Commit to diligent conversation for effective 1 on 1 meetings
HARNESSING THE POWER OF EFFECTIVE 1:1S TO BUILD TRUST, CULTURE, AND EQUITABLE OPPORTUNITIES
As a leader, how you communicate has a direct impact on your team culture. If you’re looking to deepen your leadership practice, let’s start by looking at one of my favorite, super-powerful tools for building trust, building culture, and creating equitable opportunities: The 1:1 meeting.
In an app-driven world, abbreviated messages (text, comment threads, DMs) tend to be our predominant method of connection – even in the workplace (we love you, Slack). But this short-hand form of communication needs to be set aside if you’re looking to unlock a more relational style of leadership (and of course you are!).
When you’re having a leadership conversation, you have to switch gears. Here are a few things I encourage all leaders to consciously practice – emphasis on practice. These things can take time to feel natural, but soon you’ll feel more confident and natural!
Prepare your message. Know the agenda items. Understand what you want to say and consider how it will be perceived. This is especially important for feedback conversations.
Be physically present. Take deep breaths, remove distractions, make eye contact.
Redefine what good leadership communication is for you. If you’re new to leadership, think about the leaders you’ve had who did a great job communicating – and the leaders who really didn’t. Use the gift of being able to draw on those experiences to guide how you want to be known for communicating, inspiring, motivating, and delegating.
Every leader should make unbreakable time for 1:1s with their people. 1:1s are a powerful connection point that will help you:
Build trust
Build culture
Create equitable opportunities
Don’t let short-cut communication undermine your leadership. Let’s take a closer look at some strategies for making the most of these conversations that count.
Build trust
Make unbreakable time.
Whether weekly meetings or twice per month, block time on the calendar with each team member for regular one on one meetings. 30 minutes is usually enough, but you’ll know which team members need more or less. These don’t always have to happen across your desk or a conference room! Take a walk together, eat lunch, find neutral territory where everyone can relax and connect.
Yes, you’ll be tempted to cancel or reschedule when “urgent” things come up, but do not de-prioritize these important times for connection. Your consistency and commitment go a long way toward communicating trust to your team.
Clear distractions.
Visibly turn your phone face-down, close your laptop, whatever it takes to get undistracted. Then skip the action items and listen first. Consider taking notes so you can revisit any concerns or goals the next time you meet – notes will also help you keep track of what’s important to them and give you an opportunity to ask for status updates the next time you cross paths. It’s not complicated: Just take a real interest in your team members’ lives.
Listen first.
Listening helps to cultivate a learning-focused mindset by seeking deeper understanding. I try to consciously slow down my thoughts and breathing, so I can have a more accurate understanding of the person and their story or situation. I hope this practice is noticed by the other person, that they know I care about their story and am here to create a safe space and ultimately be a trusted colleague and partner. Inevitably, this conscious practice leads to deeper, more authentic conversations between managers and employees.
Know your people.
Some people thrive with continuous goal-setting and accomplishment. Others want to be seen for hard work and consistency. Understanding what motivates each team member goes a long way toward helping them feel seen and secure – and often unlocks greater engagement and high performing teams.
Build culture
Recognize performance, improvement, and contributions.
Know that you likely didn’t have the opportunity to notice all the wins and challenges someone faced that week – especially for team members with less public output. Asking them directly can help you overcome your blindspots in terms of seeing who needs what kind of development, and who’s ready for more opportunity. Empower your team to advocate for their performance, and to become confident in speaking about it. Find out how each team member prefers to be recognized, acknowledge their wins, and champion your people.
Invite and support their ideas.
When you share business goals and invite team members to share personal goals, you open the door for ideas and insights that you wouldn’t have on your own. When team members are invited to participate in the goals of the business, engagement thrives.
Empower their autonomy. Help them see the business impact of their idea. Support, support, support, observe, and use future 1:1s to be reflective on both wins and failures. (And make it safe to fail, because no one wins all the time.)
Create equitable opportunities
Understand their goals and challenges.
1:1 meetings go a long way toward building equitable learning cultures. When you know your people, know their goals and challenges, you can guide the conversation towards growth and development opportunities that support not only their goals, but the goals of your business.
Ultimately, pushing for the success of all your team members has incredible benefits for your business (and everyone will be happier to come to work)!
I wrote some more about equitable communication, development, and growth opportunities in this post →
Wrapping up
As leaders, we’re constantly under scrutiny. Our team members are always reading into what we say and how we say it, and when we cut corners, this lack of commitment to diligent conversation and focus on pure performance reviews becomes a dangerous slope.
When you’ve authentically, intentionally made time for real conversation, you’ll notice your team members are more engaged, they’re more likely to stick around and grow, and performance all around improves.
I hope these tips help your 1:1s become calendar items you look forward to in your day to day, and that you can look back and say they were the key to your leadership success. I’d love to hear your experiences with 1-on-1 meetings – the inspiring, the gnarly, and the challenges – leave a comment on our LinkedIn!
Lead the way,
