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As I've grown in my career, I've realised that one-to-ones are a critical aspect. You can accelerate your career and capabilities with effective one-to-ones, but making one-to-ones productive is challenging and ever-changing.
There are a few different types of one-to-one meetings. I'm going to focus on the kind of one-to-one you have with your team lead - often used or seen as a 'reporting' meeting. People usually tell their boss exactly what they've been up to since the last one, hoping to portray themselves as productive - but that's different from what your one-to-ones should be about. Using it as a reporting meeting is an antipattern and not worth wasting time doing.
The reality is that one-to-ones should be a helpful and productive use of time - they’re short bursts of focus from your team lead, which you can maximise. Do so by keeping them about these three things:
You.
Your career.
Your relationship with your team lead.
Contents
Topics of focus
One-to-one environments
Frequency of one-to-ones
Topics of focus
As I said above, you should aim to have productive one-to-ones, and the most productive things to focus on are you, your career, and your relationship with your team lead.
Having a rapport with your team lead allows you to build trust, which goes both ways. You trust them; they trust you. With trust, you can have more open and frank conversations and don't spend time dancing around trying to avoid offending or upsetting. It allows for more truthful insights from both ways, expanding how you can help each other.
So, what do you talk about in your one-to-one? In a non-definitive order of importance:
Goals - career and personal
Things going on with and around you
Feedback
Opportunities
Frustrations
Recent achievements
The business - context, goals, things happening
The team
Goals - career and personal
Having goals is essential for both your career and your self-growth. Goals help give direction (in and out of work). These can be as simple as 'Getting to the gym every day' or as stretched and ambiguous as 'Accelerating development across the org'. You're good if you have achievable objectives that you both agree to and feel are worthwhile pursuing. Talk about creating new goals, progress towards current goals, and what support you need to achieve your goals.
When looking to create new (career-oriented) goals, think about your key areas of growth - where is there the opportunity to grow, and what areas are worthwhile growing in? Ensure they’re measurable and achievable goals, so you know how well it’s going. It’s also worthwhile having the goal be something you’re intrinsically motivated to achieve, as otherwise, it’s very easy to let it slip.
For example, technical writing may be a worthwhile skill in your job - perhaps write regular blog posts to practise and improve.
Things going on with and around you
It's good to keep your team lead in the loop about your life - if you feel comfortable sharing it.
If you keep your team lead in the know, they can offer you personal support or support from the company and provide air cover if needed.
An example of things happening with you could be something as simple as your kid having trouble sleeping recently or as complex as a medical diagnosis. It doesn’t have to be something big. Just keep them in the loop - otherwise, you risk an assumption being made when it starts visibly affecting you.
Keeping your team lead in the loop will also contribute towards a trusting relationship as they’ll be more empathetic towards you.
Feedback
A big one! Feedback is hard for everybody, but remember that the intention is to improve. Sometimes, asking for advice or perceiving feedback as advice will yield better results; advice feels less formal and can change the tone perceived.
Feedback is another topic heavily driven by goals but less so than opportunities. As I said above, your team lead must be helping you grow; offering feedback is a big part of that.
Feedback can be as simple as something your team lead has observed, or it can be an opportunity for you to ask for specific feedback, such as asking them to observe you in a meeting coming up so that they can offer targeted feedback - if one of your goals centres around involvement in meetings, for example.
Feedback/advice is a significant topic in itself and is tricky. A better relationship with your team lead might offer more insight, as they may feel more comfortable giving you direct feedback. Ideally, you don't need this, but as we're all human, having that relationship there will make it easier for everybody involved.
Opportunities
Goals really help drive this conversation. If your team lead has their ear to the ground (hopefully they will!), they'll know about things happening around the company that may align with your goals and can get you involved. You can then start discussing these together, as a critical team-lead responsibility is ensuring you grow professionally and personally - even if it means transferring you to another team offering better goal alignment.
An example would be that you want to learn more about cloud infrastructure, and a role has just opened up in the newly founded platform team. Your team lead heard about this vacancy and has suggested you go for it to get closer to your goals.
Frustrations
We all get frustrated; it's inevitable. Some more than others (I'm pretty bad at this!). Letting out your frustration is important as otherwise, it builds up and becomes resentment. Venting some of this frustration to your team lead can be productive if it's something they can help with. However, keep this from eating up your one-to-ones, as it can turn into a negative feedback loop.
Try to vent to your team lead privately instead of publicly, as otherwise, you risk demoralising those around you, again causing a negative feedback loop and making the team unpleasant.
Don’t linger on venting frustrations for too long if you can. Remember what you aim to achieve in your one-to-one so you can refocus the session.
Recent achievements
As much as your team lead may try, it can be easy for them to miss everything of worth that you do - especially if you're part of a big team.
Your one-to-ones are an excellent opportunity to highlight your recent achievements, ideally ones with tangible outcomes. Highlighting achievements helps ensure that when your team lead gives feedback or considers performance reviews, they have a better picture to paint.
The business - context, goals, things happening
Akin to opportunities for you, your team lead likely has more context around decisions made and what's happening where.
One-to-ones are an opportune time to get more clued up on anything you're unsure about within the business, primarily how it feeds into your growth and goals. This is also the ideal situation to ask questions you’re uncomfortable asking or may be riskier in a public forum.
The team
Talking about the team in a one-to-one is tricky and is only sometimes a good use of time - as the one-to-one should be focused on you and your team lead.
However, if your relationship with your team lead is ‘high trust’, you can offer more genuine feedback about your team members - your team lead may even expect this as your seniority increases. As mentioned above, feedback is a significant topic and probably warrants its own post - especially giving feedback.
If you have less granular feedback about team members to offer or the relationship isn’t ‘high trust’, then keep feedback high level here rather than getting into the details - it takes less time and reduces the chance of putting your foot in it. Some high-level things to discuss can include the team's ways of working or milestones being worked towards.
Don’t forget - this is also a great chance to praise your team members!
One-to-one environments
Where your one-to-one takes place can impact the effectiveness of your one-to-one as it affects the tone/atmosphere from the get-go. Sometimes, it's even worth choosing the environment per meeting based on what you're looking to get out of the session.
I'm not a fan of choosing a meeting room as it makes the session feel very formal and feels like a meeting with 'management', which always puts me on edge. If I need a laptop or notepad, I'll choose a more open and communal space with somewhere to sit, and we'll chat over a coffee.
If you're unsure, going for a short walk is a great default. The exercise and fresh air are good for you and will make you feel more engaged. Also, the lowered formality of walks themselves, coupled with walking side-to-side instead of sitting face-to-face, may make you feel more at ease and make any long pauses less uncomfortable.
Frequency of one-to-ones
How often should you have a one-to-one with your team lead? That's up to you and them to discover.
Start more frequently, like once per week, and work backwards from there. I like the interval of once a fortnight as enough time passes between catch-ups that things worthwhile discussing happen, yielding a productive session without being so far apart that things get missed.
Even if you have a scheduled one-to-one, you can cancel it. As a rule of thumb, it’s better to organise more frequent one-to-ones and cancel when not wanted - just make sure to avoid this becoming a habit, however.
Conversely, you can organise extra one-to-ones ad-hoc, given you both can find time. If something has come up that you want to ensure you discuss, then put a meeting in. Don't just sit on it until the next one-to-one if it's important.
In Summary
Everybody has different one-to-ones, with different goals and ideals for productivity. Don't just follow what I've said here; take a deep look at what you want to get from them and tailor it to your needs. The time allocated for the one-to-one is your time, so you should aim to maximise it.
Treating a one-to-one as a formality and not planning ahead (or at least having an informal agenda) to get the most from it isn’t worthwhile for either of you attending. You’re missing out on opportunities if you don’t maximise it. You have your team lead's full attention; use it.
So, try customising the format/style until you think they're successful. Mix up the environment, too; it has a more significant impact than you think.
Have any tips for having more effective one-to-ones? Let me know; I'm always looking to improve mine.
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