The Importance of 1-on-1 Sessions in Your Career
The 1-on-1 session is a meeting where only you and your manager have dedicated time to talk. This meeting is not only for junior to senior level, but even a team leader can have a 1-on-1 session with VP for example and the VP can have it with C level too.
Most people who don’t know about the importance of meeting with their manager just follow the flow without knowing what the purpose of the meeting is. Here are some gains that you can get from this meeting.
- Tell your contribution of your work so you can get acknowledgment.
- Avoid miscommunications with your manager.
- Have guidance, so you won’t take the wrong path in your career.
The thing that has to change in your mind is that 1-on-1 meeting is not your manager’s meeting, but it’s you who own the meeting. This is for your benefit, not your manager's. So you need to be active in the meeting by preparing some agenda, questions, or updates. This is the only time you can have a discussion. If you take a passive role then your manager will focus on their agenda and you will not get anything from it.
There are different styles of manager when doing a 1-on-1 meeting. So, here are some risk if you take a passive role.
- Take this chance as a regular meeting to check the progress of your work.
- See it as an occasional meeting to discuss career progression.
- The worst case is that the manager does not believe in 1-on-1 meetings at all.
“Your own boss should be one of your best sources of learning. But this might
not naturally be the case. Maybe he doesn’t see the day-to-day of your work,
or he’s busy putting out other fires, or he simply isn’t as proactive about
helping you guide your path as you’d like. Regardless, the person most
invested in your career path isn’t him; it’s you. Your own growth is in your
hands, so if you feel you aren’t learning from your manager, ask yourself what you can do to get the relationship that you want.”– Julie Zhuo, The Making of a Manager
Since you only have maybe 30 to 45 minutes per week scheduled for 1-on-1 meeting with your manager, you need to take the advantage of this time so you will gain something from your manager. It’s your responsibility for having the right topics that you want to learn from your manager. To make it happen you will need to create an agenda for the meeting. Here is the sample of 1-on-1 meeting’s agenda.
1. Personal Preamble
This section will increase your relationship with your manager. Knowing personal updates about your manager outside of work will help you understand their true nature in the office.
This is also a great time for you to share what is personal but relevant to work like why you have bad performance because you have a lot of disruption when working from home.
2. Your Agenda Section
This is where you tell your manager what they need to know. Use this time to give a report on what’s happened and what you have achieved since the last time you met. No need to be shy, when you do something that you are proud of, then let your manager know.
3. Your Manager’s Section
Here your manager maybe has an update that he needs to pass from his leader too to us but then just because this is your manager’s section doesn’t mean you will have a passive role in this section. You can take initiation to ask a feedback or information and even advice from your manager.
4. Priorities For the Week Ahead
This is one of the important sections on the agenda, so your discussion not only talks about reports on the past but a plan that you will do in the future too. It helps you so your plan is not out of track with your manager's expectations. Don’t expect your plan to remain unchanged — the whole point of discussing them with your manager is to make sure you are both aligned.
5. Development and Growth
This is the most important section on the agenda. Here you will have a discussion about your growth and future career development. This section will have talks like these.
- What does career growth make you promoted or your career trajectory looks like.
- Getting coaching or agreeing on your training skill requirement.
- How you keep motivated in your job.
6. Action Items
After a discussion, you need to discuss with your manager the action items so you may achieve the plan for your growth. Take note, do it, and report the progress to your manager in the next 1-on-1 meeting.
The impact that you get if you not sharing and aligning the priorities with your manager can be so bad, because:
- You may waste your time on work that your manager doesn’t see valuable, even though you working hard on that.
- You will have a bad performance review since you not meeting their expectations. Not because you’re not working hard, simply because you work on different priority.
To evade that happening you need to take responsibility to ensure that you’re working on the right stuff. Don’t rely too much on your manager to tell you what they want from you. The company's priorities can change over time. All of this means that your manager probably has expectations that they have not shared with you. So you can take initiative by asking the manager if you do the right thing or if should you change your priority.
“Efficiency is doing things right;
effectiveness is doing the right things.”– Camille Fournier, The Manager’s Path
I think a 1-on-1 meeting with your manager can affect your career to grow faster if you can take the advantage of it. By taking ownership of the meeting, having a good relationship, sharing all personal or working updates, and aligning the priority with your manager can make you work smart, not hard to achieve the growth of your career.
That’s all the importance of 1-on-1 meeting that I can share with you, please clap if you see this article as useful or drop a comment if you have any feedback.
Reference :
- Zhuo, J. the Art of Meeting with your Manager.
