The Best Tool to Improve the Performance of Your Team: One-on-One Meetings

Most peo­ple agree that a week­ly team meet­ing is com­mon prac­tice for most lead­ers and man­agers — crit­i­cal for ensur­ing that com­pa­ny goals are being achieved, and the team is cohe­sive and aligned around the most impor­tant things in the company.

As impor­tant, are one-on-one meet­ings with your direct reports. Done well, they are an incred­i­bly effec­tive tool:

• To make sure they are on track to achieve their top goals for the quar­ter, month and week
• To pro­vide per­son­al­ized lead­er­ship to each team mem­ber, to ensure they not only con­tin­ue to learn and grow and to help them to move quick­ly through their biggest challenges
• To get gran­u­lar about solv­ing tac­ti­cal issues and allow time for team mem­bers to bring up strug­gles and chal­lenges they may not be com­fort­able doing, in front of others
• To get a sense of how they’re doing per­son­al­ly and iden­ti­fy­ing any­thing else that you might need to know to help them to be at their best
• To talk about the company’s biggest oppor­tu­ni­ties, to pro­vide con­text and to recal­i­brate when needed.

I’ve seen hun­dreds of instances where a high­ly com­mit­ted A Play­er was pulled away from a $1,000,000 oppor­tu­ni­ty because they were chas­ing a $1,000 oppor­tu­ni­ty or con­sumed with fix­ing a $1,000 problem.

No mat­ter how smart or com­mit­ted you are, it’s very easy, in the heat of the moment, to get dis­tract­ed and if you don’t have that reg­u­lar forum to recal­i­brate you can end up run­ning in circles.

A leader’s job is to ensure that their team mem­bers have every­thing they need to achieve their goals and thrive.

One CEO we work with said he found the biggest dif­fer­ence in improv­ing the qual­i­ty of his week­ly one-on-ones – and estab­lish a bet­ter and more trust­ing rela­tion­ship – is when he is authen­tic and open about his own chal­lenges and things that he’s work­ing on.

He also said that, although he set aside an hour for each team mem­ber, some team mem­bers only need­ed five to fif­teen minutes.

Some­times, a week or two can be missed but if you don’t have a rhythm of talk­ing about the obsta­cles or chal­lenges, every week, you won’t have a forum to talk candidly.

Keep a Reg­u­lar Rhythm

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of not doing week­ly meet­ings, espe­cial­ly with your best peo­ple, because high per­form­ing A Play­ers are gen­er­al­ly very good at fig­ur­ing out what they need to do.

But with­out a reg­u­lar meet­ing dis­ci­pline, it makes it hard­er for some high per­form­ers to come to you if they are too proud to admit that they have a problem.

Both A Play­ers and low­er per­form­ers ben­e­fit from col­lab­o­ra­tion with thought part­ner: to hear their leader’s thoughts and per­spec­tives that help them to solve prob­lems more quick­ly, to max­i­mize oppor­tu­ni­ties or to pri­or­i­tize issues in dynam­ic environments.

Of course, you can still have a great rela­tion­ship with­out reg­u­lar one-on-one time. But soon­er or lat­er it will catch up with you when you’re no longer aligned around the table or need to solve key issues quick­ly and effectively.

A Sam­ple Week­ly 1 – 1 Agenda 

1. Check in

- Where are you at this week 0 – 10 (Work, Self/​Resilience & Life)

- Wins & progress

1. KPIs and Quar­ter Goals

- Cur­rent sta­tus and trend

- Chal­lenges, stucks & need­ed resources

- Next steps to ensure all on track to being achieved

1. Dis­cus­sion / Troubleshooting

2. Work­ing Together

- What else can I assist you with?

- How can I be a bet­ter man­ag­er and/​or resource for you?

1. Con­firm Decisions/​WWW

The Chal­lenge

• If you are hav­ing week­ly one-on-one meet­ings with all your team lead­ers, what’s work­ing well and how could you make them better?
• If you’re not, which team mem­bers do you think would ben­e­fit most, if you start­ed and why?

Addi­tion­al Blogs

• Team Meet­ings, Debates and the Pow­er of Bowl­ing Balls
• Meet­ing Mas­tery for CEOs
• The Week­ly Lead­er­ship Team Meeting
• Are You Real­ly Lis­ten­ing to What Peo­ple are Saying?

Old­er Podcasts

• How to Lever­age Col­lec­tive Intel­li­gence in Meetings
• How to Have More Effec­tive Meetings