One-on-one meeting (1:1)

One-on-one meetings already existed informally in almost all companies. But after it began to be institutionalized by high-tech companies, leading them to exceptional operating results, this methodology inspired the worldwide renewal of companies of different sizes and segments from the business world.

WHAT IS IT…

Basically it is the private and frequent meeting between two people: the leader and a leading member of his team. Guided by an agenda, they exchange ideas, feedbacks about the work, identify gaps between the expected result and that achieved by the employee, implement actions for the professional and personal development of the leader to optimize their performance, increasing the results of the team and the company as a whole.

ADVANTAGES

• Improves the relationship between leader and leader, strengthening trust between the two.

• It enables exchanges of feedback, more sincere and productive ideas between leader and leader, without the interference of third parties.

• It favors engagement and commitment to the company’s strategic values and goals.

• It makes it possible to identify, in real time, the problems that happen at the operational level and propose immediate solutions to them.

• Increases the productivity of the leader and the leader with consequent increase in team and business results.

• Having identified the shortcomings of the leader, leader and leader define PDIs so that he can acquire the skills required to hold his position with high performance.

• The leader plots along with the leader his career plan and actions for its implementation.

• The leader feels valued with the expansion of his professional horizon, spends more time in the company which decreases the turnover rate.

• Stimulated to protagonism, the employee develops soft skills that are currently valued as self-knowledge, autonomy, self-criticism, self-management, proactivity.

ROLE OF THE LEADER

• Listen, with attentive listening, the led.

• Align the personal and professional aspirations of the leader to the objectives, values and goals of the company, stimulating its adherence to organizational culture.

• Identify the gaps between the performance of the leader and what is expected of it, guiding how to overcome them.

• Give freedom to the leader to talk about how the leader is exercising the leadership of the team. This encourages the leader to speak of themselves without restrictions and, of course, that the leader also improves his skills to lead.

• Bring constant guidance feedbacks to the leader. Highlight your strengths, help you reflect on your performance, identify your shortcomings, and suggest actions to overcome them. The manager has a guide role: he must always lead the leader to find solutions to the problems raised.

• Have communication skills when giving feedback so as not to compromise the self-esteem and self-confidence of the leader. It is advisable that before pointing out deficiencies, emphasize highlighted performances, so as not to seem that the meeting is a meeting just to charge better performance.

• Avoid value judgment on the led. Focus on describing your actions, what happened, how it should have occurred, what to do to improve. Therefore, the leader needs to prepare to know how to effectively hold a ONE-ON-ONE meeting.

• The priority of the suggestion of the agenda is the leader, because the meeting is for him. But coordination is the responsibility of the leader. Priority does not mean exclusivity: the leader can suggest topics for the agenda, when he considers it appropriate.

• When guiding the meeting unilaterally, give knowledge of the agenda to the leader in advance, so that he can prepare properly for it. This can occur at the beginning of the meeting cycle when the employee demonstrates insecurity because of their inexperience. It should be emphasized that the leader, from the beginning of the cycle, must stimulate his autonomy, his role so that he can take responsibility for the agenda as soon as possible.

• The leader can suggest another agenda, when she brings irrelevant themes for the best personal and professional performance of both or the team.

• Do not cancel or change the date and time of the meeting without a reason that actually justifies it.

ROLE OF THE LED

• Express your opinions about leadership, the work process, your difficulties, your concerns and anxieties.

• Ask the leader for suggestions for the development of the skills required by the position to deliver the results expected by the company (OKR).

• Give suggestions to qualify the relationships between team employees, the operational process, the organizational climate and increase the results of the team.

• Suggest actions for your personal and professional development.

• Commit to propose topics relevant to the agenda of the meetings and to take responsibility for the priority of holding them.

• To give science to the leader, with the advance and the form agreed between them, on the topics of the agenda of the meeting.

PERIODICITY

Ideally, the meeting is weekly, but it can also be fortnightly or monthly depending on the reality of each team. It cannot exceed the monthly limit, because it cools the relationship between leader and leader and makes possible the greatest value of the one-on-one meeting impossible: that of being able to give immediate solution to problems soon after its occurrence.

Some consider the fifteen-day period ideal, because it gives time for the employee to see the result of a planned action, give feedback to the leader and both analyze the result.

Ideally, the meeting should always be on the same day of the week and at the same time to avoid possible mismatches.

DURATION

There is also no unanimity on the duration of each meeting. Some people consider it ideal one hour and another thirty minutes. At the beginning an hour is indicated. After a certain time, when there is better integration between leader and leader, the meeting may have its time reduced to thirty minutes, if applicable.

Whatever the duration, in common agreement with the leader, the leader must carefully divide the time to listen to the collaborator, discuss the theme of the agenda, lead the leader to the solution of problems raised and have time to make an evaluation of the meeting: tie joint agreements and define mutual future responsibilities.

THE MEETING MUST BE GUIDED

Nothing is worse than a meeting for nothing, without direction, because it can turn into an unproductive chat. Therefore it has to be guided, primarily by the leader, with the supervision of the leader, because the meeting is for the leader. The leader can assume this responsibility when he deems it necessary.

THE MEETING CANNOT BE CANCELLED.

Its occurrence should be frequent and as scheduled, according to the reality of the company and each team. This is critical to its effectiveness. In a high-performance culture, the cancellation of meetings with a certain frequency reveals the non-commitment to their value.

RECORD RELEVANT DATA AND INFORMATION

The summary, evaluation or conclusion of the meeting shall be drafted and rigorously recorded to compose a database in order to substantiate People Analytics and make people management more judicious and scientific. It is this basis that will reveal the history of the employee’s journey in the company and will support many decisions about it: PDIs, promotion, remuneration and even a possible shutdown if necessary.

One-on-one at VDX People

On the VDX People Platform, the one-on-one meeting has a lot of relevance to make management more effective and lead employees to high performance.

In an accessible way the platform facilitates communication between leader and leader, through the actions highlighted below:

• Through the platform, leader and leader exchange emails on suggestions of topics and the preparation of the agenda of meetings;

• It automatically charges the leader and the leader when a scheduled meeting has not been held;

• HR and senior leaders, through a score card, have the possibility to monitor the development of meetings: their attendance, leaders and leaders who have not fulfilled their agenda, how they are being held, the quality of records. In this way, they can make interventions that they deem appropriate for the meetings to meet the objective of raising the level of performance of leaders and leaders in order to enhance the results of the business. For HR, one-on-ones run controls with spreadsheets and query with each manager to see if meetings are happening or not.

Relevant meeting data and information is recorded in a single platform repository. Centralized in one place, it facilitates managers, at all levels, control over their achievement, the tracking of their history, the analysis of their data and information to support decisions and more assertive actions so that employees, at all levels, perform in high performance and the strategic goals of the company are achieved.

Among these actions are the definition of PDIs, to align the aspirations and career plans of employees with the goals and values of the company.

Fulfilling one-on-one meetings should be a greater value in a high-performance culture. The platform helps to tie all its points: preparation of the agendas, relevance of the themes, realization, documentation, data organization and its effectiveness to boost high performance and business results.

CONCLUSION

For the scope of its functionality: identify performances, results, analyze their causes, strengths, deficiencies, give constant, efficient formative feedbacks, continuously reevaluate, record praise to highlighted performances, the effectiveness of corrective actions of deficient performances, always aiming at the high performance of the employee, for all this, it is believed that the one-on-one meeting will replace the traditional performance and competencies evaluations. Because its practice, executed with excellence, based on Analytics, has proven to be more effective, more productive in managing people to leverage the results of companies.