Great CEOs are active managers.
The internet is full of strong opinions to declutter your work calendar. We largely agree, but 1:1s with your direct reports are not the meetings to cut. Be an active manager and stay in sync with your direct reports. Discussing roles and expectations, ensuring near- and long-term alignment on goals, building trust, and sharing feedback regularly are all key drivers of employee engagement and performance.
1. Meeting Cadence
Build a schedule that works for you and stick to it.
- 1:1 Meetings - Schedule regular 1:1 meetings (30-60 mins) every week or every two weeks, depending on what cadence you need to feel connected to the employee and their work and vice versa. Never reschedule your 1:1s unless it’s urgent. When you miss or reschedule a meeting, even if you apologize profusely and have a good reason, it creates a negative signal for the employee that they’re not important or valued.
- In-between 1:1 Meetings - Stay connected through constant dialogue that goes both ways. Don’t “save up” every discussion point for your 1:1 meetings. Create opportunities to break the inevitable transactional nature of your 1:1 meetings and the focus/intensity of your “normal work week.” Water cooler talk, lunches, coffee breaks, dinner, drinks, impromptu phone calls, etc. All of it helps build a more real-time and less scripted relationship.
2. Meeting Topics
Find ways to cover all of these topics.
- Transactional - Talk through key work tracks and recent progress. Give feedback (celebrate wins and discuss areas where they’re not meeting your expectations), and review blockers, with a focus on understanding what you can do to support them.
- Strategic - Create time to zoom out and assess how your company is tracking towards the broader goals and reviewing together whether you’re all still rowing in the right direction. Invite participation on this and ensure it’s a two-way dialogue. You don’t have to agree, but you should make sure your direct report feels heard and considered.
- Professional growth and development - Step away from KPIs and rapid-fire updates and get temperature checks on how the employee thinks they are doing, what milestones they are looking to reach this year, next year, or in their career overall. What support do they think they need to get to the next level. And what’s missing that could improve their quality of life at work, etc.
- Personal - Get to know your employees outside of their work. Show an interest in their families, hobbies, weekend activities, etc. Write them down wherever you take notes. And ask follow up questions over time. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be friends with your employees as there is always the hierarchical relationship looming in the background. However, letting them know you care about them as people strengthens the relationship. There’s a reason Bill Clinton logged over 10,000 handwritten index cards before he ran for office.
References
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