You just got to work, and you’ve opened up your calendar to see what’s on the agenda that day. You have four back-to-back one-on-ones and you also have a proposal that is due by the end of the day. What do you do? If you answered “reschedule the one-on-ones with your team” then you’re not alone. Many managers perceive their regular catch-ups with team members as being too frequent and/or less important than the other things on their plate. Research shows that they are wrong. Managers are responsible for 70% of the variance in employee engagement and employees who don’t have regular one-on-one meetings with their manager are four times more likely to be disengaged. We all know the cost of disengagement! On the flip slide, managers that support regular one-on-one meetings see a huge improvement in performance and engagement.  For example, when Adobe moved away from performance reviews and toward biweekly one-on-one catch-ups, they saw a 30% reduction in voluntary turnover. When GE made a similar move, they saw a fivefold productivity increase in twelve months! There is no denying the value of on-on-ones with your team members. But not all one-on-one meetings are created equal. How can you ensure that your one-on-one meetings with your team members are as productive as possible? Here are seven key tips: Have an agenda (that you can both contribute to) Let’s start with the obvious – agendas! Even though it may sound obvious, it’s amazing how often they are neglected. The last thing you want to do is enter a one-on-one meeting (or any meeting for that matter!) with no idea about how you’re going to use the time. To make the one-on-one as productive as possible, ensure to have a shared running agenda where you and your report can add agenda items. It’s important that you’re not writing the agenda and monopolizing the time. This is for them, not you. Make sure they have the ability to add discussion points to the agenda so that you know what they need from you. Applications like Soapbox are great for this as they make meeting preparation quick, easy and, dare I say, even fun. Once you have all of your agenda items, don’t forget to spend a few minutes before the meeting prioritizing your list. Chances are, you won’t get through everything in your time together, so make sure to start with the things that matter most so that they definitely get addressed. Create a safe space It doesn’t matter what you talk about, what questions you ask or what feedback you give if your employees don’t trust you and feel safe. Research shows that high performing teams have one thing in common – psychological safety! Psychological safety is a whole new article in and of itself, but the best way to figure out how to create a safe space for your team members is to think about which managers have created a safe space for you (and which haven’t!). What common themes arise? How do they address challenges? How do they respond to mistakes? Do they encourage or discourage your thoughts and ideas? Think about a manager that you have had that you have trusted, admired and respected. A manager that has made you feel safe and supported. Now write down everything about them that made you feel that way, and do everything in your power to replicate that list.   Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture During one-on-one meetings, it’s easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day tasks and projects. Did that email get sent? Did Client A respond? Where are we with Client B’s proposal? Yes, these things are all important. But don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. What are your direct report’s big goals? What is the team’s vision? How are they (and you) progressing on these? It’s a good idea to carve out time periodically in your one-on-ones to talk big picture as well as time to talk about the day-to-day. In saying that, even when you’re talking about the day-to-day seemingly little things, don’t forget to tie them back to the bigger goals and vision. Engagement is driven by purpose – what is the “why” behind every little task they do? How will their work impact the team and organization? Why is what they are working on important? Vision will help provide them with that “why.” Talk, talk talk. Then act. Meetings are great, but not unless they lead to action. It’s not enough to just assume that miraculous change will result from your one-on-ones with your team. Make sure you help set your team up for success by discussing what comes after your one-on-one. What are their current challenges? Their goals? What are the immediate action steps that need to be taken to overcome those challenges and achieve those goals? Make sure they finish every one-on-one meeting with at least two or three specific action steps and deadlines to complete them. It’s a great idea for you to also walk away with some action steps for either how you can improve as their manager and support their development.   Be A Coach Often times it’s really easy to tell our team what to do. However, when we take time to challenge them to step outside of what they normally would do we can actually see them grow. We can build confidence, develop trust and strengthen the company culture when our team is actively being challenged to grow. Your team will go very far under your leadership, but it’s one of those teach a man to fish scenarios. Let’s equip them to be good leaders as they move into leadership roles in the future. Don’t forget to follow-through and follow-up! Ensure you document the key meetings points and action steps at the end of every catch-up. Ideally, send them to your direct report in an email (or have them manage these and send them to you) or store them in a meeting management

12 years. 12 years is the average length of time between when individuals are promoted to management, and when they receive their first personalized leadership training. When employees are promoted their responsibilities include managing others, driving goals, engaging and developing their team. Most new managers don’t have any idea how to effectively accomplish any of these tasks. Why do we wait so long to invest in our managers when they are first given this responsibility? That is like helping your kid learn how to ride a bike at 17 years old after they’ve had 12 years on their own to figure it out and develop habits that they thought made sense. Can you image your kid at the age of 5 on their own trying to figure out how to balance, move the pedals, navigate the handles, and understand the right speed? I bet it’s nerve-wracking, chaotic and frightening. That’s similar to what new managers are feeling when they are given this enormous yet exciting responsibility of helping others succeed. Time and time again we see a common set of challenges when a new manager is promoted without appropriate personalized leadership training:  Bad habits set in. Similar to the bike example, Coach Katie warns, ”If you teach yourself to ski (or play tennis or anything else) without proper training, you build bad habits that become hard to break. That becomes your way of doing things. The same is true for managers. It’s easier to build good habits than it is to break bad ones and building good habits requires proper training and development.”  They are lost in their new role. An individual is typically promoted when she is successful in her role as an individual contributor; she has mastered the tactical aspects of her job. Once mastery is achieved, we naturally think it’s time to move on to the next challenge – to enable other people to be high achieving individual contributors towards a collective goal. While this comes with a better title and a pay bump, the newly promoted manager is off to the races trying to understand her new role, redefine what success looks like as a manager, what success looks like for her team, understand how to motivate her team members, along with learning how to have difficult conversations and the list goes on. Coach Teague adds, “New managers who are promoted into this role because they were successful in what they were doing often have zero training in how to actually manage. This can be disastrous!” ALV CEO Nicole experienced this and says, “I was fortunate enough to receive a lot of training on certain managerial topics: how to run a meeting, what to do if you have an HR issue, how to project manage. But I feel like these didn’t end up being the things I struggled with as a new manager like being promoted to lead a group of my former peers who were all older than I was. I wish I had more one-on-one support to navigate those types of situations.” By investing in your new managers in a personalized way, like through coaching, you are not just investing in their personal development – you’re improving the experience of their employees and ultimately impacting your company’s success.  They get frustrated. Newly promoted managers get frustrated and feel like they have been set up to fail because they aren’t excelling when that’s all they are used to. Due to the frustration and lack of training, newly promoted managers negatively impact team morale, the organizational culture and are likely to be a flight risk. Coach Sara says, “Too often companies wait until there is an issue before investing in developing the new manager.” By this time, emotions and conflicts have heightened and it takes more time and money to get back on track. They negatively impact the people around them. When an individual contributor is struggling on the job, it often just impacts their work product. But when a manager is struggling, that means a whole team of people is often impacted. This can be detrimental to the organization’s culture, morale, and team retention. It only takes one under-developed manager to cause turmoil and cost the organization more money than what it would cost to invest in coaching. We wholeheartedly believe that new managers need personalized and in-depth coaching to learn the leadership skills needed to enable themselves, their team, and the organization to run effectively and function highly. New managers need to learn skills beyond how to conduct performance management reviews and run effective meetings. Today, most new managers undergo management training which consists of E-learnings and/or workshops. E-learnings have a completion rate of 13% and one-off workshops are not personal enough or consistent enough to develop good habits. Managers cannot be given one-time E-learning or workshop. They need personalized coaching to understand themselves as a leader and how to utilize their strengths to positively engage their team members. When newly promoted managers are given personalized leadership coaching, it results in:  Feeling supported. In our current workforce, everyone is looking to be developed to be the best they can be. They want to have an impact and enable those around them. When you provide the personal attention and support managers need, they feel supported to succeed in their new role. Coach Ngoc says, “Coaching is a mirror for them to talk through situations and reflect. They might not have that type of outlet or support at work. If people run into challenges, they need to talk through it or else frustration can get pent up, leading to unhealthy behaviors. It’s also a place of no judgment and allows them to work through their challenges instead of being given an answer.” When this happens, there is an increase in confidence and they know they’ve been provided the tools they need to be set up for success in their new role. This leads them to want to do more and go above and beyond for