Since 2022, Steven Rogelberg has written our “The Organizational Psychologist’s Couch” segment. We’re excited to share the following excerpt from his new book, Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings.
The best leaders recognize that 1:1s are not an add-on to the job; 1:1s ARE the job of a leader. Once a leader realizes and accepts this fully, the potential of 1:1s for transforming their people and their team can start to become realized.
You might already be getting heartburn at the thought of having more meetings. As someone who pretty much despises meetings (when they’re poorly run), I get it. But keep in mind, well-executed 1:1s should wind up saving you time by creating better alignment in your team, higher performing directs, and fewer spontaneous interruptions to your workday.
Also, 1:1s promote employee engagement, ultimately decreasing turnover. Think about how much time and resources are spent finding and onboarding new employees. Much of that can be avoided by having effectively conducted 1:1s.
With that said, 1:1s do mean having more meetings on your calendar, but these meetings are warranted and can increase efficiency in the long run.
In the simplest sense, 1:1s refer to a regular and recurring time held between a manager and their direct to discuss topics such as the direct’s well-being, motivation, productivity, roadblocks, priorities, clarity of roles/assignments, alignment with other work activities, goals, coordination with others/the team, employee development, and career planning. These meetings are designed to grow and strengthen your relationship with your directs through effective, honest, and supportive communication.
Ultimately, 1:1s serve to meet the practical needs of your directs, but also address their personal needs. Practical needs refer to the support directs require to effectively conduct, prioritize, and execute their work both in the present moment and over time. Personal needs refer to directs’ inherent need to be treated in a considerate way, including the need to feel respected, trusted, supported, and valued.
Overall, despite you driving the process to create a dedicated space on the calendar to truly engage with your people, for the most part, this is the direct’s meeting. You certainly influence what is discussed and the logistics, but, the meeting should be dominated by topics of importance to the team member’s needs, concerns, and hopes. This is key to 1:1s — they are generally the team member’s meeting, orchestrated and supported by you.
Given this definition, 1:1s are not:
- An emergency meeting to address a problem that has emerged or to put out an unexpected fire.
- A meeting for you to share a to-do list with your direct.
- A meeting to reprimand your direct.
- A meeting for you to just micromanage your direct.
It cannot be stressed enough that although successful and regular 1:1s move work forward in the short term, they also promote critical outcomes that extend beyond day-to-day work. For instance, 1:1s support employee growth and development, establish trust, build the foundations of working relationships, and further still, influence how a team member fundamentally experiences you, their job, and the organization.
It is not hyperbolic (well, maybe it’s a little hyperbolic) to say that 1:1s — done well — have the potential to dramatically alter the work lives and career progression of direct reports. And although you can certainly find people who don’t feel this way about 1:1s, my contention is that this view is a result of having poor experiences with 1:1s.
In fact, the research is quite clear that 1:1s are arguably one of the most important activities you can do as a leader. More specifically, regularly scheduled and successful 1:1s are essential to these seven interconnected and important outcomes: employee engagement, team member success, manager success, building relationships, diversity and inclusion, promoting employee growth and development, and life satisfaction.
Think about what foregoing 1:1s would convey to your people. As humans, we observe others’ actions (or lack thereof) and ascribe meaning to them.
Unfortunately, as we seek to make sense of what we see or don’t see, research demonstrates that we are subject to a distortion bias known as the fundamental attribution error. Here is an example of this bias at play: A colleague passes you in the hallway but avoids eye contact or saying hello. Research shows that, most of the time, people would explain this behavior in dispositional terms and assume their colleague is rude, self-centered, or just aloof. These dispositional attributions tend to prevail over more nuanced situational explanations such as assuming that your colleague was distracted by an unexpected deadline or bad news.
Put into the context of 1:1s, what attribution will your people make if you are not having 1:1s and other managers are? Or, what if you are only having 1:1s with a select few of your directs because their job differs and you decided they need 1:1s more than your other employees? Most likely, you will inadvertently foster the impression that you don’t really care about your directs and their success or that you only care about the success of a select few, even if you had the best of intentions in making these decisions.
From Glad We Met by Steven G. Rogelberg. Copyright © 2024 by Steven Rogelberg and published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
