One-on-Ones Basics Summary

Actions to take: Following the advice from this blog, you now have all the information necessary to begin regular one-on-ones with your employees. Use this post as a reference point to previous entries.

To be a truly effective boss, the most important thing you can do is build a trusting relationship with each employee. By far the easiest way to do that is through routine one-on-one meetings. Better-boss.com recommends that those meetings are scheduled, 30 minutes, weekly, and rarely missed, with the first half of the meeting spent on whatever they want to discuss and the second half for whatever you want to discuss. All posts about one-on-ones assume this strategy.

When done correctly, regular, scheduled one-on-ones are the most valuable behavior you can engage in as a manager. This blog has now covered all the basic elements to help you run these meetings effectively.

We started with a post explaining why one-on-ones are the most important thing you do as a manager. Our next post gave an overview of the most important elements to conducting effective one-on-ones:

• One-on-ones are regularly scheduled.
• They are scheduled every week for almost all employees.
• The first half of the meeting is their time.
• The second half is your time. Throughout the week, you will prepare your list of topics to bring to the meeting.
• And the meetings are 30 minutes long, regardless of whether you have employees who talk your ear off or reticent employees.

The first one-on-one will go a little bit differently from the rest, as you are all getting used to this new process. Finally, if you ever need to justify the value of one-on-ones to your superiors, remember that one-on-ones are efficient.

Once you institute this kind of one-on-one meeting with your employees, communication will transform. You will know what is going on with your team in a way you didn't realize was possible. You will have a genuine understanding of exactly what your employees are doing and how they are doing it, rather than just vague notions of how they spend your time. They will stop feeling anxiety about coming to you with questions, instead looking at you as an important resource for helping make decisions about their tasks. 

This new level of communication will make every single aspect of your work better and easier.