Getting the Most from One-to-Ones

Getting the most from your one-to-one meetings with your team is vitally important for business success. People need to know what is expected of them and how well they are doing. The key role of a manager is to encourage the best performance from their team and help individuals achieve their full potential. Unless you have highly self-motivated people, the minimum performance you allow is the maximum you can expect.

“Performance management is a process for establishing shared understanding about what is to be achieved, and an approach to managing and developing people in a way which increases the probability that it will be achieved in the short and longer term.”

Michael Armstrong

Purpose of the one-to-one

The purpose of the performance management one-to-one is to facilitate positive change. It can be an opportunity to give constructive feedback, (positive and negative), keep everyone informed, resolve issues, and help the participants to grow. Both the employee and the manager can learn and improve from each meeting.

“When the meetings are done well, they can make a team’s day-to-day activities more efficient and better, build trust and psychological safety, and improve employees’ experience, motivation, and engagement at work.”

Harvard Business Review

Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail

Although a cliché, planning is everything. As most people are time poor, it would be a shame to waste the time spent in these meetings. You can plan what outcomes you are looking for, what evidence you have to give praise or improvement suggestions, and what questions you want to ask. On a scale of 1-10, (where 1 is poor and 10 is excellent), how effective are your one-to-ones?

You may want to consider how you feel about having the meeting, what you know already about the interviewee’s personality, what they want from the session and how much time you need to achieve this. Also if you are looking for improvement in performance, what standard are you expecting and is it knowledge, skill or attitude that needs to be better.

Managers have a duty to focus on making sure the meetings take place. Then, it is about creating space for genuine conversation, asking good questions, offering support, and helping team members get what they need to thrive in both their short-term performance and their long-term growth. Putting the date in the diary can ensure it happens and conveys that this is an important priority. The date should be sacrosanct. If something major happens to prevent it, a new date can be quickly arranged.

Setting Expectations

Setting clear expectations can allay fear and create greater certainty by mutually agreeing when, where and for how long the meeting will take place. Asking for their input about what is to be covered can help with engagement. You may also like to agree behaviours, responsibilities, and relationship for the meeting. It is easy to assume that these are understood but making them overt may prevent problems occurring. Examples are confidentiality, do they have the right to challenge, being open and honest, who will take notes, what information needs to be prepared, etc.

The one-to-one is also an opportunity to restate the company vision, values, culture, and performance expectations. It may also be important to clarify the seriousness of the discussion. This is more than ‘let’s have a little chat’, which I have heard managers say.

Quality of the Question

The quality of the question will determine the quality of the answer. Asking appropriate, open, incisive questions can help you learn more about the person. It is then important to listen to the answer because that will lead you to what the next question needs to be. The danger is to focus on your next question without listening to the current answer.

Asking rather than telling can be far more powerful in bringing about change and helps get them to take ownership.

Communication Skills

Active listening is a critical skill in one-to-ones. It is about not just listening to what they say, but what they are not saying. What is their body language telling you? What is your body language telling them? How empathic are you being to their needs, concerns, and reasons?

“You are not learning much when your lips are moving”

Letting them do the talking will tell you more about what you need to know. Silences can be difficult, but if you can hold fire, then they are likely to open up more. Some people need time to think.

Focus on the Future

The main aim is to improve performance in the future, so this requires you to bring insight or realisation of the issues, whilst empowering them to find the solutions for themselves. It is also about giving praise so you continue to get more of the right behaviours.

SMARTA goal setting (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time bound and AGREED) sets the actions required with timelines and their agreement. The goals need to be realistic, so small steps are better than big ones. The important thing is to get some quick wins and not to set them up to fail. It is just as important to set a start time as well as a deadline, so that the goal remains achievable.

“Treat people as they are, and they remain that. Treat them as though they were what they can be, and we help them become what they are capable of becoming”

Goethe

Monitoring and Follow Through

All your good work can come to nothing if there is no monitoring or follow through to hold people accountable. During the one-to-one, you can agree how performance will be monitored and when the follow through meeting will take place. Again, it is important to make sure it happens. Most importantly, celebrate success, even it is only a small one and set milestones if necessary. A buddy or mentor can help in some cases. Change is never easy, so offering support can help make it happen.

“If it isn’t recorded, it didn’t happen!”

Having agreements written down makes it much easier to make sure of understanding on both sides and have evidence of what was said.

It is better to have reviews regularly rather than once a year. A good plan is to book the date for the next meeting at the end of the current one, so that everyone has it in their diaries.

Making Improvements

If you want to improve your one-to-ones, you could ask for feedback from the interviewee as to how it went. Training is another way, so please contact me for more detail. My thanks go to the Management Team at The Torridon for helping me compile the article. This 5 star hotel requires top performance from their team and therefore has monthly reviews. As with the amazing quality of the hotel, they are looking for continuous improvement from their people.

Also published on Medium.