One to One Meetings are Incredibly Effective for Driving Performance. So, Why Don’t They?
One to ones could be an effective tool to driving performance. They are not. Instead, they are cancelled, postponed, slimmed-down, or never done. If they are done, One to ones fail to be effective for one of 7 reasons:
- Lack of purpose
- Task focused and not people focused
- Poor preparation
- Inconsistency, often de-prioritised
- Lack of psychological safety
- No follow-up
- One-way
There’s a lot there, and we’re not going to solve this overnight, so let’s start small, practically, and bite off the most important reasons why. I believe a lack of purpose and too task focused are the main reasons why one to ones are not an effective tool for driving performance. Preparation will probably never happen as it’s like having an agenda for a meeting – we know we should, but we don’t. Inconsistency will be fixed when one to ones start adding value. Safety, and one-way, will be solved when we deal with the first two reasons; purpose and task focused, by using this simple approach.
The 3 F’s of One to Ones:
- Feeling
- Feedback
- PerFormance
These 3 are the keys to having meetings with your reports that drive performance.
Feelings: Ask how they are feeling about work. Each time, ask about their thoughts and feelings about work. What motivates them? What did they like doing this week. Not like doing. Imagine if one of your reports shared their feelings about work consistently, and together you aimed to create an environment where they could be happy. Yes, it sounds all very twee but here’s the fact – Happy people get more done. So, your job, is like a gardener creating soil for them to grow and removing the things that stop them growing, like weeds.
Feedback: Yes, it’s the ‘F-word’, and synonymous with telling people their crap. Change it. Instead, ask for one thing you could do to help them. This demonstrates leadership by you asking first. Share something positive they did this week and remember to add why. Not just ‘well done’ but why, because when people know what they do well they’ll do more of it. For example, ‘The presentation to client z was excellent because you were calm, confident, and your deck was images which were very engaging’. Do you know what they’ll do next time? Yep, the same.
PerFormance (Sorry about jamming the F in!): This is a discussion against SMART targets. Yes, most people have heard of SMART and yet only 1% of people have SMART targets. By having smart targets there is no ambiguity. It’s not a subjective discussion, instead it’s a discussion about how ‘we’ are going to deliver it. Your part of the ‘we’ is twofold; Getting things out of their way that stop them performing (weeding) and also creating the soil for them to grow. Maybe that’s coaching, mentoring, or training.
Don’t avoid. Start having a one to ones every 2 weeks.
This article was written by Darren A. Smith for The Grocer. Read the original published article here.
