Mastering Powerful 1:1 Meetings:
Crafting Conversations that Build
Connection & Drive Progress

Welcome to Culture Community, and we're recording. Great. Welcome to Culture Community. We are so excited to have you all here. I'm just peeking at the participants. 37 people on this call. Yay, that's so great. Thank you for coming. Thank you for spending your morning with us. We have a great presentation in store for you, so you will not regret spending your morning with us. Who are we over here at Culture Community? We are a group of people passionate about being great leaders, about being intentional, about building great cultures, and community. We specifically designed the space to learn, develop, and grow, connect with each other, and my personal favorite and how I always leave culture community is inspired and activated to make positive change in the world. When, where, and why we meet, we meet monthly here virtually through Zoom, and we provide free leadership training in those monthly sessions. Get excited because next month we have our dear friend Michelle Venturini coming to talk about really impactful communication practices. That's on July 25th, and registration is open now on our website. Sign up and we'll see you there. I'll turn it over to my amazing teammate, Jess, to talk about the perk.

Hi, everyone. Good morning. I am Jess. I'll just tell you a little bit about the perk. We are a Premier Leadership Culture Development Studio based in Madison, Wisconsin. But we work with organizations all across the nation to build the world's best leaders. We've got a couple of examples here. Something that is true for all of our clients is that they really are passionate and understand the importance of leadership development, and they really want to make sure to bring the fun, bring the energy, and have those lessons really land for the long term. Yeah. For the way that we do this, we know that there are a lot of organizations that are building great and amazing leaders, but we really focus on the fun and how we can make it human and safe, meaning that we facilitate a lot of trust-building behaviors. We really bring everything from literal confetti to engaging activities. We make it custom and we make it last, meaning that we are not here just for a shot of inspiration, but we really want to make sure folks walk away with practical, pragmatic tips that they can use right away with their teams.

We're known for several things, but best known for our Custom Leadership Development programs, which includes cohorts, live training and group coaching. We also do one-to-one coaching, team workshops, which are really experiential and also very fun, executive retreats. If you are planning a time together with your team, we can help you create that, and our clear leadership training program. Those skills that can build trust very quickly across teams and build that cross-functional communication. With that, I will hand it over to our lovely Emily.

Awesome. Thanks, ladies. Good morning, everybody. I I'm just so, so excited to be here and talk about one-on-ones. The first thing I want to ask is, or the first thing I should say is all your beautiful faces are over here. If I'm looking over here, it's just to see all of you. My first question I have for everybody is who's having one-on-one meetings? Just raise your hand if you're on screen. Yes. Almost all of us. Love it. Yes. These must be so important if in any industry, in any company, we are prioritizing these meetings. We have so There are so many things going on in our calendar, and we're still fitting these in. Let's talk about how to make them productive. Let's talk about how to make them amazing. Today, we're going to be talking about skills for how leaders can effectively lead one-on-one meetings for their teammates. If you do not have a team, that's okay, too. Feel free to bring these back to your teammates, bring them back to your leader, or just find ways that you can have a conversation with your leader to incorporate some of these things. But the main thing that we'll be talking about today is how leaders effectively lead one-on-ones.

All right. There are some of us on the call who look like this when we see a one-on-one on our calendar. We love them. We find so much value in them. We're building relationships during them. We love these conversations. Then there's a couple of other of us on the call who look more like this. They like the idea of one-on-ones. They think that they can be very valuable, but right now they're feeling stale. They're feeling repetitive, and it's every single week we're getting together and walking through a to-do list, walking through our client list. Then there are some of us who are thinking, I have so many other things to do on my to-do list. I do not have time for one-on-ones. No matter where you're at with any of these things, it's okay. It's great wherever you're at right now. But I would love to do a check-in. If you are in front of your computer, we're going to do some annotate. In the lower left-hand corner, you're going to see a little green dot, and that is going to be our annotate we're going to use. I'll walk you through how to use that in a second, but let me explain what you're looking at first.

Oftentimes when we're working with leaders, these are the three most common things that we hear, the topics for one-on-ones. The topics that we talk about feel stale or I don't know what to talk about in our one-on-one meetings. In the middle-time, time. I don't have time for one-on-one meetings. I don't have time to prepare for them. I don't have time to make them a better meeting or value. I just flat out don't see the value in these meetings. So these These are three statements that we hear often, and I would love to hear where everybody is at in this room, and that'll tailor what we talk about today. Then jumping back to our little annotate in the lower left-hand corner, that green pencil. Feel free to click on that. Then you can click on Stamps. Once you click on Stamps, feel free to select one of these three stamps up here, and we can see where are people at. Are we agreeing with these topics? Are we not really sure about these, or do we disagree with them? Awesome. Topics, for sure. Value, we're seeing a lot of value in the meetings. Love it. Great.

Time, a little bit of both. Mostly don't agree with. Okay. Topics, that's the big thing that we're really focusing on. Fantastic. I'll give people just 10 more seconds to fill these out. All right, I think they're slowing down, so my team can go ahead and clear those. Topics, great. Let's talk about what topics we should be talking about in these one-on-one meetings. We're all looking for a little bit of one-on-one time. I want you all to just take a step back with me to middle school. After we're going to shrug off the awkward middle school years embraces. I want you to think about a time where you had a huge crush on a boy or girl in school. They come up to you in school and they're like, Hey, do you want to go to the fair with me? You are so excited. You're like, Yes. They're finally going to see how funny I am, how wonderful I am. We're going to start this relationship. It's going to be perfect. You get ready for your date and you show up and you see them there and you're so excited. Then you realize that all your friends are with them.

They invited you on a group date. Don't we love group dates? It's still okay. It's still fun. We get to spend time with each other outside of school, but you don't really get to have those deep conversations. Those same feelings to the workplace. It is so awesome to spend time as our team and get to build those relationships. One-on-one time is so, so important to make sure that each one of your teammates feel seen, heard, and valued valued to make sure that they feel like they are celebrated for the amazing things that they're doing every single week. I know a lot of you on the call already said, I see the value in one-on-ones, and that's fantastic because your team is looking for it. There's a lot of different things to talk about in one-on-one meetings. One of the main reasons that we have one-on-one meetings is time for communication and feedback. Great. This is a space for two-way communication between leaders and teammates. It's also a time to give and receive feedback. We are all looking for more feedback from our team or to give feedback to others as they're working on projects as we're delegating and setting expectations.

Sometimes giving that feedback is not great for a team setting, so really focusing in on that one-on-one time. It's also time to clarify expectations, tasks, responsibilities, and help reduce those misunderstandings. Hopefully, some of our people on the call are already using on this time for communication and feedback, or some people are thinking, Okay, we're starting to look at a different lens. What are some other things that I can infuse to this time together? Another thing that these one-on-one meetings can be used for is relationship and trust building. So 60% of workers say that one-on-ones build trust faster than any other action. I would love to see, again, show of hands, who on the call is looking to build more trust on their team? Some people, yeah. Love that. Great. And those of you not on camera, yes, if you're an organization who likes or is looking to build more trust, implementing one-on-ones and holding these one-on-ones on a regular basis is a great way to do that. Lonely people. I attended a conference last month and I actually attended a whole session on how loneliness is an epidemic. We are the most connected that we've ever been in the world, but we're also the most lonely that we've ever been as humans.

And so lonely people, they skip 5.7 more days of work per year and are two and a half times more likely to look for a different job. If you're an organization who wants to have retention on their team, or you're just a human who wants to be more empathetic and help make other people feel valued for the work that they're doing and less lonely in this world, one-on-ones is another way to help with that. I'm sure some of you on the call are thinking, Why? Why do one-on-ones help with building trust, retention, relationships, all these different things? It's because one-on-ones are an intentional time that you're spending connecting with each other, forming these relationships with another person. It's a time for you to be curious, to listen, to learn from one another. Again, you've heard me say this multiple times already, but make sure that your teammates feel seen, heard, and valued for the work that they're doing. All right, a couple more reasons. We talked about communication. We're talking about relationships and trust building. It's also time for problem solving in progress. I'm sure some of the people on the call is like, Yes, this is my sweet spot.

I love solving problems. This is the time to help your employees get unstuck, make progress, and grow. There is the Progress Principle by Theresa Amible, and What this says is that as humans, we are more fulfilled when we are making progress at work. When we are seeing the needle be moved, we feel more fulfilled. When we feel more fulfilled, we get to be more creative. We have more energy for the things that we're doing and working on. In a study that they did with the progress principle, on days where employees made progress on their work, they reported a 75% chance of having a good day. On the flip side of this, when they experienced setbacks, the likelihood of having a good day dropped to 25%. The only factor that changed here in 75 to 25 was progress and feeling like they made progress. As our leaders are holding these one-on-one sessions, a great question to ask yourself is, how do I help my team make progress? How do I help give them tools or resources that they might not have available to them to help them move the needle? And how do I help them see that they're making progress?

How do I help celebrate them when they hit these milestones because it is a big deal? This provides an avenue for employees to, seek feedback and guidance from their leaders and mentors. Last but certainly not least is growth and development. A lot of times organizations are great at talking about growth and development once a year in our annual reviews, but we can really infuse this into our conversations that we're having on a weekly and monthly basis. Our one-on-ones are a time to coach your employees for the development that they're working on. It's a time to align and check in with these goals. It's also a time to discuss areas for improvement or opportunities for skill enhancement. I'd love to hear from the group, are I'd love to hear from the group, maybe these are things that you're already doing in your one-on-ones, or maybe you're starting to think of different conversations you could be having during this time together. What's coming up for people? Everybody's following through. They're like, Yep, totally agree with everything you're saying. I love Leah's comment that she made about sometimes our team is making progress and they don't realize it.

Yes. So what are ways that you can help your team recognize that they're moving the needle on the things that they're working on? 100%. All right, so we We all agree with some of these reasonings behind what we can use one-on-ones for. What I want to jump to next is how as leaders, we can best show up in these meetings. Consultant versus mentor versus coach. These are terms that we use often in our language, and I am sure a lot of you know the definitions of each of these, but I just want to break down the difference between a consultant, mentor, and coach. Now, as a consultant, when you put on your consultant hat during these one-on-one meetings, this means that you tell other people how to fix their problems. You are Oprah. It's like, You get a solution, you get a solution, everybody gets a solution. Everybody gets a solution for their problems. That is you showing up as a consultant. Oftentimes as leaders, this is the role that we feel we should show up as to help remove barriers for our team, to help provide solutions to our team and the obstacles that facing.

A mentor. A mentor is somebody who tells you what to do based on their past experiences. Then a coach. A coach is somebody who, they don't fix your problems. They see their teammates as naturally creative, resourceful, and whole, and they get curious. They ask lots of questions to help their teammates discover the answers that are right for them. Let's look at this in a little bit of a different way as an example. If you're coming to me and you're like, Emily, I I want to bake a cake. I'd be like, Heck, yeah. Let's do it. I'm wearing my consultant hat, and a conversation that we probably have is, Here's the recipe. I brought the ingredients. I will go into the kitchen and bake the cake for you. I am solving your problem that you are coming to me to help solve. If I switch out my hats and I'm trying on this mentor hat, the conversation that we have might look more like, I've made a cake before. Let me tell you how I baked mine. Let me share my past experiences. If I'm coaching you, I would say, You want to bake a cake?

You can totally do it. I see the ingredients that you brought, and I'm going to ask questions. Together, we will collaborate, create a recipe that is right for you. I will be in the kitchen every step of the way to support you, celebrate you when the cake is baked. Like I said before, oftentimes in our one-on-one meetings, as leaders, we show up as the consultant. We We are ready with solutions. We are ready to brainstorm and problem-solve, and there's a time and place for that. But we should really try to focus our time on being a mentor and coach. We're going to talk a little bit about how to be a coach later in our segment this morning. But what I really hope this does is give a breath, a weight off your shoulders. As leaders, I am giving you all the permission that you do not need to have the answers in these one-on-one meetings. You don't need to feel the stress of all the problems that your team is bringing to you. This is really a time to have a conversation around what they're working on and see how can you help guide them to the answers that they have within them.

I want to take a minute before I jump to something else. Is there any thoughts or any questions coming up on the Consultant Mentor Coach? Emily, it looks like there's a question in the chat. I don't know if you can see that or I can read it to you. Yes, thank you. How do you be a mentor and coach when you do not have the skills of those you lead? You lead a team of developers, but you don't know coding. Great question. We're going to talk a little bit about to be a coach later when we're talking about the how with one-on-ones. But something that I like to share is I coach a lot of different leaders in a lot of different industries, and I don't do their jobs. And yes, there are some things that I don't know all the terminology that they're using or all the words that they're using. And that's okay because you can still use some of the behaviors or the skills that we'll teach today to help them solve some of their own problems or being a guide for them of what is a resource that you may have or a connection that you may have that you can introduce them to to help them problem-solve with some of those solutions.

So hopefully that was helpful, but I do think that some slides later on will help clarify this as well. A lot of times when we work with leaders, they say, We want this on our teams. We want excellent communication. We are looking for more collaboration and trust and coaching skills. All of these are awesome things to have on a team. If we were going to break down each one of these individually, each one of these separately, and focus on how to do amazing trust, amazing emotional intelligence, it would take a long time. It would take a long time, a lot of energy. What I really want to focus on today is that one-on-one meetings are the catalyst for all these other things. You had to think that I was going to say one-on-one meetings are the catalyst. But when we have effective meetings, effective one-on-one meetings, we are going to develop better coaching skills. We are going to create a culture of psychological safety on our teams. We're going to build trust in relationships and have more alignment. You are going to be hitting or checking the box on all these other areas of your business by only focusing on effective one-on-one meetings.

I want to call out effective. Effective is the keyword here. Like I said in the beginning, when I asked who was having these one-on-one meetings, Most of us are having these right now. Making sure that we're talking about the right things, that it's in a productive way, that's really where the magic is going to happen for all these other areas. All right. I'm sure everybody on the call is like, We're bought in. I agree with you. Yep. How do we do it? I'm going to show a little clip from the office because I think the office does such an amazing job of explaining how not to do things in the workplace.

Jim, can I get a... Hi. Hi. You need to run down if it glints. Can you get that to me? Sure. Okay. What the hell is a rundown? Just need that run down by.

As soon as possible. Okay. Just get it right.

Yeah. Got you. Of course.

We're going to dive in to the run down.

I'll be exhausted because it's like a triathlon.

Did you want to close this? How do you want to keep it? So hopefully what we can see from this short clip is that oftentimes in business, as teammates, we waste a lot of time when we don't really know what is being asked of us, when we don't really know the purpose behind something. Or as leaders, sometimes we are seeing a lot of frustration or even disappointment because we are having requests from our team, but they're not doing what we want. I want us to take a step back. As leaders, have we identified the purpose behind what we're asking and how we communicated this to our teams? When thinking of the lens of one-on-one meetings, clarifying and communicating the purpose. Asking yourself, what do you want the impact of your one-on-one meetings to be? What do you want to happen as a result of these meetings? Or even, why are these meetings important to you? Why are we putting them on our calendar every single week? These are just a couple of questions to get the gears start turning. If you're a Rockstar student and you have answers to all these questions, the next question that I have for you is, have you communicated these expectations?

Have you shared with your team what you would like to see from them? We're going to do some work around this a little bit, but I think that it's important when we're thinking about why we're hosting these meetings each week, why we're dedicating time to it. Let's talk a little bit about what one-on-ones should not be. So one-on-ones are not a time for pure status updates. It should not be in time for an employee to run through their task list or their client list, nor should it be asked from the leader. One-on-ones are not a It's not a time to bring up important issues that should have been brought up earlier in the week. These should have been addressed right away. There should be no surprises in these one-on-one meetings. It's not a time for business-only conversation, and it's not a time for only personal conversations. It's also not a time for the leader to talk at or present to their team. Really, the goal should be, let's have the teammate that we're working with talk between 50 and 90% of the time. It's a conversation. It's a meeting, it's not a lecture. Before I turn it over to you to do just a little bit of reflection on this question, I want to give you an example of the perks purpose behind one-on-one meetings.

Something that we have identified here at our organization is we believe in having weekly one-on-one meetings between employees and their direct leaders. This is a time for developing relationships and skills It's also a time to deepen connection, checking in on goals and progress. There is space for both personal and professional time during your one-on-one, so it is all welcome. You are welcome to bring any area of your life during your one-on-ones that you feel comfortable with. We're going to be talking about goal setting, and your leader will check in with you on your goals to help you be accountable. They will be your biggest cheerleader, and they will hold your feet to the fire to accomplish the amazing things that we want to see as a team. We are here to be your partner, to activate you, to support you, and celebrate you. I want to hear from the audience or from everybody on the call. If I were to share this purpose with you, we're going to meet for a one-on-one and I say, Here's the purpose behind our one-on-one meetings. What expectations do these set for the best ways for you to show up in these conversations?

Feel free to just hop off mute and just share after seeing these. I think it brings an expectation to both parties to be genuine and honest in the meetings. Absolutely, Sarah. What else?

It seems like a lot to try to cram into a small meeting if you're only meeting for a half hour. It could be overwhelming, I think, to some employees.

Yeah, I think that that's a great call out. It is a lot. How as leaders, can we make sure that it's broken down? How can we start to build this trust over time? How can we make sure that we are covering a lot of these areas, a lot of our bases, even in 30 minutes?

Emily, have you thought about... If you're meeting weekly, so there's four bullet points Week 1, bullet point number 1, Week 2, bullet point number 2. What do you think of that then? If there's not limited time and a lot to talk about?

I think it's a great idea, Troy. We're going to talk today about a frame of the framework of ways to incorporate all these into a one-on-one meeting, even if it's a half an hour. So what are ways to cut down in each of these areas? And that might not work best for your team. So you say, Okay, you know what? This week we're going to focus a lot on big idea and vision. So bring all your ideas to the conversation. But just keeping in mind that the intent behind our one-on-one meetings is to infuse some of these aspects throughout.

Emily, the other thing that I think I notice is somebody who tends to be pretty... I show up to meetings and adjust them as they go instead of preparing. And that works out fairly well for me. But this does presuppose you showing up with some intentionality of where things are going to go in the sense of your goals, in the sense of what do you need help with vice versa.

Yeah. Absolutely. Who else on the call is really great at showing up on meetings and just going on or having off-the-wall conversation or don't always prepare for meetings? Some of us on the call? Yeah. We live in a a very fast world where our due dates are the same time or the dates that we do the work is the same days that they're due, D-U-E. And so what are ways that we can create space to try to prepare for these a little bit more? Jake and our next tip, I think we'll dive into that a little bit. But it's real. A lot of people just show up for these one-on-one meetings. Actually, that makes me think this could have an employee thinking that your leader is going to run it as maybe the other way around. I don't know what your feelings are in requiring an employee to bring an agenda for their one-on-ones to run them. Fabulous transition, Sarah. Yes, that'll be what we talk about next. So great point. But yes, so these are our expectations for one-on-one meetings, and you can add some other expectations, which we can talk about as we build this together.

And maybe one of them is for the expectation is you are, as the employee, are talking and preparing for these meetings, or I would love for this to be a conversation. It's going to be a 50/50 conversation. Some things that, as I read through this, stick out to me for the purpose behind one-on-one meetings is, okay, this is a time for both personal and professional time. As the employee, I don't have to the personal side of my life. I can bring anything that's coming up for me that's really relevant for me to the conversation. Something that also speaks to me is, oh, okay, we're going to set goals together. When you check in with my goals, It's not because I'm doing something wrong. It's because as a company, this is what we do. Our leaders check in to make sure that we're staying on track and hitting these goals. It also is going to support the the behaviors that we have outside of these meetings, too, and make sure that there is clear communication on the purpose behind those actions. Our first tip is understand your why. Why are these one-on-one meetings going to be effective and purposeful for you?

This is what we listed as the perk, and it might not be for everybody. If you have a 30-minute meeting, you may have a very different purpose, and that's totally fine. Let's work on this a little bit together. We have a action plan. It's going to be a digital download. We're going to toss it into the chat. I'm going to find a link right here. Great. Hope, let me or my team know if this doesn't work for you, but this is going to be something that you can type into, and it's going to follow us through in this presentation, some of the things we're talking about. But the first section is, what is the purpose behind your one-on-one meetings? I'm going to give everybody a minute. I would love for you to just type out some thoughts. Maybe the purpose behind your one-on-one meetings is to talk about goals. Maybe that is a lot to cram into these weekly meetings, and so we're going to be focusing more on setting expectations and making sure that our team is seeing progress being made. Maybe we really want to have a highlight on relationship building. Jotting down some thoughts of the purpose behind your one-on-one meetings.

I'll time it. I'm going to give everybody one minute, just 60 seconds to reflect on these.

All right, Awesome. I saw some sharing in the chat, too, and I love everything that I'm seeing. Deepen relationships, open communication, providing feedback, absolutely. A space to share concerns. That's awesome. Getting really clear on what would success look like for you out of these meetings, and then communicating that to your team. What do you want to be focusing on during this time together? Any last questions on the purpose behind one-on-one meetings?

Emily, can I just note something quick?

Yeah, please.

You did a great job of sharing the perks, purpose behind our one-on-ones. It just made me realize that at the park, one thing I haven't done is checked in with the people I'm doing one-on-ones with. I'm like, Are we living our purpose? We created this purpose of our one-on-ones a long time ago and have created different things to make sure we're living our purpose. But it's been a long time since I've had the actual conversation of, Let's look at our purpose for these one-on-ones. Is this what you are actually getting out of it? Are you feeling comfortable to bring personal items into this space? That's just a note for me of creating the purpose and then taking time to check in to make sure we are actually living that purpose.

I think that's a great call. This is not something that we're looking to build and then put on a shelf. The way that this is going to be impactful as if it's part of our language, it's part of the conversations that we're having. Like Leah mentioned, it's not like we're starting every single one-on-one with, All right, here's our purpose behind one-on-ones. Let's dive into it. But maybe set a reminder of a couple of times a year checking in and say, Hey, have our one-on-one meetings gotten stale? Are you still getting these things out of it? This is what I see as success. What would success be for you? And have that be a conversation. Awesome. All right, so preparing for our one-on-one meetings. We've had a couple of people pipe up on this. How much time should managers spend preparing for one-on-one meetings? Any guesses? Any thoughts? Five minutes? An hour? Five, 10 minutes? Yeah. To have effective one-on-one meetings, we need to shift We need to shift this to have your team prepare for their one-on-one meetings. If you are somebody who has said or has thought one-on-ones are a waste on time, this is a great sign or a signal, then maybe you're doing it wrong.

One mistake that we see with a lot of people with one-on-one meetings is not preparing for their one-on-one. For some people, this is okay for their conversations. I totally get that. But But when we prepare for a one-on-one meeting, we have time to reflect on what has gone well in the week, what obstacles are in our way, what opportunities are in front of us. It leads to a much better conversation, a much more productive conversation, because we've already thought about, what help and support do I need from my leader to be able to move these things forward, to be able to see that progress, that progress principle that we talked about earlier. With this tip, we are going to have your team complete a one-on-one prep 24 hours in advance, to have them prepare for the meeting and then send it to you in advance. When you're preparing, it's not you looking at a blank sheet of paper saying, Okay, what do I need to share with them? It's saying, Okay, here are the things that are top of mind for my teammate right now. Here are the things that are most important to them, the progress that they've made, the things that they're working on.

How can I best support them where they're at? As your leader, it's It's not your job to run the one-on-one meeting. It's not your job to present to them. I was reading through some of the comments when we were reflecting, and I know some people said, Okay, some of my teammates are a little bit more quiet, and so I step up and feel like I have to do a little bit more presenting. Absolutely. That's only natural for somebody to lead and guide the conversation. Hopefully, with having this in place, this reflection form in place, it will give them time to be able to think about some of these questions, and you can use some of their experiences to help guide that conversation. This one-on-one prep form should be self-reflective. It helps them come prepared for what they want to talk about and make movement. I do want to note that this does not mean that if there is something that you need to bring to their attention that you don't say it, as your leader, it is your job to be able to shine light on some of these areas and be able to help guide them, help support them, and give them this feedback that you're hearing, having these hard conversations.

The hope is that if you're having these one-on-one meetings, if you're intentionally taking this time to build relationships and trust with your team, these hard conversations or these moments of feedback might be a little bit easier. They might be a little bit more receptive, and it'll be a more conversation based on results and progress. Here's an example of a prep form. I know the questions are very small to read. If you are interested in some of the questions, we're happy to provide those. But we just wanted you to more so see how many questions we're asking. We reflect on about eight questions each week, and you just add in a couple of notes from each one. Then you'll also see at the top of the screen, we have a ROC review, or this is our quarterly goals that we're working on. Checking in on those goals that we set, where are we at, what progress What else are we making, what roadblocks are we running into, and then some of these other reflection areas down here. In your action plan that we sent you, I listed out four questions to get you started, and those are pulled from this sheet.

But then I want to see what other questions you have. The tip number three is having your team prepare for these one-on-one conversations. Before we get to the action plan in our little reflection time, what's coming up for people as we talk about this?

One thing I just wanted to chime in is, Emily, when you said having your team prepare for their one-on-ones, doing these prep forms, it doesn't mean that you as the leader don't bring up things that you need to talk to them about. I found that in doing these prep forms, it's oftentimes that the people I'm leading, they say in their prep forms what we need to have a conversation about. The conversation is much easier then because it's like, okay, they are aware of this issue and they know that it needs to be addressed. That's also been really helpful. We can be like, Okay, you noted in your prep form. I had it on my list, too. Let's talk about it. It really makes that conversation even easier.

Absolutely. I'm seeing in the chat, a lot of people are asking for the prep form example for sure. We can send that out in the follow-up email as well. But let's work on your prep form. We'll give an example, but I'd love to hear from you. That is one that works well for our culture and the goals that we are working on. In your action plan that you have in front of you, I listed out four questions to get you started. Then I am going to give you all one Give everybody one minute to reflect, what other questions do you want to see on your prep form? What other questions are going to help move your teammates in your culture and your goals? We'll give everybody one minute to add in some questions to their prep form that they're building.

If you're stumped on questions, we'll have a whole list them coming your way. So stay tuned. All right, so we have talked about how to set the purpose, our intention behind these meetings, and communicate that to our team. Then we talked about how to prepare for these meetings. Now let's dive into what are we actually talking about in these meetings? How do we focus our time most effectively to be able to build these relationships, build these connections, and move work forward? Using the 10-80-10 structure, I love this because you can apply this to any time length of check-in. You can do this for a 30-minute, 45-minute, or 60-minute meeting. What this says is we will spend the first 10% of the meeting focusing on one-on-one connection or discussing big picture items. This can be personal connection or professional connection. Then we're going to spend the bulk of the meeting focusing on their prep form. Again, what have they identified as something that they're working What challenges that they're running into? What learning opportunities do they have? And what do they need from you as their leader? We'll talk a little bit about how to do that in a second.

And then ending it with a commitment and action. This is a great conversation. What are we going to commit to to move forward after this? And what recognition needs to take place? How can we celebrate them for the amazing things that they're doing? This is a lot to remember. So breaking it down even Connect, coach, commit, and celebrate. We're going to start with connection. We're going to have the bulk of our time being coaching our team, and then we're ending with commitments and celebration. All right, so let's break these down further in how to do these. Connecting on a personal and professional topics. Based on the relationships that you have with your teammates, sometimes you don't get very personal, and that's totally fine. I listed out some awesome I have some questions here to hear some big picture thoughts or hear some vision from their perspective that's strictly on a professional basis. That could be, how is work? Or how is the work that you're doing contributing to the vision, mission of the team's organization? What talents of yours am I not utilizing but should be? Where would your time be best spent? What are we doing well as a team?

What can we be doing better? Connecting with them on a professional level and just stating in your intention with the purpose that that's okay, that we talk about personal stuff because we are building those relationships. I also want to note, how many times do we ask these types of questions in our day-to-day work? I know I don't ask them very often, and so this is a great time to hear the feedback from your team to hear from their perspective. All right. Next. Oh, my goodness. I just... Okay, here we go. Hit the wrong button. All right, coaching. This is where we're spending the most, the majority of our time during our one-on-ones. We're going to be focusing on their prep form. That is the material that we're going to guide our conversations, but how do we show up as a good coach? Bringing us back to the beginning of this conversation, a coach, remembering that we are not there to fix their problems. We are really trying to show as the guide to hold them as naturally creative, resourceful, and whole, and get curious with them. We need to start as leaders with a coaching mindset.

We need to come to these meetings with a mindset that our teammates are, again, naturally creative, resourceful, and whole. We want to hold the space to help them come to the conclusion on their own. We want to ask these questions and see what is already going on in their mind. We Like Leah said before, when we give them an opportunity to reflect on their week, oftentimes the things that we want to bring up to them are already things that they're thinking on. So showing up as the guide. This framework comes to us from Story Brand. And what this says is that in any story, you have a hero. You have the main person of the story. And in a story, this hero encounters a problem. After the problem, that hero meets a guide, and then together they create a plan. They take action, they achieve success, and transformation happens. Just to put this into a story that some of you may I'm going to be familiar with, Aladdin. Aladdin is the hero of the story, and he has a problem. He wants to marry Princess Jasmine, but he can't because he's not a prince. So he meets the guy, the Genie, and together they create a plan.

How are they going to have Aladdin marry Princess Jasmine? They take action, achieve success, and transformation happens. In our one-on-one meetings, now bringing it back to the work that we're doing, as a leader, you are the guide. Your team is the hero in their story. They're coming to you with a problem, and you, as the guide are going to help them, coach them, help guide them throughout their story and have the solution or help them find the solution that they already have within them. Having the mindset and shifting our mindset of, you are not the hero in these one-on-one meetings, you are the guide. How do we show up as the guide? How do we How do we shift from, I need to be the hero, come in, solve the problems, have all the answers, and shifting this to, I need to take a step back. I need to hold a space for my teammate, help them get clear on what they want and support them along the way. This is hard. This is hard to do. But it also might be, like I said before, a little bit of a relief. You do not need to have all the answers.

You are helping your team find some of the answers on their own. Any questions on the guide mindset? All right, great. Once we are in the right mindset, let's talk about the skills to actually coach our team. We're going to talk just briefly on curiosity and listening to power coaching skills. Curiosity. Curiosity is the quality that starts the coaching process and the energy that keeps it going. A lot of us know what curiosity is. It's asking questions. Curiosity is not about having the answers. It's about having questions. Both curiosity and coaching, both starts with a question. But not all questions are created equal. We want you to focus on asking powerful questions in your one-on-one sessions. Asking powerful questions, what this means is you're asking questions that do not have a yes or no answer. You're looking for it to be a little bit more expansive so you can build on top of it. You're also asking questions questions that are non-judgmental. You are not trying to cast blame. You're not trying to have them defend their answers. You're asking questions because you genuinely want to understand their perspective and their ideas. An awesome way to do this, a great way to ask powerful questions, is focusing on what questions.

What? It's this easy and it's this complex. It's complex because why and how questions tend to be easier for us. They're not necessarily bad. They absolutely have their place in problem solving and in the workplace. Focusing on what questions takes a lot of practice. It takes a lot of work. But 90% of the time, what questions are going to be open-ended and more expansive. We can problem solve, we can be more creative together when we start with a what question. Here's some examples for people when thinking about their one-on-one meetings. Some questions that I am sure you have asked, and they're not bad questions by any means, I know I've asked them, is why did you do it this way? Why are you focusing on this? How are you going to get these results? How can we fix this? Then let's shift this. Let's shift our mindset. Let's shift from being the hero in solving these problems to being the guide. As the guide, we want to help them discover the answer. So what makes this an effective strategy for you? What's important to you about this? What obstacles are standing in your way right now?

What ideas do you have for how to improve this? When you're asking these questions, our teammates automatically feel like they don't have to defend their answer to you. They just have to explain what they're doing. I have a list of questions on here for you. Feel free to take a screenshot if you'd like. They might be great questions to add to your prep form or just to include into your one-on-one conversations. I love these questions because they move work forward and deepen connection. A couple of questions you could ask are, I'll just pull out a few of my favorites. What does success look like from your perspective? What are your ideas for improving this? If we say yes to this, what are you saying no to? What will you hold or what will hold us What are the next steps from achieving our goal? What are the next steps from your perspective? What questions do people have? Another powerful question after looking at these. Great. No questions. I'll share one story that I love asking powerful questions in one-on-ones. I was working with a one-on-one coaching client, and I asked if I could share this story, and she said it was fine.

She is going through curiosity right now, and she's learning a lot about it. She has a teammate, and the teammate she shared with me is always negative. It's always, this is the worst it's always been. Nothing is going right. Everything's terrible. Everything is wrong. She said in their one-on-one meetings, she would come in very negative, and this would leave just feeling drained. The whole time, it wasn't a productive conversation. She would offer solutions, but it was never the right one, and it was just a conversation that would go in a circle. After learning about Powerful Questions, she said, In my last one-on-one, she came in, and again, this is the worst it's ever been. This is a terrible situation that we're in. I don't know what to do. The leader actually asked a couple of powerful questions. She shared with me that it was amazing. She said the teammate started talking through where she was at. She started offering solutions. The teammate shared with me that she only shared one idea. She shared so many ideas, the exact same ideas that the leader had in her own head, but she came up with them on her own.

And by the end of the conversation, she said, You know what? It's actually not that bad, and I know what I'm going to do next. The leader said, We have never had a conversation like this before, and I was shot. And so empowering your teammates to empower them to feel like they had the answers. And they're the same, sometimes the answers that you have in your mind, but you're helping them be the hero in their own story. I love that example of asking what questions, and I think there's so much power to adding these into our conversations. If we're going to talk about curiosity, then we have to talk about the flip side of the coin, listening. All right, so listening, I'm going to share a quick video clip from Oprah, and she talks a little bit about listening or just values that we all have as humans. And this was on a clip from her last show. I've talked to nearly 30,000 people on this show, and all 30,000 had one thing in common. They all wanted validation. And if I could reach through this television, sit on your sofa or sit on a stool in your kitchen right now, I would tell you that every single person you ever will meet shares that common desire.

They want to know, Do you see me? Do you hear me?

Does what I say mean anything to you? Understanding that one principle that everybody wants to be heard has allowed me to hold the microphone for you all.

It is It will work for this platform, and I guarantee you it will work for yours. Try it with your children, with your husband, your wife, your boss, your friends. Validate them. I see you. I hear you. And what you say matters to me. In our one-on-one session, this is absolutely the platform that we should be using to make sure that our teammates feel, heard and valued. Listen to them. Truly give them the gift of that time in that space and your attention. Our tip for listening, if our tip for curiosity was asking what questions with listening, it is eliminate distractions. I know this may seem like an easy one, but distractions have become a part of our everyday world. We have our phones and our watches and our emails, and it just becomes part of the norm that we don't even realize it's happening. But distraction destroys connection. You cannot be fully present with somebody in a conversation if you're distracted. You can't sense people's tone, their body language, their energy with distractions, and you can't be curious with distractions. In my last job, my boss that I had, when I'd show up for my one-on-one meeting, she would say, Okay, I'm going to turn off my computer, send this email.

You have all my attention. If the phone would ring, she would let it go to voicemail. If somebody showed up at her door, she would say, I'll come find you afterwards, and she would just be focused on our time together. To me, that showed that my time was just as valuable as hers. What I had to share with her was important, and then she wanted to hear it. I have been part of meetings that I'm sure some of you on the call have as well, where you go to a one-on-one meeting and the whole time they're, and they're responding to an email, or somebody gives them a phone call and they're having a conversation. It's not a really productive meeting because there's so many other things going on and they were distracted even when they were talking with you. A way to help with this, eliminate those distractions. Oh, I should stop. Only 2% of people can multitask effectively. I love this statistic from Popular Science because that means that most of us on the call probably can't multitask. I'm sure a few of us can, and that's awesome. But this is just a reminder of how important is to set aside those distractions.

Curate your environment to have less distractions. Close your laptop. If you're going to have an in-person meeting, shut down your laptop. If you are having a virtual meeting, please don't close your laptop. It is so awkward when you hop back on the call. But a way that you can do this in a virtual world is say, All right, I'm closing down my email. You have my full attention. Put down your phone. Even having a conversation with your phone in your hand signals to the other person that there's something that can be more important that might take away my attention at any time. Place it down, turn it over. Don't even have it be a factor. Turn off your notifications. Making eye contact. If you're holding meetings in person and you oftentimes have people stop by your office, maybe hold your one-on-ones in a different location, find a conference room, or go for a walk outside. Lastly, communicate your needs. So whatever you need, if you do need your phone out, because we understand the world keeps turning, people need things from us, just say, Hey, my kid was sick this morning and I'm expecting a phone call from daycare.

I have my phone out just for that, but that's the only reason. Letting your team know in the beginning of the meeting is a great way to continue to build trust, even if you may need to be distracted for a minute. All right. So this 10 structure, we talked about a lot of things to be a great coach, getting in the coaching mindset of being the guide, not the hero. Leading in on our curiosity and our listening. Another tool that I want to add to your toolkit is the GROW Coaching Framework. Grow stands for goal, reality, options, and will. And what I love about this is you can apply this framework into so many different conversations. You can focus on any goal that your team is working on. A couple of other things that I love is when you are in the reality portion, you're talking about, Okay, what state am I in now? What is hard about this? What am I excited about? When you get to the options, your time to brainstorm and be creative, what avenues could I go down to potentially reach this goal and work on? Of course, it doesn't hurt that they're with powerful curiosity questions.

What do you want to achieve? Where are you now? What could you do? What is the plan? Asking all of these questions for your team really empowers them to come up with their own solutions, come up with their own framework and own next steps, and really take control of the process. Any questions on the GROW Coaching Framework? All right, great. Just a couple more things. Ending our session together. Ending our one-on-one sessions is our time to commit and celebrate. We want our teammates to make a commitment to take action from our conversation. That is what takes it from a really nice coaching conversation or a really nice conversation and turns it into action, turns it into coaching. Is that behavior change? Make sure your teammates know what exactly their next steps are and celebrate them. Celebrate them for the amazing things that they've already accomplished and the things that they're working on. Help them feel like they're making progress. Celebrate the progress that they're making. That is our third step. Follow the 10, 80, 10 structure. 10% connect, 80% of the time we're coaching, then we're following up with that commitment and celebrate. Back to your action plans.

At the end, you have a couple of areas to focus on curiosity and listening. Jots down, what are some curiosity questions? What are some powerful questions that you want to bring into your next one on one? Maybe distractions is something that comes up for you a lot. What is one way that you can eliminate distractions for your next meeting? All right, team. You did it. You made it. You made it through the presentation. You are one-on-one meeting masters now. We talked all about how to clarify the purpose, how to prepare for these meetings to create more time in your schedule. We talked about what are the things that we actually should be focusing on in these meetings to make sure that we're driving business forward and building that connection. Doing a check-in, for those of you on the call, if you have your annotate available, I would love to see. I know in the beginning for the time and the value, a lot of us already disagreed with this, which is awesome. I love to see that. Seeing where we're at, what do we need more support with one-on-ones, or what do we feel really good about with our one-on-ones leaving this meeting for next step?

In the lower left-hand corner, there's going to be a little pencil. Feel free to click on that or draw it. I love it. Where are we at? Are we agreeing with this? Are we unsure? Still a couple for the topics, absolutely. Absolutely. But we're seeing more red. Love to see that. Great. Question mark? Yeah, for sure. Amazing. Thank you all for sharing where you're at. I'm so glad we were able to move the needle for some of you with the topics and what to talk about. For those of you who still are just feeling really lost on what to focus on, please reach out. I would love to have a conversation. I know that one-on-ones can be so unique to each person in each relationship, each teammate that you have. How do you build that in an effective way to be productive for them. All right, I want you to make one commitment from our time together today. What is one thing that you are going to put into place and put into action? You can write this right on your action plans, one of the notes that you're making. How are you going to make your one-on-ones after today even better from some of the things that we talked about?

That is taking our very nice conversation and moving it into coaching. That is it. I so appreciate you all being on the call today and just hearing some of your insights. I know that there's a lot of questions in the chat, so I'm sure some of my amazing teammates answer them. If they haven't been answered, I'll reach out afterwards. But please don't hesitate to reach out to me to continue the conversation because I would love to see how we can help you with that. But I know that we have a couple of minutes, so I will stop sharing my screen, but any last comments or questions on the call? That you want to talk about with one-on-ones?

I noticed, I think it was Corinne that mentioned the question of how do you provide that request to eliminate distractions to your boss. My initial thought there, because it is a little awkward, you're like, What? They're very distracted. We talk a lot about the FBI model of feedback, and I found that really helpful, too, which is to start with the B, the behavior. When you are distracted or I noticed that there's a lot of multitasking happening, the feeling it makes you feel, it makes me really feel like maybe this isn't a priority or you can say it in a way that feels authentic to you. Then the I is the impact. What's the impact on you or the relationship? Make that request that way. That can be a way to start the conversation. Curious what comes up for other folks.

I love that, Jess. There are some people that don't feel safe to say that to a supervisor, but maybe this is passive-aggressive, but maybe, Crain, going with your phone to the one-on-one and be like, You know what? I want to avoid all distractions today. I'm putting my phone away. I don't know if that's passive-aggressive, though. Well, look what I'm doing. I don't know. The one thing that I wanted to mention in one-on-ones for me is I always mention to our team that there should be no surprises to you in your annual performance evaluation. If I am an effective supervisor, I will address everything in our one-on-one meetings that need to be addressed during an annual performance review. Nothing should be a surprise to you.

I love that.

One other thing, Troy, that brings up for me, too, is Sometimes our leaders don't necessarily know what is most effective to get us to work at our maximum capacity. That's also a way, again, if you don't feel comfortable providing feedback, but there's an opportunity to clarify what really works well for you that can feel more positive and centered around yourself. Something like, what's really helpful for me is when we can connect directly on this without distraction, it helps me stay focused. That's also a side way around that. I love that concept of like, yeah, what's a creative way if you don't feel like there's an avenue to share feedback. And, Corinne, I love that, getting them out from behind their desk. I know I could personally use that to myself For sure.

Back when I had an office, when that was a thing, and I wasn't working out of the spare bedroom, I had an offset of this grand desk because it had been the owners at one point. But when I would come up for one-on-ones, I had a table in two chairs there, and I would come out and sit at the table in a chair, not behind my desk for one-on-ones. And so the tables could be angled based on how awkward we felt and how much eye contact we wanted to have. Some people wanted to stare into space, and so I wouldn't try to pressure that eye contact when people didn't want to go there, but we could turn and face each other if we wanted to, or we could move really close to each other because we could move around that table. I think that's a powerful statement when you come up from behind your desk. That's a great call out, Jess.

Tom, I love that, too, because it's also like, there's research and stuff that's done on when you're changing your environment for something, it shifts your mind, too. So even in a virtual space, I wonder if there's like, okay, when I do my one-on-ones, I go to this part of my room where I sit on the couch over here, whatever. So it shifts you into like, I'm not at my computer, distracted problem solving. I'm in a one on one now.

That's great. I might explore that because I'm sitting here with my multi I'm going to enter rig right now, but I could take my laptop and I go sit in the chair back here, and now I can't access other screens. That's great.

Amazing. All right. Well, thank you all so much. We will send out the sample prep form afterwards along with the recording from today. But please let us know if you have any questions, and we hope to see you next month when we have the amazing Michelle Ventcherini with us. All right. Thanks, everyone. Have a great. Thank you. Bye.