Avoid these 5 most common mistakes managers make when preparing one-on-one meetings

Photo by Nik MacMillan on Unsplash

Employee productivity in the workplace is directly affected by their level of engagement. Employee engagement is predominantly affected by the interactions they have with their manager or team leader. Managers and team leaders are seldom aware of their quintessential influence on employee engagement (and therefor retention) and are even less equipped to positively influence productivity outcomes with their staff.

“Managers account for at least 70% of variance in employee engagement scores” — Jim Harter, Gallup

One underestimated yet powerful way managers can maintain or improve employee engagement is through one-on-one meetings. One-on-one meetings give the unique opportunity for managers to connect with their employee on a personal level and to make them feel empowered, therefor maximizing their staff’s level of engagement and productivity.

“People leave managers, not companies” — Marcus Buckingham

Here are five ways managers don’t run one-on-one meetings correctly and what they should do instead.

Mistake #1 — One-on-one meetings aren’t an operations review session, they should instead be about connecting and understanding how the employee sees their life at work.

Most managers confuse operations review sessions and employee management sessions. Most one-on-one are about urgent operational matters, issues with other departments, course correcting productivity issues, providing more input on how things should be done or giving more information on current matters. That’s fine if your goal is to review the work that needs to get done. But it’s not the same as reviewing your employee’s level of engagement and performance doing the work.

Managers need to carve out time to separate operations related meetings and one-on-one time with their employees. One-on-one meetings don’t need to happen every week and don’t need to be long. But they should be their own meeting with the objective of connecting with the employee and making them feel empowered.

Can’t make the time? Think about the cost of not managing your team’s engagement.

“Gallup estimates the cost of poor management and lost productivity from employees in the U.S. who are not engaged or actively disengaged to be between $960 billion and $1.2 trillion per year.” (Source Gallup)

Other estimates suggest that it costs a company 6 to 9 months of the employee’s salary to replace someone who quits, and that is without the increase stress on the reduced team. The cost and productivity loss are even more acute if your industry is experiencing talent shortage.

Key takeaways:

Conduct two separate meetings:

• One operations review meeting (probably what your current one-on-one is about) ;
• One separate and true to its purpose one-on-one meeting where you’ll be focusing on connecting with the employee and making them feel empowered.

Mistake #2 — Managers don’t focus on how the employee should feel at the end of a one-on-one meeting.

Performance reviews aside (which usually happen once or twice a year), most managers approach their one-on-one meetings as either a moment to catch up on work related issues and priorities (at best) or as something they feel they have to do to be a good manager (at worst) where they either do a clumsy performance review pointing out all the issues about the employee, or they try to have a touchy-feely and often awkward conversation about the employee’s personal life.

One-on-one meetings are not about the manager. They’re about the employee. More precisely, it’s about how an employee feels after their meeting with their manager.

Employee engagement, including yours as a manager, depends on how they feel in the workplace. Highly engaged employees feel this way when coming to work if asked:

• I feel I have been listened to, and heard ;
• I feel valued, I feel supported ;
• I feel safe, I feel cared for ;
• I am growing and being grown.

How well do you think you’re doing on making your staff feel heard and empowered?

One-on-one meetings are a manager’s stage to have conversations that reveal and fuel employee engagement through communication that makes the employee feel empowered.

Think about your meetings with the manager you report to. Do you walk out from your one-on-ones with them feeling empowered, neutral or disheartened?

Do you want your staff to feel disheartened or empowered? It’s all about your employee when you meet them one-on-one, and it should be all about you when you’re meeting with your own boss.

Key takeaways:

It’s all about the employee and how they’re feeling at work during one-on-one meetings. Check-in on how they’re doing at work in general, and do your best to make them feel like they’ve been heard, valued, and empowered when they walk out at the end of the meeting. You will have mitigated the major reason employees disengage at work and quit: because they feel their boss doesn’t care about them and the way they feel.

Mistake #3 — Managers don’t ask the right questions when they try to connect with employees during one-on-one meetings.

Most managers will start their meetings by asking how the employee is doing. Most employees will say they’re fine. Next, managers will switch to the meeting’s agenda (when there’s one) or the current burning work-related topics. Some thoughtful managers will ask more personal questions to start the meeting in a friendly manner asking about family, life, or weekend activities. But after five minutes, they’ll usually get down to business.

The purpose of the one-on-one meeting is to assess and influence the level of motivation and engagement of your staff. In order to do so you want to create a psychologically safe space to talk about the way the employee feels about different aspects of their work life, personally, in their team, and in the company.

The objective of one-on-one meetings for managers should be to get a sense of how the employee feels about the work they have to do, and about their work environment (including interactions with their colleagues, and manager).

In order to gain those insights, managers need to ask a different type of questions and conduct the meeting with a focus on active listening, non judgement, and a readiness to discuss topics with an open mind. Manager must want employees to feel heard, respected, and positive about the meeting.

Here are a few questions that fuel meaningful conversations about the employee’s work life. Some questions lead to a follow up questions to review another aspects of the topic. Always start with positive aspects of work and then follow up with the challenging parts.

The questions are in two categories: relevant for every one-on-one meeting, and relevant to ask once a quarter (to your discretion).

Questions for every one-on-one meeting (I mention the “must-haves” if you were to only ask three questions and their follow ups per meeting):

• [Must have] “What’s been the most fun to work on lately, and why?” followed up by: “What’s been the least fun to work on lately and why?”
• [Must have] “What were some highlights working with the team lately?” followed up by: “What were some challenges working with the team lately?”
• “Do you feel that your team has your back?” followed up by: “Do you feel that your manager has your back?”
• “What important work are you focusing on right now?” followed up by: “Are you facing any challenges in that endeavour?” followed up by: “Were you able to count on your team or on me to help you out?”
• [Must have] “What challenges have you had lately at work?” followed up by: “Were you able to count on your team or on me to help you out?”
• “In your work, what would you like to do more of?” followed up by: “And do less of?”
• “Are there any accommodations or tools you’d need to be more productive?”
• [Must have] “Do you feel that I’m available and supportive enough when you need my help?”

Questions you can ask once a month or quarterly during your regular one-on-one meetings:

• “What are things you do that you feel are a waste of time?” followed up by: “Who do you think should do these things?” or “What could be done so that you don’t have to do these things anymore?”
• “Is it clear to you what is expected from you to increase your performance and eligibility for a raise or a promotion?”
• “Is there anything I said that I would do to support you and that I haven’t done or follow-up on that I should be reminded of?” — here you should apologize for not having follow up on your word.
• “Do you think that you get enough feedback from me on your work performance?”
• “If you had a magic wand, what would you fix in our team, in our department, or in the company?”

If you have one-on-one meetings with employees that are themselves managers, ask these questions:

• “What do you like about managing your team?” followed up by “What do you find challenging about managing your team?” followed up by “How can I help you address the challenges you’re facing with managing your team?”
• “What are some accomplishments from your team that you’re proud of lately?” followed up by “What are some challenges your team is facing lately?” followed up by “How are you helping your team deal with these challenges?” followed up by “How can I help you address the challenges your team is facing?”
• “Do you find that you spend enough time supporting your team” followed up “What could be done to give you more time to support them?”

While asking these questions, managers should be extremely mindful about being appropriate and respectful of the employee’s personal boundaries. The purpose of these questions is to better understand the employee’s point of view, not be judgemental and react in the moment to what they say.

Key takeaways:

During one-on-one meetings, managers should ask questions about an employee’s life at work rather than about the work at hand. Managers should be mindful and ask meaningful questions about the highlights and challenges the employee is facing at work in general to ensure that they feel heard, valued, supported, and cared for.

When one-on-one meetings are with managers, questions should include how these managers feels about dealing with their teams.

Mistake #4 — Managers don’t calibrate frequency and duration appropriately when planning one-on-one meetings.

Depending on their level of seniority, employees tend to have one-on-one meetings on a weekly or bi-weekly basis (for entry level positions), bi-weekly or monthly (senior or manager level), monthly or quarterly (for senior management levels). Usually the frequency doesn’t matter much as these meetings tend to be an operations review rather than an opportunity to have a meaningful conversation about the employee’s engagement at work.

Operations reviews are important and should remain as you see fit. One-on-one meetings that foster employee engagement on the other hand don’t have to be long. They also don’t need to happen on a weekly basis as managers might want to leave some time for work life to unravel in between meetings. Bi-weekly to monthly one-on-ones, for 30 minutes, is a good starting point. At minimum once a month. Beyond a month might create too much of a disconnect between what an employee has experienced at work, and the opportunity for the manager to talk about it and address any issues or concerns a given situation or experience. If managers feel that more time is needed after a one-on-one meeting, they should follow up quickly with an ad hoc meeting to make sure any unfinished issue can be properly addressed.

Key takeaways:

One-on-one meetings aren’t operations reviews and don’t need to happen weekly. Managers want to let “life at work” unfold for a couple weeks at least to catch up on how an employee feels at work and if their situation has evolved. 30 min, once every too weeks or at least once a month is an appropriate pace.

Mistake #5 — Managers care about their employees only during one-on-one meetings.

Scheduling regular one-on-one meetings is a best practice that is usually enforced in the workplace by HR or senior management. It forces busy managers to spend time with each and every employee in their team. While some managers view this as an obligation, others might be frustrated because they feel it’s not enough time spent with their people.

Caring for employees and making them feel heard and empowered shouldn’t only happen in one-on-one meetings. Often busy managers will see one of their staff showing anxiety and overwhelm in their body language, and instead of finding time in the near future (that day or the next at latest), they take a mental note to review this at their next one-on-one. Which they might forget about if the meeting is too far in the future.

The truth is that manager shouldn’t manage how they’re employees are doing only during one-on-ones. They should check-in more regularly. They should carve out the time if they see a team member going through a rough patch and take a few minutes, over coffee even, to debrief with them and let them vent. It might be nothing, or it might me their last bad experience after a long series before they put in their resignation taking you completely by surprise.

Also, if one-on-one meetings are spaced out to far in between, you might miss some important cues related to employee moral, collaboration issues, or disgruntlement about the dynamics with other teams. Checking in regularly is the most effective way to take the pulse of the team and anticipate or nip in the bud the escalation of issues.

Caring for their staff should be a manager’s top priority but more than often it’s something they feel comes in the way of all the other demands and emergencies that they have to address. There is this false sense that addressing a task related issue, or seizing an opportunity, is more important than spotting when an employee needs their manager’s support.

“Employees who receive daily feedback from their manager are 3x more likely to be engaged than those who receive feedback once a year or less.” (Source Gallup)

In our busy work lives, we tend to jump on short term wins and give less importance to the work we do on the people we manage. Actively managing your staff leads to more team cohesion, steady increase in productivity and resilience, and overall a great team spirit that increases employee engagement and retention.

Key takeaways:

Keep an eye open and make some time beyond your scheduled one-on-one meetings to attend to your team’s needs. Showing your team that you’re constantly caring for them rather than once every so often during your one-on-ones is what managers should be doing more of to maximize employee engagement.

If you’re a manager, flip this on its head. Unless you’re the CEO of the company, you’re probably being managed too. Does your boss make these mistakes? How do you feel after your one-on-one meetings? Do you walk out more engaged with your team and the company? Would your one-on-ones improve if your boss avoided these 5 mistakes?

There’s no going back to your old ways now that you know how to conduct more meaningful and impactful one-on-one meetings with your staff. Go make a difference in the lives of the people you work with and who work for you. Be an awesome and more competent people manager!

“Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person — not just an employee — are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.” — Anne M. Mulcahy, former CEO, Xerox