Managers: Make Time for 1-on-1 Meetings
For a servant leader, a weekly 1:1 meeting cadence and pre-set agenda ensures you keep the needs of your team front & center.
Last year I wrote a post called 11 Promises From a Manager that was read by a startling number of people — tens of millions, by now. The thread is still getting comments to this day.
Sincerely, I must admit that the sudden virality of this particular post was completely mortifying. I hadn’t set out to write a pithy how-to guide from an unimpeachable source. It was meant as a confession — an expression of remorse for some of the worst errors I’d made over the years. (Truly, 11 promises aren’t nearly enough for that job. Eleven down, eleventy billion to go!)
I also wanted to make those promises to my future teammates, as a way of proving to myself that I was learning from my mistakes.
Of them, the most urgent topic on the list addressed the regular 1:1 meetings managers have with the people they lead. I was inspired to change my behavior after some hearing some tough but true feedback from a colleague.
That person made me stop and rethink some of my habits. That led to this new approach, which I’ve put to the test over the past few years. Today, I’d like to visit those topics from the list, and share with you some of the mistakes I’ve made and what I learned from them.
Checking In and Checking Out
For many years, I conducted 1:1s with my team — some call them “check-ins” — on an occasional, as-needed basis. I might meet individually with someone as often as every week or two. With others, we might go weeks or months between meetings. Of course I’d see these people in project, team, and all-hands meetings, so we were hardly strangers. As a manager, I felt my needs were being met.
I suppose I thought this laissez-faire approach showed my trust and confidence in the team. I wanted them to feel empowered to ask for a meeting when they needed it. It took me far too long to realize this, but eventually I realized this approach was not having the effect I intended.
Here’s some of the lessons that I learned:
When 1:1 meetings aren’t held regularly, people assume that the appearance of a 1:1 in their calendar meant impending bad news. In the days before the meeting, they’d worry about what it meant, and they’d spend most of the meeting beset with anxiety, waiting for the shoe to drop.
Looking back, I’ve very often felt hesitation at last, and aversion at most, to scheduling meetings with my boss. They’re always very busy and tough to schedule, just like me. My stomach dropped when I realized that I’d concluded what I expected to work for my teams wasn’t even working for me. I was practicing what I preached knowing full well it didn’t work.
In an exit interview, a teammate explained to me that she was felt anxious and uncertain about how to prepare for our very occasional meetings. When people asked me what they should prepare for a 1:1, I’d respond with something like “whatever you like!” I would have been infuriated by the same response from my manager. Again, I wanted more for my team that what I was getting, myself.
If for any reason I took to having more frequent 1-on-1 meetings with someone, it gave the appearance of favoritism. This was so tough for me to accept, because the effect was so completely disconnected from my intent. It still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, but I’ve also learned an important lesson: The misalignment of intent and effect is at the root of many if not most of the most common leadership gaffes.
In hindsight, I can see the selfish motivation behind trying to run a team with “as needed” 1-on-1 meetings. Mathematically, it made sense for me to optimize my time and energy around the kinds of meetings I wanted to have most: meetings with people who needed a specific thing from me, or from whom I had a specific need.
That might be efficient time management, but it’s not servant leadership. I knew I could do better.
Cadence + 5 Points
I developed my approach to manager 1:1s to address these issues. There are six elements to my approach to 1:1 meetings. The first relates to cadence and the next 5 are agenda items. The cadence is by far the more important element.
Weekly Cadence
I promise each person on my team that we’ll have weekly 1:1 meetings that I’ll never cancel. This one word — “never” — has generated more controversy than everything else on the list combined. I’ve been endlessly delighted by this, and I’m so grateful for all of the “well, actually” replies reminding me that no real manager can realistically promise anything ever.
I feel you, Dan and the others who weighed in similarly! I have very often demonstrated this very same very smug, snug anal-cranial fitment — “I’d love to be a good manager, but <reasons>.” It’s a little bit funny, and it’s a little bit sad that our expectations for how present and engaged a manager ought to be can fit into this very tiny space.
My friends, there is nothing unrealistic or unattainable about promising a weekly meeting. Every person within the sound of my shrill and shrieky voice deserves, at a minimum, one weekly 30-minute meeting with their boss. Managers, try this: Make the promise, then try to string together a track record of a few months of steady attendance. Then when they least expect it, cancel one meeting. Maybe you got Covid, or a flat tire, or arrested by the Policia Nacional in Ibiza. Doesn’t matter.
What you’ll find is that your lapse will be quickly forgotten by your team, although perhaps not by Interpol. That’s ok because nobody expects perfection — that’s not the point of a promise. If you hurt somebody’s feelings, you apologize and promise not to do it again even though you’re likely to re-offend.
The point of making a promise to your team is to deliberately set your intention to prioritize them. When they observe you making your best effort to do that — even with, you know, all the other crap going on — you’ll be delivering on the promise even when you break it.
This all reflects my belief that these meetings are very important. How important are they? To answer that, you first have to answer how important your people are to you, in relation to all of the non-people stuff you’re responsible for. I start out every week with the belief that 1:1’s with my team are the most important thing I have to do. Everything else must fit around them.
If that doesn’t sound feasible to you, I’d like to hear why. Has your own manager specifically told you to prioritize the other things in your calendar ahead of the psychological safety, productivity, and engagement of your own team?
If, like many people, your own manager doesn’t give you as much attention as I’m asking you to give your team, you are surely not alone. I know that makes it more difficult to make this kind of commitment. While you’re contemplating that, ask yourself this question: Are you content to be only as good of a manager as they are?
Making Time
Let’s say there are roughly 501 half-hour time slots in your average work week. Personally, I would like to feel that I’m among my manager’s 49 most important things to handle this week. When the meeting happens I’ll think “Top 2% this week, Matthew, yes!”
If you manage a team of five, you only need to make them more important than 8% of your priorities to meet with them all every week.
If you have 10 direct reports — well, shit! That’s too many. Still, that’s 5 hours from your work week. If you shorten the meetings to 20 minutes, it’s less than 10% of your time. With a stiff cup of coffee, you can do them all back-to-back on Tuesday before lunch.
A manager who can’t meet with their team individually each week is setting their own priorities based on convenience, preference, or comfort. Perhaps they’ve adopted priorities from a culture that prioritizes something other than people. That would not be unheard of. If that’s the case, this your chance to show that you want more for your team.
I can capture the ideas behind those first two promises in a single, simple statement:
My job is to prioritize my own activities each week according to the needs of my team — not the other way around.
The Agenda
A meeting without an agenda is the sign of an organizer without empathy for their colleagues. It’s always been quite unkind, and it’s gradually becoming socially unacceptable. If you’ve been getting away with it, know that everyone hates it.
(Managers who schedule meetings without a stated purpose must learn that it causes anxiety and stress when they do. I had a tough time believing that this was a real, legitimate thing for a very long time. Eventually I figured out that this is because I’ve felt safe in my job for a long time, because I’ve been a senior leader for a long time. If you haven’t picked up the signals about how the ambiguous behavior of leaders causes or exacerbates anxiety in their teams, try checking to see if your privileges are causing some interference.)
At one time, I believed that 1:1s are meant to be casual, informal discussions that range across a number of different topics, so perhaps there’s no need for an agenda.
Stick with that if it works for you and your team. I set an agenda not out of need, but to ensure that my intention for the meeting doesn’t get lost over time, or forgotten when new people join. Nothing on the agenda needs to be discussed every week (except the first one, more on that shortly.) I put them on this agenda to make it easier to ensure we talk about each of them on the regular.
The exception is the first item. I start every meeting with the question “Are you ok?” Usually the answer is “Yeah, I’m fine, how are you?” Sometimes the person is not ok, and when that’s the case there is nothing more important to discuss during your meeting. I always want to hold space for people to not be ok. This moment is my way of doing that.
The rest of this article contains the complete agenda which I include in the meeting invite, as a reminder of topics for discussion. To me, the weekly dependable cadence is the most important thing. It’s not as important which items you put on the agenda as it is that you set your intention for what the meeting is meant to accomplish.
One final point about these meetings: no status reports are expected. Sharing an update on projects isn’t forbidden, but I think it’s important to make it clear that this meeting is not meant for any “regular business” that could be done asynchronously (like email, chat, or DM) or shared in a team meeting. If I create the expectation that people are meant to provide a status report in this meeting, it will cause them to do work to prepare for it, which will cause the topics below to be abbreviated or skipped.
Feel free to copy & paste it into your agenda. If you do please preserve the link at the bottom, and/or give a link to this page.
1:1 Agenda
1. Wellness : Are you safe and well? There's no need to disclose any personal or private information to me, but I'm here to listen and help where I can. I particularly want to know if there are areas where your work is impacting your well-being: Do you feel physically and psychologically safe, and is your work and life being balanced in a way that is compatible with your mental health.
2. Readiness : Do you have what you need to succeed? Are the expectations clearly set for what you’re meant to accomplish? Are you clear on what those expectations are? Are there any supplies, materials, resources, partners, training, or any other precursors that you need to maximize your success?
3. Obstacles : Looking ahead, what is standing in your way? One of my primary roles as your manager is to help identify and clear obstacles that stand in the way of your progress. Let me know what you need from me to help me help you.
4. Recognition : Since we last met, what did you accomplish that you feel good about? Let’s not let too much time pass before we notice each other for what we’ve done. It’s no fun trying to look back over a year and try to gather up the tiny victories that indicate our progress. Let's try to mark down each win as we go.
5. Feedback : Feedback between us should not wait until the HR department says it’s time. Let’s not make the mistake of assuming we know what the other is thinking, and provide a little space for quick informal bits of feedback ("You were awesome in that meeting." or “You know what you could do for me?”)From: http://safeatwork.bizlet.org
There’s probably many more than 50 half-hour slots in a work week, but the math was nicer this way.