Mastering One-on-One Meetings with Your Manager
Tips for Effective Communication with Your Manager
In the early days of my career, the meeting I used to worry the most about was my one-on-one (1:1) meeting with my manager. My understanding was that these meetings were for my manager to ask me about any topics they wished to discuss, which equated these meetings to pop quizzes in school - always unpredictable!
Effective 1:1 meetings with your manager can be an important part of your professional development and success. Your manager’s success is connected to yours. By thinking of them as your partner and leveraging their insights, you will improve the probability of your outcomes.
The best 1:1 meetings help both sides understand, unblock, and align on the path forward. Think of these meetings as “Las Vegas”: what happens here, stays here!
In this blog post, we'll look at how to have effective 1:1 meetings with your manager. By following these suggestions, you can make the most of your 1:1s and achieve your professional objectives.
Set an agenda
Agendas help you structure your conversation and prioritize the discussion. I maintain a canonical document for my 1:1s with my manager and use it to track my upcoming and previous 1:1 meetings in that document.
What does an effective agenda document include?
Live discussion
Categories of topics you want to discuss
Progress on goals
Prioritization alignment
Challenges / Blockers
Feedback
Follow ups from previous conversations
Asynchronous discussion / FYI
Updates on projects
Insights / learnings to consume
Requests for follow ups
By sharing this agenda with your manager ahead of time, you can help them prepare for the conversation and provide any necessary materials to help them assist you effectively. This will ensure that the meeting stays on track and addresses all areas where you need their input.
Active listening
Effective communication goes both ways. Listening is equivalent to hearing with the intent to understand and internalize the message.
Active listening helps build trust, promotes understanding, and fosters effective communication. When you actively listen, you demonstrate respect and show your manager that you value their input. Active listening allows you to clear up any confusion, ask pertinent questions, and comprehend the feedback and suggestions.This helps you drive a meaningful and constructive dialogue, which will in turn assist in getting to better outcomes with a higher probability.
Anticipate your manager’s need
Step into your manager’s shoes and ask yourself about the information he might need to represent the team in conversations with the leadership team. By changing the lens through which you look, you can help your manager represent your team’s progress and challenges.
To do so effectively, you need to understand your manager's priorities, and communication style. By anticipating your manager's needs, you can help stay ahead of deadlines, provide relevant information, and proactively address any issues that may come up. This will help enhance your manager's productivity, demonstrate your value, and build a strong professional relationship.
Managing time
Typical 1:1 conversations are 30 minutes long and occur once a week.
An effective 1:1 is where the manager and employee agree on the most important and time sensitive conversations to have. I have found the most effective 1:1 conversations to be those where both sides share their top list of topics to align, prioritize, and keep track of time such that they can discuss most, if not all, of the topics they intended to cover.
During busy times of the year, I have found it valuable to discuss top discussion topics prior to the conversation and determining if giving each other time back would be valuable.
Follow up
After your meeting, take some time to write down any action items you discussed. This will help you stay on track and make sure you're making progress towards your goals. The best time to start building the agenda for the next conversation is after your current 1:1 ends. By sharing the action items assigned to both sides, you ensure commitment to follow up on yours as well as give your manager the ability to add the action items assigned to them to their list. Your manager has potentially moved from your 1:1 conversation to other meetings and will appreciate the follow up on action items.
TL;DR
Effective 1:1s require preparation, active listening, managing time, and following up. By implementing these tips, you can build trust and rapport with your manager to help you achieve your professional goals and advance your career.
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