Why one-on-one meetings should be a manager’s secret weapon (and why they’re usually not)

Imagine you’ve just called customer service. You’ve finally got a human on the line, and you carefully explain your very complicated problem in detail. When you’re done, the rep says, “Sorry to hear that. Let me transfer you to my manager.” A new voice says, “Hi, what seems to be the problem?” 

How’s it feel?

Now imagine you’re an employee about to pop into your one-on-one with your manager. At last week’s meeting, you detailed three issues that are preventing you from making progress on an important long-term project. Your manager told you that they’d come to today’s meeting with  solutions for busting those blockers. When they get to the meeting, their first words are, “So...what are we talking about today?” 

How’s it feel?

What’s Sabotaging My One-On-One Meetings?

What went wrong in both of these scenarios? It’s pretty simple; important information was not captured or transferred across conversations. Why? Because there was no structure in place to make sure that important information was documented. As a result, in both cases, stakeholders important to the success of a business feel, pardon our French, “pissed and dissed.” Not what we’re going for. 

Effective One-On-One Meetings Signal Respect While Boosting Morale and Productivity

So what can we do about it? 

Documentation and structure are the magic ingredients that give any meeting — but especially one-on-one meetings — superpowers to:

• Build trust by making employees feel seen, heard and valued. The positive impact of an employee knowing their manager is really listening, capturing feedback and taking their input seriously cannot be overstated. 
• Accelerate results. When managers and employees both walk away from meetings with clear next steps and are both held accountable for taking them, energy and momentum builds. 
• Keep two-way communication happening. Regularly asking for and sharing feedback is one of the most important ways for managers to help their direct reports grow and improve. 

How To Make Every One-On-One Meeting More Awesome

Ready to bask in the glow of amazing one-on-one meetings? Us too.

We created an easy-to-use, customizable template — something we call a “Flow” in Assembly — to support better conversations and documentation that leads to way better results.

We’ve pre-built a series of questions for you to use in our One-On-One With Direct Reports Flow template — and we’ve made it easy for you to customize.

Our One-On-One With Direct Reports Flow is more than just a centralized place to document meetings — although it is that too. It also uses multiple formats — from open-ended questions to scale rankings to multiple choice questions — to help employees and managers:

• Document important goals, KPIs, and outcomes
• Identify and address blocks to progress
• Regularly ask big-picture questions 
• Get feedback including suggestions for improvement
• Have fun and break the ice with team activities

Ready To Try Out Our One-On-One Meeting Template? 

Sign up for free today and give our One-On-One Meeting Flow a try! You’ll get access to this and — bonus! — more than thirty other templates you can put to work today. 

Add structure, transparency, and accountability to one-on-one meetings. Easily edit, add and adjust Flow to match your preferences and needs. Get started today - we can’t wait to hear how it works for you!