One-on-One Meetings

As a young CEO I focused on customers, selling our products and gaining input for

improving them. I hired good people and expected them to do their jobs well. But they

weren’t getting much of my time during our brief and irregular meetings and that wasn’t

working. So I turned to what most management experts consider a best practice: weekly

1:1 meetings with my Direct Reports. I’ve never turned back, though I have continually

improved the process.

If done well, weekly 1:1s build and sustain relationships. That’s critical because it

creates a reservoir of goodwill you can draw upon when things get tough. Weekly 1:1s

also ensure priorities are aligned and concerns are addressed early. They distinguish

between urgent and important issues and allow them to be dealt with appropriately. And

they make both the manager and the Report better.

I find that using a report template makes these meetings 2X more productive and

5X more efficient. My current version is below. There’s a great deal of management

philosophy and execution packed into that single page. My Reports tell me that once

they complete the template the first time it typically takes about 10-12 minutes to update

it each week. It takes me just 3-4 minutes to read and by doing so eliminates the need

to discuss 80-90% of the items listed. It also serves as an automatic agenda. The

meeting then focuses only on the most important items and the specific input the report

most needs from me. 

Below I explain why I include each element of the report and how I use it. You can copy

mine, modify it, or create your own, but I strongly encourage you to follow two

principles: Hold regularly scheduled 1:1 meetings with each of your Direct

Reports and use a reporting template to make those meetings much more

productive.

My Meeting Report Template

In my version, Temperature Gauge is a weekly indication of how things are going in

terms of job success. Even having the simple Green-Yellow-Red indicator ensures that

I’ll know if there’s a problem. It’s surprising how many people say things are fine when

asked how the job is going but will use Yellow or Red when forced to answer

categorically.

Well-Being Grade reflects how the Report is feeling related to whole-person health.

Obviously if it’s not B or above I ask about that right away. This both shows that I care

and helps me understand if something is inhibiting their ability to perform well.  

Key Goals are core objectives/responsibilities of the job. These don’t change often

because they are essential to the position and usually are either long-term or ongoing.

They have status/updates listed for each of them, but these may or may not be necessary to track weekly. For example, one goal for a marketing director might be to

increase the number of customer accounts by 15% over the next 12 months.  

Major Concerns are anything the Report is concerned about. It’s OK if there are fewer

than 3 – even if there are none – but I tell my Reports that they better not come to me

with a problem that has been ongoing for more than a few weeks that hasn’t shown up

in this section. Before I did this Reports often would delay telling me about an issue,

perhaps for fear that it would reflect poorly on them or because they thought I’d ask

them to resolve it in a way they didn’t want. This way makes it much more likely that

we’ll be able to address a problem before it gets serious.

Priorities for the Week aren’t a to-do list. They represent what most needs to be done

over the next seven days. It’s a good way to check that both manager and Report are

on the same page about what’s important. Typically there will be many other tasks and

responsibilities the Report will work on that don’t rise to the level of top priority.

The Manager Input Needed section should include whatever the Report most needs to

discuss with the manager. Any of the prior items may be more important but won’t

necessarily merit discussion. I always take this section seriously and usually start with it

during the meeting since I know if I don’t cover those issues the Report won’t be

satisfied and the meeting won’t be a success. 

Staff Updates should include all staff who are supervised directly by the Report. The

chart should show where the manager is most trying to help the Report improve

(professional development) as well as a weekly performance rating. I typically use A-F

but any explicit system can work; just don’t use anything vague and qualitative. I

understand what it means if a Report has moved from A- to B-, but can’t easily interpret

if they’ve gone from fine to OK. As with concerns, I want to know quickly if there are any

performance problems (or emerging stars). It’s very common for a manager to avoid

telling the boss that one of their Reports isn’t doing well because it can look bad for

them and (especially) because they’ll then have the unpleasant task of dealing with a

performance problem. Practically everyone puts that off, and if they eventually need to

fire the Report they nearly always realize/admit that they did so too late. A good

manager will push hard for Report to identify and acknowledge performance issues and

to deal with them quickly, whether by (ideally) improving the performance and, if they

can’t, making a change. This section often engenders needed conversations; I

frequently would ask why, if the manager was having trouble with a Report, they hadn’t

adjusted the letter grade. 

Other Issues are anything else the Report feels should be included. Most of the time

this section is blank.

Feedback is mainly a reminder to provide feedback for anything observed/experienced

over the past week. The Report completes the section for me in writing and during the

meeting I provide oral feedback for the Report. I try hard to create a culture of frequent,

helpful feedback. This item forces me to more closely observe my Reports and to try to

provide some combination of confirming, correcting, or suggesting feedback every

week. It also expresses the expectation that my Reports will provide me with feedback

as well, modeling that everyone can improve and that all of us can help one another in

that way. 

Finally, Professional Development lists the key areas for improvement the Report is

pursuing, and how they are doing it. Typically this changes only a few times a year, but

it’s a good reminder that we are continually engaged in self-improvement.