The Perfect Ending for a 1:1 Meeting

Episode #334 The Perfect Ending for a 1:1 Meeting

HAVE PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS SEEN THEIR DAY?

Performance management gets a bad rap these days. There’s a school of thought that formal performance management processes do more harm than good – And in the hands of an inept leader working in a poor culture, that’s probably true.

But I’m a huge believer in the power of 1:1 meetings. Even though formal performance meetings are just one example, some leaders use the trend against performance management as an excuse for not conducting 1:1 meetings at all.

There’s a host of compelling reasons for stepping up your game on 1:1 meetings, and in today’s newsletter, I look at some of these in detail.

I’m also going to help you to sharpen your focus by defining the primary objective of a performance discussion. And – the big bonus – I’ll give you a practical technique for closing your 1:1 meetings that’s going to leave your people with unquestioning clarity.

This is going to radically improve the probability that the individual delivers on the commitments they make.

1:1 MEETINGS ARE THE BACKBONE OF PERFORMANCE

Over the last several years, we’ve seen a movement away from 1:1 meetings between leaders and their people. Part of this might have been due to Covid, but many large companies here in the US are abandoning formal performance evaluation systems altogether.

The rationale for this is that the cost of implementing these systems, and the damage they can do in the hands of inept leaders, outweigh any benefits that might have been achieved.

Au contraire.

For those of you who don’t know me that well, let me nail my colors to the mast right up front. I am an avid believer in the need for leaders to manage the performance and, when necessary, the behavior of their people.

Without this, there’s no pressure to achieve a higher standard… there’s no push for excellence… there’s no drive to be better… you end up with an ‘all care, no responsibility’ culture, where everyone is simply allowed to be who they are!

Some leaders rationalize this by calling it “empathetic leadership”. They camouflage their inaction with a noble intent to put people ahead of profits. For my part, I call it negligence, and I’ll explain why shortly.

You might get away with abandoning a performance focus in an organization that’s sheltered from the rigors of competition – so, think government agencies or regulated monopoly businesses – but if you’re at all serious about optimizing your team’s performance, you need to create a culture that promotes:

• An ongoing performance focus;
• Setting a standard of excellence that everyone strives for – and meets;
• Clearly differentiating between your highest performers and your average performers; and
• A no tourists policy, where the people who choose not to meet the standard you’re setting are freed up to be successful in another organization.

THE PHILOSOPHY BEHIND 1:1 MEETINGS

It’s much easier to embrace 1:1 meetings if you approach leadership with the right philosophical outlook.

For example, if you think that you should never offend anyone, never ask anything of them and never criticize them – or if you feel as though you should treat everyone exactly the same regardless of their performance and their behavioral choices – you may not see a pressing need to hold 1:1 meetings.

If this is how you see the world, then you should feel free to just sit back and relax, as you wallow in your team’s mediocrity. Of course, you are going to rationalize this in your head and, aided by the lack of any comparison, you’ll develop unshakable confidence that you’ve built a high-performing team.

If this is you, let’s face it, it’s highly unlikely that you are going to agree with anything that I say from this point on. So if you stop reading now, you can save yourself 10 or 15 minutes.

However, if you believe in stretching people to be their best… in being a good steward of the resources your organization entrusts to you… in constantly looking for ways to improve your team’s performance… then you’ll no doubt see the value of using the 1:1 meeting as your foundation.

If you want to create a culture of performance, the 1:1 conversation is an essential building block for that. Without it, you’re going nowhere. Every team member has to be part of the conversation about improving performance, both collectively and individually.

In the last five years, we’ve produced a number of podcast episodes looking at what it takes to achieve true high performance. What defines successful people and teams? What differentiates the people who are at the very top of their game from everyone else?

Unfortunately, most of the conventional wisdom out there is bullsh!t. You can’t do it just by expecting that you can “look after your people and they’ll look after the business”, as many like to bastardize the Richard Branson quote. You can’t do it simply by hiring great people and getting out of their way.

These things are necessary, but they’re not sufficient.

If you want to eke out exceptional performance, it’s incredibly hard. And any leader who’s serious about it is going to have to do some hard things.

So, why have 1:1 meetings at all? 1:1s come in many shapes and sizes, of course. I’m referring specifically to the meetings you have with your people where you talk about their work – where you help them solve problems, keep them on track, and give them feedback about how they’re going.

I’m not just talking about annual performance reviews, although these are definitely part of the overall cadence. I’m talking about every 1:1 interaction, from a corridor conversation, to a coffee catch-up, to a formally scheduled meeting.

FIVE COMPELLING REASONS TO CONDUCT REGULAR 1:1s

I’m going to give you five compelling reasons why you should focus a disproportionate amount of your time and energy into 1:1 meetings with your people.

1. You need to build a trust relationship with your team. Any decent leader knows how important it is to have a connection with the individuals they lead. You won’t always click with everyone the same way, which is to be expected. But it’s important that you have a friendly and respectful working relationship with every single person you lead. Really good working relationships are underpinned by trust. Trust is built in your personal interactions where you get to know your people, and they get to know you.
2. They’re the vehicle that allows you to provide clarity of purpose and mission for every individual. This is where you align people’s individual goals with the goals of the team, and the company. One of the biggest issues I saw in my corporate career was that people simply didn’t have a clear enough understanding of what they were trying to achieve. So, in good faith, they set out to do the best they could. And in many cases, this was actually counterproductive. 1:1 meetings are your forum for clarifying expectations for the what, when, and how something needs to be delivered. But, equally importantly, it’s your opportunity to draw the links between the company’s purpose and strategy, and how your people’s day-to-day work contributes to this.
3. It’s an opportunity for your people to work out exactly where they stand. We know from decades of relatively credible research that children are much happier when they have strong boundaries. Look, we don’t really change that much as we get older. We all like clear boundaries, and your 1:1 meetings are where you get to set those boundaries for your people. This is where you describe the minimum acceptable standard. It’s where you make your expectations as clear as possible. It’s also where you take the opportunity to orient each individual’s expectations so that they’re more closely aligned with the reality of their situation. This is absolutely vital. If people don’t know what your expectations are, how on earth do you expect them to deliver on them? A lot of leaders talk about setting their people up for success, right? Well, this is where it begins. Once people clearly understand your expectations, you can calibrate their actual performance against those expectations. If you don’t do this, you’ll never liberate your people to do their best work.
4. This is where you build your people’s vision for their future. If you’re smart, you’ll use a 1:1 meeting to let people know what’s possible for them, individually. What do you see as their ultimate potential, and what would they have to do to get there? How can you help them to unlock that potential and reach their ultimate goals? What do they need to do to get to where they want to go? And what are you prepared to do to help them achieve that?
5. This is where you stretch your people to be their best. 1:1 meetings give you the opportunity to see how far you can stretch each person. Knowing them individually enables you to determine when they’re under too much pressure, or perhaps to see where they have more capacity. This is a core leadership imperative.
   You need to stretch people so that they’re challenged, and they feel as though they’re achieving something difficult and worthwhile. Here’s something really important if you don’t already know it – this is the source of every individual’s self-esteem, job satisfaction, and longer-term happiness with their work.

YOU HAVE ONE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE

There are the five compelling reasons to be diligent about conducting 1:1s. Having read that, you may be feeling as though you need to step it up a bit. And if you haven’t already got a strong commitment to 1:1s, your instincts may tell you that you are already doing too many. When that happens, you’ll know that you’re probably about halfway to where you need to be!

So, we know all the reasons why we should do 1:1 meetings with our people. Now, I want to focus you on your primary objective for a 1:1 meeting. And I’m going to make this really simple because… it really is!

Obviously, you’ll have a huge range of subjects that you might cover in any given 1:1:

• Sometimes they’ll be coaching sessions;
• Often you’ll be helping an individual to solve a problem;
• You may be giving them feedback on something you’ve observed with the intent of helping them to grow and develop;
• You may be trying to boost their motivation by painting the vision;
• You may be talking about resource shortages; or
• Possibly, talking about how they can retain a critical individual in their team who has emerged as a flight risk.

There’s a limitless number of things you can (and will) talk about.

I want to split this into two separate categories to help us think through the problem.

1. The meeting is not a feedback meeting. If this is the case, your primary objective is this; you want to walk out with a better understanding of the person than you walked in with. So, you need to listen.
   You need to work out what’s going on beneath the issue at hand, which might just be a superficial manifestation of their core problem. This is where you get to learn about a person’s capability, their stress levels, how they approach problems, how diligent they are, and where their focus will naturally shift towards if you don’t redirect them.
   The better you understand each individual’s capacity and capability, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to achieve high performance. It’s a prerequisite for getting yourself out of the weeds so that you can confidently let them do their job, and you can focus on yours. So, that’s it. Learn to listen intently.
2. The meeting is a feedback meeting. In this case, your objective is even simpler: you want the individual to get a crystal-clear understanding of that feedback, whatever it is. So your job is simply to convey the message as clearly as possible – whatever you need to do in terms of message, or language, or conversation, then do it.
   I’ve seen so many cases where the leader just muddies the water, and they’ll say to me, “Oh, Marty, I’ve already given that person feedback.” But because they tried to soften the blow for the individual, or to reduce the level of conflict in the conversation to make themselves feel more comfortable, the message was too diluted to land effectively.
   The individual walks out with a completely skewed view of the message that they were supposed to receive. In my view, this is worse than not giving feedback at all because, instead of just leaving uncertainty, it creates a massive disconnect that neither person even realizes is there.
   If you’re a leader who gives feedback to their people, then kudos to you for actually being caring enough to do it, and to give them specific targeted feedback. But don’t blow it by being mealy-mouthed or unclear. Don’t be evasive or waffly.
   Be kind to the other person and don’t leave them in any doubt whatsoever about the message you’re trying to convey to them.

THE PERFECT ENDING TO A 1:1

We’ve covered the five compelling reasons for holding regular 1:1 meetings, and we know that clarity is everything when you give feedback – your number one objective is simply to land your message clearly.

I’m going to wrap up with a practical technique for closing your 1:1 meetings that’s going to radically improve your chances that the other person will understand the message, and that they’ll deliver on your expectations.

I want to give a massive shout-out to David O’Rourke, who works for one of our clients, BX Bunka. He shared this approach with me in a group mentoring session that I was conducting with his leadership team. I’ve adapted it slightly, but this is David’s innovation.

When I would wrap up a 1:1 meeting, I used to say, “Okay, great. Well, we can check in next week and see how it’s all going.” Not bad, but pretty loose.

Instead, there are three questions you can ask that are going to greatly enhance the likelihood that someone will be successful.

1. “Do you understand what you need to do?“ This question is particularly important, because it gives the individual the opportunity to seek any clarification they need, rather than just assuming your message landed.
2. “Do you think it’s a reasonable expectation?“ This question gives the individual the opportunity to share any misgivings they might have about what you’re asking them to do.
3. “Is there anything that might stop you from delivering?“ This gives them the opportunity to talk about any risks and issues that you may not have considered yourself.

Let’s just run a quick example:

Question one, “Do you understand what you need to do?“

“Well, yes, Marty, but I’m not sure exactly when you need it delivered by.”

Okay, that gives me an opportunity to clarify the deadline.

Question two, “Do you think that’s a reasonable expectation?“

“Well, it seems to be Marty, but the devil’s in the detail, so I’ll have to go back to the team and do some more planning.“

Okay, so then I go away and set another meeting in three days’ time, where we can revisit that question and ensure the expectations can be met.

Question three, “Is there anything that would stop you from delivering?“

“Well, Marty, you know I have another urgent initiative that I’m supposed to be delivering in the next five weeks, and I’m just not sure if I can deliver them both.“

Fantastic. This gives me a chance to refocus that person on the highest value work at the expense of low-value deliverables.

DO YOUR JOB – THE REST IS UP TO THEM!

This process is really powerful. When you get explicit eyeball-to-eyeball commitment from someone, there’s a much higher likelihood that they’re going to deliver on their promises.

Assigning tasks via email or DM – or even over Zoom – doesn’t have anywhere near the impact.

When someone says to you face-to-face that they’re going to deliver something, they’ll feel a strong personal commitment to actually doing it. Your job is to make it easy for your people to take accountability for delivering outcomes.

So, make your 1:1s clear, and never forget that single objective – to have them walk out with a clear understanding of the one message they need to hear.

They might not necessarily agree with your feedback… and they might decide they don’t want to take it on board. But that will be entirely up to them.

As long as you’ve done your part competently, your people are free to make their choices accordingly. And then, your job is to hold them to account for those choices. But that’s a story for another day…