Principles of one-to-ones
The mythical one-to-ones, the “they moved it again”, the “thing got escalated to me”, the “I need to vent”, an hour of an honest conversation sometimes dreaded from both sides. Is it important to schedule and make these? Does it even matter? I run a fairly large team, and in all the time I’ve been doing my one-to-ones, there are four key principles I distilled for myself, ready to stand by them.

1. Show up
Yes, the workload gets bad, yes we are all guilty. Large team, multiple project tracks, new business race. However, there’s no real excuse to neglect meeting your team for over a week. You wouldn’t do it to someone you care about, why would you do it to a team? Business caveat: if things really, really go wrong and you have to cancel, ‘reach out — reschedule in advance — apologise’ is a good sequence to go by. There are only a few things worse than an anticipated conversation moving further away right in front of your eyes.
2. Take it outside
This is one of the most important principles that continues to change my meetings a lot. For our last one-to-one with one of my brilliant designers, we strolled the streets finding ourselves in one of the best magazine shops in the area, I got to know she’s interested in landscape design and we had a great conversation about which music instrument to try and learn first with an owner, who kept pulling out magazines and inviting us to stay and read. I learned more in those 10 minutes than a couple of weeks of meeting her in the office environment. We also made a friend in the face of a friendly and knowledgeable shopkeeper. Change of the environment resulted in change in the conversation and dynamic.
3. Listen and take notes
This one is about avoiding immediate responses, listening in, reframing problems in “why do you think that is so” mode and getting to the bottom of what people think and feel. But how do I take notes whilst walking you say? Audio notes can do, just notes on your phone can do too. Once you’ve taken those notes though, that’s your responsibility to turn painpoints into actions and report on progress. Own it. Where I’ve seen this principle failing is where the discussion felt great, but no actions followed.
4. Use the time…
…to change course of meeting as you see fit: they said they don’t really know people? Take them around the office. Do stuff together — draw, discuss, share. In very large organisations (and whilst not working on projects together) that may be a rare opportunity you won’t otherwise get to work with someone amazing, however limited that time is.
Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Then why is it that every second person I meet in the industry either has a nonexistent support structure or is struggling through difficult work relationship? I’m still happily learning many aspects of looking after people, yet I truly believe one-to-ones are a part of establishing that support structure, moreover, meeting design is a design too — it’s a narrative, it’s a story. Let it be an engaging one where everyone is looking forward to the next episode.
***
All comments left here will reach me, @alex_andr_a — Head of User Experience (at POKE London), a bit of a book nerd, a metaphor addict and a decent wine lover. Thoughts my own, would love to hear yours.
