture and Professional Relationships, see:

• The Well of Goodwill

• The Art of Being Unreasonable

• Communicating Change

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