Tactics: More Effective 1:1s

1:1 meetings. If you’re up and reading this, you’ve probably taken a gander at your calendar for this first full work week of 2019 and are feeling very “FML”. You’ve got tons of meetings - some group meetings and some 1:1s and maybe no idea WTH any of the meetings are for. If you’re a participant in a group meeting- you can skip this post. If you’re going to be in a 1:1 - you should read this post.

1:1s are a whole different ballgame and you can control a lot of it. And you should. Go through right now and list out your 1:1s and take a few minutes to ask yourself: What do I need to get out of this meeting with this person. That’s the beginning of your agenda.

If you’re driving the agenda, this is how I typically structure mine. I also always send over an agenda 24 hours in advance.

• Two parts: FYI/Inform and Discuss

• For discuss, try to write the topic and question you want answered

  • ex. Performance Reviews - How will the calibration process look?

• By listing out the questions, maybe the person can answer them in the email without needed to discuss them during the 1:1

• Ask the other participant for any adds and to add them in a different color

• During the meeting, I strikethrough each topic so I know it’s been discussed

• All uncovered topics get moved to the following week and/or I follow up in an email

If your workplace works on collaborative documents like Quip or Google Docs, it’s really easy to keep all the agendas in the same doc and link to the agenda in calendar invite.

A bonus of taking this approach is that you might be able to condition other people to this format so that when they’re making agendas with you - they use the same format! Try it out and let me know how it works.

As always, share your tips in the comments!