One-on-ones

Purpose

• guide people to improve themselves and their work continuously
• learn about arising problems early to help to mitigate them
• evaluate and amplify needs of the people you led towards upper management
• explain and amplify strategy of the upper management towards the people you lead

The foundation: build trust

The people you want to lead need to trust you so they feel safe to share their thoughts and needs and are willing to follow your lead. Trust goes both ways: when you accept to lead someone, consider them trustworthy and that they act with best intent. If that is your mindset, it will show in your attitude. Trust breeds trust.

Vegas rule

To set the stage assure them “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”. What they share with you confidentially you will not expose to others unless you both agree to share.

Chit chat

Chatting about your personal lives is fun, relaxing and will create better mutual understanding and trust.

Questions to go deeper

Here’s some questions you can ask to exchange about motivation and values. Also share your own stories to role model openness and vulnerability.

• What achievement are you proud of?
• Share a story of when you failed. What did you learn?
• What was your best experience with leadership you had?
• What was the worst experience with leadership you had?

Operative talk

Ask what and how they are doing in their daily job to understand their pains and help them reflect how to improve their work on a daily base. Tell them what you’re working on to role model sharing thoughts and concerns and create transparency. Discuss company goals and strategy to create alignment.

Situational leadership

Different people and different situations require different styles.

Leader as Coach

The most empowering and sustainable way to lead people is to assume they have the skills and assets they need to solve their own problems. Help them find the solution themselves by asking questions. You might find the GROW model helpful:

• Goal setting: What do you want to achieve?
• Reality check: What is the situation now?
• Options: What could you do?
• Will: What will you do?

Leader as Mentor

If they don’t come up with ideas how to solve their problem and seek advice, you can also mentor them and tell them what you would do in their stead. Storytelling can help you to get an idea across without commanding someone to do something: Think about a similar situation in your life, explain it and how you dealt with it. What went well? What didn’t work? Why? They can then judge themselves if the situation relates to theirs and if they want to apply your learnings.

Leader as Teacher

If someone lack the skills to solve a problem, it’s not helpful to coach or mentor but better to build the foundation first by teaching what you know. If you figured out together that there’s some knowledge you can share, offer to go into “teaching mode” and explain it in the one-on-one. You can also give an internal talk if it might be helpful for more people in the company.

Escalations

Escalations should be an exception. If someone is really overstepping a boundary and the situation is not resolvable with feedback, be clear about it.

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