_{Image – Gregor Cresnar}

One to ones are quiet, focused collaboration time for employees and bosses to connect. It’s their time, not yours. Kim Scott – Radical Candor

We can all point to memories we have of great and terrible line managers we’ve experienced, and the shape of the clumsy boot-print or lifelong inspiration they left with us. Good managers are the single most important thing that an organisation can offer employees. And because what happens between them is mostly in the form of one-to-one conversations, the quality of these, and the usefulness being exchanged, is the most important thing moving around organisations. One-to-ones are the main vehicle through which we build trust and retain our best people.

Here are 10 ideas for leaders who want to develop their one-to-ones.

1/ What do people say they want from one to ones?
– A planned agenda (few things in depth, not a huge tick list, and no unwelcome surprises)
– A discussion which is meaningful (i.e., we are dealing precisely with the things that matter to me and to my workload)
– Helpful feedback (honest, constructive and clear – which will help me to improve)
– Clear outcomes (I can manage what is being asked of me in the timeframe)

In a recent coaching conversation, a school leader described to me her frustration that the working day is swamped by mundane operational items, and the more interesting strategic challenge never seems to emerge. If everything is operational, she said, it feels like you’re just moving through someone else’s tick list, instead of developing your own skills.

So, managers should think about what will be most helpful to them, not you: They want to leave the meeting with less on their plate their when they started.
Ask at the beginning of the meeting: What’s the ONE thing that you cannot leave this meeting without us having time to think about the issue together?

2/ The best conversations are where the line manager deeply wants the very best for their teammate, where the performance of their colleague is more important than their own, where they create the kind of thinking space inside the meeting that people anticipate and look forward to, where they go the extra mile outside the meeting to find the things that will help (details, habits, research and support) and where they tell you what you’re doing well, and what you need help with.

Successful one to ones happen where we have:
– Regular scheduled meetings instead of meetings often cancelled for other priorities
– A line manager who is calm & listens instead of the quality of the meeting being dependent on mood
– My agenda first instead of the line manager prioritising their agenda
– A focus on my output, growth and my CPD instead of just a tick list of my actions & output
– My line manager giving useful follow up with actions & reading (‘I saw this & thought of you’) instead of any notes & follow up being my responsibility
– A psychologically safe conversation instead of never being sure where I am in this work relationship

3/ Staying quiet and taking notes
The quality of your attention determines the quality of other people’s thinking. Nancy Kline – Time to Think

I take notes in almost every conversation. It has become a ‘thing’ for me. I think it’s a respectful way to demonstrate that you are actively listening, especially when you refer back to the notes you have taken of the words they said. Practising the art of summing up what we have discussed, of what’s been achieved and our next steps can really help ‘tidy up’ and bring closure. Making notes also keeps your head down and focused, allowing their mind to roam. It allows moments of quiet, or thinking time, which may not have otherwise occurred. Ask yourself how few words you can get away with using.

4/ Whose time is it anyway?
Doing fewer things doesn’t mean accomplishing fewer things. Slow Productivity – Cal Newport.

We should approach each one to one with the mentality that this is more about the other person than us. Here are some practical ways to make sure it is their conversation, not yours:

– their agenda items comes before yours
– focus on the HOW as well as the WHAT
– remember the listen and talk ratio
– check that your ratio of preparation time to meeting time matches your colleague’s
– ask who takes responsibility for things that went wrong, and who takes credit for things that went well? What words will you choose to make that difference clear?
– final reflection for the line manager: What’s being said here that I’m not hearing?

5/ There are three agenda problems:

a) An agenda that has far too many things on it. The meeting becomes a surface skimming of ten or twelve things, none of which get much air-time and you both end up feeling overwhelmed (it’s problem-focused). The alternative, when you plan to spend time drilling down into one or two areas in depth, creates a much richer and more successful conversation. There is a sense of satisfaction that you have really bottomed out an issue (it’s solution-focused).

b) An agenda that is too vague. For example, the agenda item: “reduce workload,” is pretty meaningless, whereas “take feedback from our ECTs on lesson planning and marking, and make a decision on which specific tasks we need to cut staff turnover,” signposts the real issue and tells me what we are really discussing. 

c) The agenda surprises – where something is sprung upon us in a meeting, that we haven’t had thinking time to prepare for. You only need to get this wrong once as a line manager to lose a great deal of the trust (and psychological safety), that you’ve built up. 

6/ Allocate fewer meetings – but give each one more
In an attempt to drive efficiency and save organisational time, sometimes leaders recommend shorter meetings, so that they can generate more (shorter) meetings with more people. But actually sometimes what is needed is more, not less time. So much of what happened during Covid was pseudo-productivity. Filling calendars and running through lots of meetings rapidly creating the illusion of progress. Covid conversation was often a shallow, tinny, transmission exchange over Teams. One thing I’ve learnt from this period is to schedule fewer, slightly longer meetings with colleagues to create a deeper discussion. If I don’t, this is the breakdown of each interaction: 

But I’ve noticed that when I do allocate a little more time, this happens: 

The main sections of our conversation do not significantly change. We say hello, then review what they are working on, look at the next areas of focus and drill down into any difficult areas which need special attention around the ‘how’. But two things happen when we allocate more time:

a) we spend more time at the beginning, checking in on each other, actually looking at the other person, instead of a cursory glance before switching back to the laptop. This gives us an opportunity to rebuild the trust that already exists, but needs re-articulating for it to be meaningful. This checking in stops the rushed and tokenistic ‘everything all right?’ where it’s obvious that I can’t wait to get this meeting started and then quickly over, in time for coffee.

b) we spend more time at the end of the conversation, checking on our understanding and on levels of confidence. I am more likely to find the time to use the following phrases: Does this sound like a realistic plan? Can you foresee any problems? Are you worried about any of it? Is there anything else that you need support with? 

All of these questions are a form of checking out. Are they comfortable with what we’ve discussed? Is there anything they’ve been holding back but they’re anxious about? In my shorter meetings we don’t have time for this, and so I can miss the signs that my colleague is not confident about how to implement what we’ve just planned. There is a greater risk that we have just made a list of what to do’s, without thinking about how to do it.

In organisations of all sizes, most blocks occur, not because people are ignorant of what needs to happen, but because they are afraid to ask for help in how to do it. The best line managers allocate the right amount of meeting time for their colleague to be confident of how to know exactly how to do the next thing, not the right amount of time for the line manager to be able to allocate tasks.

7/ Contracting line management
Line management can be a powerful and overlooked tool we have in schools to turn our vision into a lived experience. Claire Harley

Questions to ask: What would feel like an excellent one to one experience? How will we offer feedback?
Balance the meeting: The operational and transactional (you run through the to-do list and get the stuff done); the strategic and transformational ( long term and inspiring).
Don’t cancel the meeting: just because of tight deadlines or staff absence – this sends a message that your colleague doesn’t matter to you quite as much as they hoped that they did.
We’re in this together: Most line managers preoccupy with short term outcomes and the results for which you are accountable, and thus meetings promote anxiety. This may result in the manager being told what they think you want to hear rather than the unvarnished truth. If, on the other hand, right at the outset we think in terms of ‘what are our expectations of what we could achieve together,’ this shares the load. Your success becomes co-dependent.

8/ Try the 40 40 20 rule (prep/follow-up/meeting time)
This rule suggests dedicating 40% of the time to preparation, another 40% to productive follow-up, I’d only 20% to the actual meeting itself.
Effective preparation – means both of you think about the agenda and prepare well (including the line manager).
Effective follow up – doesn’t just mean sharing a list of action points from the meeting, though that can help. It means to shine of spotlight on the small number of areas you focused on, and keep working on these against the inevitable inertia of the urgent and immediate stuff which hits your in-tray.

9/ Line Management style
Many managers focus one to ones exclusively on outcomes, but if we spend more time thinking about mastering new skills and personal growth, we may find that these become the means to the end, while providing us with much needed longer-term fulfilment. Two useful questions:
– What are you trying to achieve, and how do you plan to measure success?
– What skills and behaviours do you want to work on which will help you improve performance?

Instead of thinking that the line manager has to solve the problems and provide all of the answers try these coaching tips: ask more questions: keeping the focus on them, not you; listen: to what they’re saying and what they’re not saying; synthesise: by playing their words back to them helpfully; remind them of their broader goals: we forget these in the heat of the operational and the urgent; challenge them: to try something new, to get them out of their comfort zone.

Tame your advice monster – M B Stanier. The Advice Trap

If you are a line manager who focuses on strategy and people development, then try a more immediate style deciding on outcomes and milestones will help you to focus with your colleagues, and drill down on the important results element of line management. If you are a line manager who focuses more on short-term resultsd and ‘did you do what we agreed last time?’ style, then trying a coaching style can help you to be bring a more developmental style to your line management meetings, helping you to ask better questions and look further into the future.

10/ Belonging
Effective line management is the most immediate mechanism to help me know that I really belong. It is where I know that here is someone who is expecting me to be my best self, but doesn’t crash and burn when I fail in something. Who checks in on me when workload is high or personal stuff emerges, and gives me accurate feedback which helps me assess how I’m doing. All of this helps me feel psychologically safe, more engaged, more confident and more secure. It will help me take risks and… It brings out the best to me. And this is good for the organisation: when I experience this feeling of belonging I will do my best work.

Instead of I’d like this done by the end of the week, how about using the words I’d like to be working with you in five years’ time. This is such a powerful phrase. It communicates nothing and everything at the same time. It tells the receiver that whatever work needs to be done or checked is a means to an end, a shared pursuit and gives confidence that we’ll solve this together. It builds trust. I’ve used these words more and more recently, and usually the conversation becomes deeper as a result: we move on from the immediate to talk about workload, career, aspiration, family circumstances, and confidence at work – conversational trails that unless they felt psychologically safe, we would never have trod together.