At Facilitated Training, we believe that the practise of conducting one on one meetings not only useful in building rapport and trust with team members, it also increases the effectiveness of teams and individuals.
It’s a big call, right?
It’s time well spent, creates alignment, and reduces surprises for both the leader and team member come formal appraisal time.
Healthy relationships are built on effective communication and structured, ideally, weekly one-on-one meetings with each team members. It fulfils the essential requirement of employees to be recognized, acknowledged, given feedback, and communicated with clarity about the direction and progress. It also allows employees to provide feedback to the manager and answer any questions that are necessary to keep both aligned.
Frequent, brief meetings enable coaching to occur, the team member can build on their strengths, and their manager can redirect and guide their employee back to the right path when issues arise. When team members are working on projects,- these regular meetings provide a regular opportunity for updates. Everyone benefits.
Formalizing and planning of your meeting can feel restrictive; however, over time, you will find that the conversations will be more free-flowing as trust and rapport is built. You will find that the want to formally document questions will lessen, however, these notes are an invaluable tool to use during the end of year performance reviews or giving specific and detailed feedback when completing a 360-degree feedback survey.
Location:
Consider holding these meetings over a coffee; this helps to reduce the manager/subordinate dynamic or a formal meeting room and provides a place from the prying ears of other workers.
Time allocation
Start by booking in reoccurring meetings into your team members’ calendars. This will help to send the message that these meetings are essential for both parties. When scheduling meetings, try to avoid scheduling them on a Monday or a Friday, as this statistically is when it is more likely that the meeting will be postponed due to sickness, annual leave or public holidays.
Depending on the industry, role, location, and seniority will help to determine the frequency of the meetings and the time allocated. Not being in the same city or country, shouldn’t stop these meetings, schedule a video call instead of a face to face meeting.
An optimum amount of time to schedule is 60 minutes, but at least 30). This time frame enables you to delve into more detail based on their responses and explore their answers, ideas, frustrations, and feedback by asking follow-up questions.
Questions to ask.
What you talk about, and the one on one meeting questions you ask, make all the difference in the performance of your team. To make this more comfortable for you, let’s review some questions that you can use to get you started.
- Start with some general chit chat- ask about their weekend, their pets, children, family, what they did on the weekend.
- Ask – How is life treating you? (of course reframe it into language that you would use, so it doesn’t sound cheesy.)
On the surface, this doesn’t seem like a significant question to ask.
However, this question can be quite powerful, as it assists in building trust. The more you know about team members, hobbies, pets, children’s names, etc., the greater the sense of trust is. And the greater the trust, the easier a tough conversation is.
And let’s face it, as a manager, these conversations need to be had from time to time.
“Is there an aspect of your job you would like more help or coaching?”
A great workplace relationship is all about managers helping employees be better, and employees helping managers be better.
Google did a multi-year, double-blind study on its managers. They found the single most important competency that separated high performing managers from low, was coaching.
Would you like more or less direction from me?
Feeling micromanaged is often another source of stress for an employee — and it’s one of the most common. As a manager, it can easily to unintentionally give an employee too much guidance. At the same time, employees find it equally frustrating when they’re hung out to dry with no support. When you ask this question, you can then adjust your management style and techniques. Furthermore, asking this question also signals to your team member that you recognize the value of providing the right level of support as a manager. As a leader, this question shows you’re self-aware.
Would you like more or less feedback on your work? If so, what additional feedback would you like?
It is easy to assume that your team member will want the same type and frequency of feedback that you do. This may not be the case. So ask the question! Don’t make a team member wait till the end of year formal performance appraisal. Your-on-one is the perfect opportunity to figure out exactly what kind of feedback someone would like.
Still not convinced that conducting regular one on one meetings are a worthwhile investment?
They Save Time
Most managers are already spending at least one cumulative hour per week holding unstructured conversations with their staff – why not hold a structured one-on-one meeting using that time which will enhance the relationship and improve clarity and alignment much more so than unstructured chats.
A key tool to combat disengagement.
Scheduling time with your team members lets them know that they are important to you and the organization. In times of significant change or uncertainty, your team members will relish this time with you, to engage and ask questions that they may not be comfortable in asking in a public or team forum.
Let’s talk about ROI.
While certain variables will impact ROI for one-on-one meetings from one company to the next, a MetrixGlobal LLC study estimated that consistent employee coaching via regular 1:1 meetings produced a 529% ROI.
Further studies concluded: that the ROI can be further increased when you factor in the positive impact that one-on-one meetings have on retention: when considering how these weekly meetings reduce the financial burden of turnover, the total ROI climbs to 788%.
It’s safe to say; those one-on-one meetings have one of the highest ROIs of any management practice.
It’s compelling, isn’t it?
Contact Facilitated Training today, and we will send you a one on one coaching template to get you started. Email us at hello@facilitatedtraining.com
About Facilitated Training
Facilitated Training is your one-stop-shop for world-class employee and personal development resources. Our mission is to assist individuals and companies in developing management, leadership, and business skills in themselves and their employees through effective, customizable adult learning-centered, development materials, and courses.
Facilitated Training offers training and organizational development resources to facilitators, trainers, coaches, HR managers, and individuals.
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