High-impact one-on-ones

(electronic music) - [Woman] As a leader, your individual relationships with your team members is paramount. Those strong relationships result in more trust, and more transparency. - [Woman] You're right, and the other thing I think about is, you're going to make mistakes as a leader. - [Woman] Everyone does, course they do. - [Woman] And the better your relationship is with your team members, the more likely they're going to assume that you have good intentions, and it's going to be a lot easier for you to bounce back. - [Woman] The most crucial place where those relationships are formed are in one-on-one conversations, and there's a few practical best practices for that. And the first is, to set regular times with each team mate. If you wait to schedule them based on that week's calendar, or until there's time to schedule them, you're probably not going to do them as frequently as you'd like. - [Woman] So you want to get just a standing time. The other thing you want to do is you want to take notes. Take notes so that you can review your notes, prior to the next session, and you're going to be doing a lot of these one-on-ones, but for each of the people on your team, that's the only one that they're doing, so they shouldn't have to come in and ground you about what you talked about last time. You should know, and you should be ready. And that's where the notes come in. - [Woman] And there's a few tactical things you want to cover, in a one-on-one. First there's a tactical update. Run through the current projects, customers, deliverables, whatever, really specific on what is happening. You also want to cover some strategic priorities. It's important for you to continue to connect to a tactical position, but also the strategic goals of your department or your organization, and how those goals impact your customers. And lastly, some element of personal development. Doesn't have to be an extensive coaching session, or even a formal plan, but mentioning, "You know, hey, I read this article, "I thought you'd find it helpful for your project." Or, "What webinars are on your radar these days?" - [Woman] You want to be really conscious of how you spend your air time in these meetings. As a leader, you tell your team what's important to you, and what you think is important to your organization. So I got a lesson in this several years ago. I was working in my younger daughter's kindergarten class, and I was the parent volunteer, and the teacher asked the kids to make these projects for Mother's Day, and the teacher said, "What are your mommy's favorite things to do?" And all the kids wrote down words, or they drew pictures if they couldn't write about their mommy's favorite things. Well, I got the booklets, and my job was to staple them, and put a ribbon on them. So naturally, I read them. And according to a group of kindergartners, the majority of them said their mommys' favorite things to do were cleaning and sleeping. - [Woman] (laughs) Who are these women? - [Woman] That was my thought, who are these women? So I started asking, I said, "Tell me a little bit about your mommy, "and why you're so sure that "she loves cleaning and sleeping." (woman laughing) And the answer was really telling, and has some real leadership implications, because what the kids said was, "That's what she talks about. "She's always saying we got to clean up around here, "we got to clean up, and if she's not saying that, "she's saying, oh my gosh, I'm so tired." This is a powerful lesson in air time, because whatever you give the most air time to, is going to be what your team thinks is most important. I feel confident if I polled those mothers, they would not tell me that the loves of their life were cleaning, maybe sleeping, but not, but not cleaning. - [Woman] Definitely not cleaning. - [Woman] And so I think it's just really powerful as a leader, or a member, look at your air time. What are you giving the most voice to, in those conversations with your team? That's what they're going to think is the most important. - [Woman] You know, one-on-ones are like most relationship-based conversations. You get what you give, so using these moments as a time of intention, and connection, is how you build a strong team.