Almost all leaders, managers, and employees working in a company are familiar with the 1:1.
A 30min ‘check-in’ organised by a manager at a regular frequency, designed to catch up with each member of their team.
Often employees dread these meetings because it involves the manager spending ~85% of the time talking at them, providing updates they deem to be important, giving their opinions, and in the worst cases, micromanaging and telling the employee how to do their job.
In these 1:1’s you’ll hear statements like:
- “Here’s what you should be focussing on…”
- “If I were you…”
- “Could you just…”
These managers use it as a chance to disseminate information and their opinions. They fail to consider what it might be like to be the employee, hence, dread.
The opportunity is to remove this dread by using the 1:1 as a chance to disseminate culture. A culture that leads with empathy and a curiosity to find out what it’s like to be the employee. A culture that says: I care about you and what you have to say.
To do so, a leader must flip the ratio on its head and do ~15% of the talking, spending majority of the time asking questions and holding space for their employees.
In these 1:1’s you’ll hear questions like:
- What are you working on?
- Where do you feel stuck?
- How can I best support you?
Once upon a time, I thought wearing a visor was cool. Thankfully I reconsidered this trend. Now is the opportunity to do the same with our 1:1’s and create connection over dread.