How to Crush 1:1 Meetings

What's up, everyone. This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Morning Brew. Welcome back to Founder’s Journal, my personal audio diary, where I give you, the business builder, the tools you need to think better in order to build better, whether that's building a business, a team, or a new product. Today, I am talking about How to Crush One-on-Ones as a manager or as a direct report. Let's hop into it. 

One-on-ones are high-leverage activities

So I will be the first to say, one-on-ones are not sexy, but they are super important. It is one of the only times in a week where you have the undivided attention of your boss or of your direct report, and think about it this way. If you want to be successful in your career, you need to be successful in one-on-ones. It's that simple. As a manager, your performance is based on the performance of the team and your team is made up of different individuals. The highest-leverage activity you can do to support those different individuals so your team does well and therefore you do well, is weekly one-on-ones. And as an employee, you perform well when you understand how your role contributes to the business, when you do your role very well, and when your manager recognizes that you're doing your role really well. A one-on-one is the perfect space to make sure that you are clear on what your job is and that your work is being recognized.

And here's how Andy Grove, who is basically the godfather of management, here's how he put it. He describes one-on-ones as the essential high-leverage activity that all managers need to invest in. Basically 90 minutes of your time can enhance the quality of your subordinates’ work for two weeks or for some 80 plus hours. And while Grove is totally right, I see one-on-ones as a two-way street. Both parties need to make account. As a direct report, it's your chance to show why you're great at your job, to over-communicate things you're thinking about, to work through challenges together, and to ask questions that you ordinarily wouldn't have had the chance to get answered in the day-to-day of business. And for managers, it's a great time for you to listen and provide support.

So I believe in a well-run one-on-one you are listening as a manager 80% of the time, and you are speaking 20% of the time. And when you do talk as a manager, it's to ask questions, answer questions, share important company information that wasn't shared with a level below you, or to provide feedback. And by the way, when you think about it, for managers this is why managing too many people can be so detrimental. If you're managing effectively, you're taking the right amount of time to prep for one-on-ones, to be present, but you can't do that if you're responsible for the day-to-day and managing, say, eight people. That's why my rule of thumb has always been, don't manage more than six people at any given time. So here's what I want to do. I want to share four of the Cardinal rules for effective one-on-ones and then share actual outlines by founders and senior leaders that they use to run their one-on-ones today. 

4 cardinal rules of one-on-ones

Cardinal rule number one: You need to understand why a one-on-one does and does not exist. A one-on-one exists to work through big blockers related to major priorities, to make sure that everything stays on track for you as the manager, and for you to provide support to your direct report. A one-on-one exists for you as a manager to share important company information that your direct report isn’t privy to. A one-on-one exists to support your direct reports’ career development and provide clarity around job trajectory so they are never guessing what is the next role that they can grow into and what do they need to do to be able to grow into that role. And a one-on-one is for both the manager and the direct report to understand how each other is feeling about the relationship. A one-on-one is not for status updates. A one-on-one is not for small talk or surface level talk. And a one-on-one is not for just giving compliments for the heck of it to boost employee morale. 

The second cardinal rule of one-on-ones is to be consistent and be on time. It is so obvious, but so many people mess this up. The worst thing you can do is to make your one-on-ones irregular. Not only does it make your direct report question if you really care, but it is such a slippery slope. You start with your weekly one-on-ones, then all of a sudden you cancel one. It turns to biweekly. Then all of a sudden you're saying, Hey, do I need to do this biweekly? Why don't we do this monthly? And the issue is, is you just can't expect your direct report to evolve and improve as a professional if you're not giving them the dedicated space to ask questions and receive feedback. Make sure that you're on time, make sure that you're present. Every decision that you make in your relationship with your manager or your direct report, it communicates just how much you care about the relationship. Being consistent and showing up and being on time and present to your one-on-one is like a layup to show you actually care. 

Third cardinal rule of one-on-ones: This is the employee’s meeting, not the manager’s meeting. Ben Horowitz, a famous entrepreneur, famous investor, obviously one of the founders of Andreessen Horowitz, here's how he describes one-on-ones. He says it is the free-form meeting for all of the pressing issues, brilliant ideas, and chronic frustrations that do not fit neatly into status reports, emails, or Slacks. Employees own the agenda and lead the conversation. You just help to provide some structure and guardrails so it's a consistently effective conversation week in and week out. 

The fourth and final cardinal rule of one-on-ones: The best one-on-ones start before the actual meeting. Here's what I mean. Everyone's time is valuable. The best way to make the most of a one-on-one is through a running doc, could be a Google Doc, between a manager and a direct report. You as the manager provide a framework and I'll share in a few minutes what a framework could look like, and then the employee is responsible for filling in the blanks of that framework to the agenda every single week. It is a great way for you to know where everyone's head’s at, and it allows you to avoid status updates or filler conversation, because you can see what everyone is thinking about prior to the actual meeting. Also, if you end up leaving a one-on-one with say, action items, say you're working through a big challenge or a blocker, and together through conversation, you figure out an action item that needs to be done to work through that blocker, you can then include that action item in the running doc, so in next week's one-on-one you can make sure that it was checked off and the blocker was broken through. 

So those are the four cardinal rules to run effective one-on-ones. 

Examples of good one-on-ones

Now I want to talk about what it looks like in practice, so I'm going to share the exact one-on-one formats of three leaders who I respect dearly. So first up is Adam Ryan, my friend, and the co-founder of Workweek. And so in the past, he shared how he has three to four questions prepared that every direct report answers prior to each one-on-one. And the four questions he asks are: What is your state of mind? What was the highlight of last week? What happened unexpectedly? And what are two things that Adam can do to make your week better this week? And his view is similar to the idea I just shared about a running Google Doc. He thinks written word is easier because it makes it less tense in the conversation, or it makes it less sense to have hard conversations because both the manager and the direct report know exactly what's going to be talked about when you walk into the meeting, he also shared that he always spends about five minutes talking about personal stuff, then he dives into questions and answers, and then finally he ends the conversations talking about rocks, which are 90 day goals. We use those at Morning Brew too, and where he can help an employee accomplish their rocks.

Now here's a totally different framework from a senior leader at Morning Brew. This senior leader uses a format that's known as Oasis, and it stands for “ownership, asking questions, being solution focused, informing of important company information, and streamlining problems or blockers.” Now, one other for you is a format that my buddy Rameez, who runs a company called Antenna, this is his format. And it's actually the format that my co-founder Austin uses in his one-on-ones as well. So the basic format is accomplishment, priorities, and blockers. An employee will fill out their accomplishments from the previous week, their priorities for this week, and any blockers they're facing. They'll share that in a Google Doc, prior to the meeting. And then the meeting Rameez will have will kick off with tactical stuff. And then they will focus basically the entire one-on-one on questions that Rameez has or blockers that Rameez is trying to help the employee work through. And his view is that this is a great format for helping an employee think through their thoughts, but then also to be able to spend most of the time working through challenges rather than just updating each other on what's happened in the previous week.

And so those are some of my thoughts on one-on-ones. Again, they're such an important touch point for any manager and any employee. You need to learn how to perfect them, no matter what role you're playing in the one-on-one. If you have any questions on one-on-ones, shoot me an email to alex@morningbrew.com or DME on Twitter @businessbarista, and also stay tuned for next episode of Founder’s Journal, because I'm going to be talking about how we all can speak with compassionate candor. So being direct, being honest, but doing so in an empathetic way where you don't come off as a jerk and having that skill is the most important thing to effectively giving feedback in things like one-on-ones. Also make sure to pound the subscribe button for Founder’s Journal, whether it's on Apple, Spotify, or the podcast player of your choice. It's the number one way to grow their show and it's also how you get notified of new content when it comes out. If you already pounded subscribe, do the same thing on YouTube.

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