The One-on-One: Laying the Foundation

Preparing for your One-on-Ones, both administratively and mentally, helps set you and your team members up for success.

This time can be some of the most productive, most interesting, most valuable time you spend together, but more often than not, it is wasted due to lack of preparation, unstated but somehow implied expectations, and dread or nervousness.

Set the stage so that expectations are out in the open.

Your team members need clear expectations. If you go out there like so many unprepared managers and just ask them what’s going on this week, you will get back exactly what you put in: NOTHING.

Do better:

• Mindfully create an agenda
• Share that agenda with your team member
• Talk through it before using it
• Be clear on how you want the conversation to go, what you want from them, what they should expect from you
• Be open to what they might want from you in this conversation

Don’t:

• Cop out of your responsibility and say it’s their job to manage up
• Be afraid of getting personal — IT IS PERSONAL (And it’s business. It’s okay to do both. You’ve got this.)
• Talk at them versus with them

Set expectations together. Make sure they know you’d like to have a directed conversation with them each week. You’ve thought through how you want it to go. You’ll provide an agenda and walk through each question with them. You’ll spend a lot of time listening. You won’t judge. They can be as open as they want to be. You will meet them where they are at. And you hope it will strengthen your working relationship as well as prepare you to help them along their career path.

Following in this series, I will share with you five questions to use in these one-on-one conversations that will make this the most productive time for both of you, will improve the working relationship between you, and will make you one of the best managers they’ve ever worked with before — and they’ll tell you that directly, if you keep it up.

Look out for The One-on-One: Part Zero for what’s next in your One-on-Ones.

Follow the entire One-on-One Series here.