One on one. What? Why?

You see that something is not going well, one of the developers stopped talking to the rest of the team. And you wonder why. He does not say a thing at the meeting nor if you ask him at his desk or in the corridor. Why?

Well, there are some basic things that you, as a manager, can do to find out, for instance:

• do nothing: it’s ok, he will get back, no stress
• do something: help him

“Do nothing” is easy, just observe, let it flow. But let’s look at the “do something” instead. To change the status quo one need to understand how and why did you get there in a first place. The goal is to get the developer to talk and share his thoughts. That is not always easy. He usually won’t talk in front of the team about this kind of things. Nor he will explain casually at the corridor or during friendly discussion with other people over football table. What he is looking for is private space with a person who he trust (let’s hope it is you) to share his thoughts and worries. The activity is called “one-on-one” (one to one, 1–2–1..) session. I intentionally did not use “meeting” here.

one-on-one

1: playing directly against a single opposing player

2: involving a direct encounter between one person and another

The important fact to realize is, the goal is rather number 2 from the description above. I’m going to share my thoughts and tips how to prepare and conduct such session successfully.

Preparation

What is sharing thoughts and worries based on? Think about it. Take your time. It is:

T. R. U. S. T.

That is first prerequisite toward successful one-on-one session. Work on it :)

Under what circumstances do people speak up/feel open to talk?

Comfort zone

Whatever that means:

• sit in the meeting room
• go out for lunch or coffee
• drive a car during business trip
• at the company party

Different setups work with different people. Experiment.

My personal tip: Devote one day for such sessions (depending on how many people you will talk to). Friday works quite well, as people are usually not that heavily concentrated to the job itself, 30–60 minutes per person, lunch or meeting room, once in 2–4 weeks.

Last but not least: stick to the schedule, be on time. No one likes rescheduled meetings, especially the ones that are so close to his inner self :)

Execution

I’m going to summarize some topics and areas that I believe are crucial to cover during one on one meetings to consider them productive.

Career development

Understand where the person is, what are his skills and goals. Is he engaged in what he does? Does he feel appreciated and see the means of his work? People needs to feel the progress. Track the goals and skills, evaluate and adjust. To support the consistency, link these goals and skills to organization strategy.

Feedback

Feedback helps everyone to get better. However, not everyone likes or wants it. You can share you feedback as a project manager, gather some from other colleagues, customers and share. Do it smart.

Improve team or company

You can’t change and control everything. But you can hear that and talk to people who can. Your role is to understand the need and address it, either within the team, where you definitely have some space to change things, or at company level, then you have your management to discuss it with.

Some high-level questions that might

• What is the one thing we should not avoid doing next month? Subsequently, what is the one thing we should avoid starting next month?
• If you were CEO, what is the first thing you would change?
• How would you change this meeting?
• How do you like your daily cooperation with the team?

Keep it simple, no need to ask complicated questions, just let the person speak.

Happiness

Is the person happy with what he does and how he does it? Does he or she has any worries? Is there any area of the company you would like to learn more about?

Conclusion

One on one session is good platform to establish and improve your relationships with team members and get some deeper understanding what they like and fight with, other then messy code or lousy documentation. Make sure you prepare for such meeting well, time it wisely, stick to the schedule, understand your team’s point of view, their goals, engagement, happiness, ideas for improvement and address these. Setting actionable steps also helps moving people feel the progress on next one on one session. Good luck with it!

What is your experience with one on one? Have you ever had one? What value does it bring?