All by Myself in the One-on-One
Most of my One-on-One Series is aimed at managers with the desire to improve their team’s relationships and performance in addition to growing their own abilities to effectively manage humans at work.
But not all of us are so lucky to have such a manager.
Much of my management expertise comes from years of being badly managed!
So if you’re stuck with a manager who rarely checks in or whose interest in your growth and success is limited at best, then this one’s for you.
Most of us desire growth and development along our career journeys. We want to understand what makes us successful and how to improve when we know we’ve not performed up to expectations or potential. And when you have a great manager, they will be able to partner with you to work through these desires and progressions. But you might be stuck going it alone on this front. Here’s a tool that can help.
I encourage you to read each of the 5 Questions of the One-on-One and walk yourself through each. I call this the Rubber Ducky One-on-One. One effective way to do this is through journaling. There are so many other excellent development journaling resources out there, check out my other series on Journaling for Professional Development for more!
Here are the Questions with links to the managerial content, as you are essentially self-managing in this respect, for context as well as some alternate ways to ask some of the questions to keep it fresh:
Answering these for myself today, here’s what it looks like.
For What did you Love?
I loved when my team member expressed gratitude for my providing opportunities for growth through the tasks and responsibilities I assigned her this week. She is thoroughly enjoying that I trusted her to figure it out and that she gets to put her book knowledge to good use. I really loved that the investment I made and the trust I extended paid off and that she was grateful and took advantage of the opportunity.
You can see in my response above that I tried to point out why the situation was important to me. I extended trust and invested, and my investment paid off. This is something I’ve found through my exploration of my loves: I really love helping people on their growth journeys, but if I am providing resources or opportunities, it matters a lot to me that they are appreciated. Otherwise, I will find myself not investing my time and energy where the recipient is also not investing their time and energy — they must desire growth and choose to act upon that desire for me to be an active co-investor with them.
For What was Frustrating?
I was frustrated that there seemed to be political turmoil taking a lot of my energy one day this week. There was a whole uproar over something simply to make sure we were presenting in such a way that senior leadership wouldn’t get riled up about minutiae. The amount of last-minute, emergency energy I had to put into this effort was really annoying. Reflecting on it, I’m challenged to figure out how to avoid the last-minute-ness of this kind of activity and look for opportunities to get ahead of this perception-protection earlier on in various cross-team projects.
Again, in my response, I can detail what was frustrating while also trying to actively plan to avoid this kind of problem in the future. There will certainly be times that I don’t know the solution right away and will need to spend more time with the problem to figure it out. Again, look out for that development journaling post coming soon! It’s really good for situations like this!
For What are you Learning?
I’m doing a lot of various reading lately. I just finished a parenting book that is helping me create strategies for keeping my cool when my kids inevitably push my buttons. I’m learning more about Eleanor Roosevelt in another book, which has been fascinating since I read her auto-biography in high school. And, I’m reading about the women who spent time around Jesus and their interactions with him. All excellent books. All very different. I’m enjoying the variety of it. I’m also doing a great job of keeping up daily with Spanish learning on DuoLingo.
It’s interesting to me, looking at my response, that none of my current learning is explicitly related to my current role at work. This is all personal learning, things that are helping me in other areas of life or fulfilling personal curiosity. That’s entirely ok! I don’t always have to focus my learning on development specific to my career.
For What do You Need?
I need to take time to detail a clear plan for progress to my next role. I am happy in my current role, but want to have a clear path detailed so that I have specific steps and experience I can show that supports my readiness for the next position I will take.
It’s really telling to note that I don’t have a clear plan for my next move AND that I’m not currently focusing my development and learning on my work. I bet as soon as I detail this plan, my learning choices will branch out to start fulfilling that new goal!
For What Else?
I’ve got some high priority tasks including the scheduling of a presentation with each of the VP’s orgs that I need to finish up over the next week and a half. I will commit to contacting one person per day to make steady progress on this task.
I was able to quickly identify an area that needed some focus and make a do-able commitment to solve the problem quickly. Having sifted through my other thoughts, it was really easy for me to find the next thing that should be prioritized, the thing I am procrastinating or ignoring. This was a really helpful exercise for me today even though I regularly go through similar exercises with myself.
So there you have it. Hopefully this exercise will help you, too. I’d love to hear about your experiences with it.
Check out more content in the One-on-One series.
As well as more about Journaling for Professional Development in these posts:
