1-on-1s: Why great managers have them and what you’re missing out on when you don’t
The benefits of one-on-one meetings.
How seriously do you and your direct-reports take 1-on-1 meetings?
Some managers and employees may give 1-on-1s less importance than these meetings deserve. They schedule them just because they have to, come up with a couple of last-minute questions, share some light updates, or (sometimes) don’t even have them at all.
However, great team leaders acknowledge the importance of these interactions and the potential they have to empower their fellow teammates and the organization as a whole.
The Fellow app team wants to help you in your journey as a team lead. To kick things off, we’ll spend a bit of time talking about some of the top benefits of having regular 1-on-1s with your direct reports:
1) They boost employee engagement
One of the primary benefits of 1-on-1 meetings is that they increase employee productivity and quality of work.
“Ninety minutes of your time can enhance the quality of your subordinate’s work for two weeks, or for some eighty-plus hours, and can also upgrade your understanding of what he’s doing.”
These are the words of Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, who grew Intel’s revenue from $2,672 to $20.8 billion in less than 30 years, and wrote High Output Management.
In the book, Grove states that 1-on-1 meetings not only save you time as a manager but improve your team’s performance and create a culture of constant communication. Similarly, Gallup’s State of the American Manager report found that open communication between managers and employees fosters professional growth and “puts the company on the path to maximizing its human capital.” The report shows that organizations that adopt human capital strategies like 1-on-1 meetings “achieve 59% more growth in revenue per employee.”
By analyzing 2.5 million manager-led teams in 195 countries, Gallup found that “employees whose managers hold regular meetings with them are almost three times as likely to be engaged” as employees whose managers don’t.
One-on-one meetings can take a substantial amount of time for managers with various direct-reports. However, they have a high return on investment, as the Gallup study shows. These meetings help you and your employees develop a common base of information, similar ways to handle issues and a list of priorities that you should focus on. In the end, this base of knowledge leads to employee productivity and more effective delegation.
2) They help managers build candid work relationships
The second reason why you should hold regular 1-on-1s with employees is that these meetings empower you to establish personal connections and create better relationships with your team.
As Kim Scott, Co-Founder of Candor, Inc and author of Radical Candor, explains:
“To understand a person’s growth trajectory, it’s important to have career conversations in which you get to know each of your direct reports better, learn what their aspirations are, and plan how to help them achieve those dreams. You should have these conversations with each person that reports directly to you.”
In Radical Candor, Scott argues that building good relationships with your direct-reports is the key to becoming a great boss. She explains that high-performing leaders use 1-on-1 meetings to show employees that they care personally about them, are willing to listen to their problems and want to help them grow.
“In fact, these conversations are the very first thing I recommend to you when rolling out radical candor on your team,” says Scott.
Asking about your report’s hobbies, level of satisfaction at work and career goals are all great ways to show that you care about them. For this reason, great managers use 1-on-1s to offer support and help employees move any obstacles that might be blocking the road to success.
, Engineering and Product VP at Facebook, argues that 1-on-1s should be personal and above all, a little awkward.“If it’s not a bit awkward, you’re not talking about the real stuff,” he writes in the article The Art of the Awkward 1:1. “You’re not talking about your challenges — how you’re a little burned out and started daydreaming about other jobs and why. Or that you’re scared about not making progress on a growth area.”
On the other hand, Rabkin argues that 1-on1s should be used to share positive feedback and demonstrate appreciation, even if it feels a little awkward the first time. An example of this would be telling your co-worker “how you’re so grateful how their care and empathy got you through a really rough patch. Or how they inspire you with how good they are at a skill,” he says.
Try it out. Next time you have a 1-on-1 with a direct-report, don’t treat your meeting like one more thing to check off the to-do list. Instead, use this valuable time to enhance your relationship with that person.
“I found that when I quit thinking of them as meetings and began treating them as if I were having lunch or coffee with somebody I was eager to get to know better, they ended up yielding much better conversations,” writes Scott.
3) They keep managers in the loop
Great managers have regular 1-on-1s because these meetings empower them to unearth issues before they become full-blown problems. Imagine these two scenarios:
In the first one, manager Mary meets with her direct-reports once a week. She hears from one of her employees that there is some tension arising among the team, and this helps Mary address the issue immediately before it becomes a big deal.
On the other hand, manager Michael keeps cancelling his 1-on-1s and undermines the value that his fellow teammates could get from these meetings. After a couple of months, he realizes that his direct-reports all have a lot of tension with one of their co-workers. There’s resentment in the team, rumours about people, and some clashes between co-workers who aren’t working well together. No one was able to address this with Michael, mainly because he never sat down with each direct-report to ask about the challenges that he could help them overcome.
An article published by the Harvard Business Review shows that 58% of executives believe that their current performance management approach drives neither employee engagement nor high performance. This happens because most managers wait for quarterly reviews to ask their employees about their issues, or to bring up their own.
However, forward-thinking companies around the world are encouraging more frequent communication between managers and reports by establishing 1-on-1s as the norm. Deloitte is one of them:
“Our design calls for every team leader to check in with each team member once a week. For us, these check-ins are not in addition to the work of a team leader; they are the work of a team leader,” said Ashley Goodall, former director of leader development at Deloitte Services in an article published by the Harvard Business Review.
Industry leaders around the world are replacing annual reviews with frequent check-ins between managers and employees. The list of pioneers includes companies such as Adobe, Dell, Microsoft, General Electric, Accenture, PwC and IBM.
Just like managers in the world’s most innovative companies, you can use 1-on-1s as a powerful tool to stay updated about issues and provide your team with ongoing support.
4) They provide the ideal environment to exchange feedback
Holding frequent 1-on-1s with your direct reports will empower you to foster a culture of honest feedback and open communication.
When you schedule 1-on-1s with members of your team, you save them from the awkwardness of having to request a specific time slot to raise an issue with you. They’ll know that their weekly or bi-weekly 1-on-1 is the ideal time to voice their concerns, ask about their performance and provide feedback.
As Mark Rabkin suggests in The Art of the Awkward 1:1, these meetings should be used to share private information that you wouldn’t discuss at a team meeting or address over Slack.
“Don’t talk about any topic that you could discuss in the open, among your team desks or in the cafe,” says Rabkin. “If it’s safe enough to be overheard — it’s not the right content for a 1:1.”
We discuss specific ways to ask for feedback and provide employees with constructive criticism in this article. Today, we want you to leave with this idea in mind:
When managers recognize the value of 1-on-1s, they discover the power to enhance team productivity, foster great work relationships, address issues before they become significant problems, and provide constructive criticism and praise.
In my opinion, those sound like great reasons to schedule your next 1-on-1.
Free Download: The Art Of The One-on-One Meeting
The definitive guide to the most misunderstood and yet powerful tool for managers. With a foreword by Lara Hogan.
Fellow helps managers and their teams have more effective 1-on-1s and team meetings, exchange feedback, and track goals — all in one place!
