I thought it would be a good idea to share some random resources found from very smart people around the internet on making 1:1 meetings effective. This can be from the reports side or the managers side.
I have a manager I want some info on great 1:1's
An engineer by the name of Julia Evans makes really great techzines over at Wizardzines.com here are some great ones about understanding your managers role, how you can get feedback or possibly structure your 1:1
A goto book most peer’s have read is High Output Management . I’d suggest reading it. Over at Get Light House they’ve done a nice job at expanding some of the content around 1:1’s — https://getlighthouse.com/blog/high-output-management/
For example, as a report — what you should do and know about 1:1’s you will have with your manager https://getlighthouse.com/blog/one-on-ones-employee-know/
I’m a manager and I think 1:1’s are tough
Effective 1:1’s need the report to drive the agenda, but because this isn’t’ guaranteed to happen you need to do a little driving / coaching to help your report bring these meetings to a good state. How about getting some inspiration from 1 of the 21 reasons to have 1:1’s with your team or how about the very smart folks A16Z on why 1:1’s are important to helping your team members become more productive and aligned.
Asking questions at the right granularity is a great skill and can really get someone thinking, which can result in really great discussions that have positive impacts for both people in the room and possibly teams or projects. Jason from lighthouse has made a list of classified questions here which you could use for inspiration in your next 1:1 which seem to be flat lining.
1:1 Quality classifier
After that it could be good to try and work out what a good, indifferent and bad 1:1 looks like. You can try to measure the success of your 1:1’s and calibrate after that.
Good 1:1 — Report runs the agenda. Asks questions which are inline with their current state of mind (Growth, Strategic goals, Projects, Issues, Random).
Indifferent 1:1 — Employee isn’t really driving it, manager is able to ask questions that create ability to go into topic in more detail which are inline with development plans, projects, or upcoming projects.
Bad 1:1 — Manager drives the agenda and looks for status updates on various projects and tasks. In the end the manager knows about project status, report gets nothing from it.
Links:
The state of one on ones. Great insight into challenges from a managers point of view. https://soapboxhq.com/state-of-one-on-ones-report
