Effective frameworks for 1–1s: Learn more about your team
The best way for a manager to keep a pulse on their team satisfaction and engagement, is through effective one-on-ones. These meetings should be approached as a sacred time for you and your employees to connect and collaborate with each other. It’s a great space to build a trusted relationship, where you listen, absorb and act on the topics they bring up.
In my 6+ years as a people manager, I’ve experimented with various structures for 1–1s with my employees. Sharing three of my favorite frameworks, for anyone that is looking to try one out.
Framework 1: Start — Stop — Continue
This is a pretty simple framework. You ask your employee 3 questions:
- What would you like to start doing in your job?
- What would you like to stop?
- What is something that’s working great and should continue?
I find these 3 questions pretty powerful, and I learn a lot about what my employee feels about various aspects of their role. Focusing on what they want to start doing is a great way to understand where they want to grow their skills, based on their interest. By being aware of their preferences, you’re in a better position to help them find the unique opportunities, that are suited to their interest. It could also be a space to get the best ideas from your team about where the innovation opportunities lie.
The stop question is a no-brainer. Many people have aspects of their daily work that they don’t particularly enjoy. Some of these tasks might even belong to a different team altogether. The reason it might have ended up in their bucket in the first place might have been due to a lack of clarity, or something that was supposed to be temporary. This creates a great opportunity to provide that clarity about roles and responsibilities downstream, and also sideways with partner teams. If it ends up that 5 different people on your team are feeling that something shouldn’t be part of their job description, it’s a good time to see if you can separate that skill out entirely, and hire a new role just for that. It could also be an opportunity to see if your team can benefit from a new tool, or resources that help automate a pain point. If it ends up being something that can’t really be stopped, at the very least it’s an opportunity to empathize with your report about the frustrating things related to their job.
The continue question is my personal favorite. It’s a great indicator of what the employee likes doing, and derives satisfaction from. This is a great opportunity to make sure they’re set up to get more opportunities to flex their muscles on the type of work they enjoy. If they can’t think of anything, that’s usually a sign they’re disengaged, and need some help from you. At times you might even find one employee who loves doing something that another one hates — classic opportunity for a win-win!
These three questions can be positioned in relation to their role, or the company, or even their interaction with you as their manager. It’s a great format to solicit feedback about all the things that are working, and where the opportunities lie.
It can be tricky for some employees to feel comfortable with vulnerability, so definitely work to create psychological safety on the team. The first step is to practice active listening, and then to actually act on the action items. If something is within your power to change or improve, then provide them updates on what you plan to do about it, and set realistic expectations about the timeline. If something isn’t within your power to change, then be transparent about the reason why and make sure they understand the limitations. My team hated having to document every single dataset they created, but it was definitely a part of their job and not outsourceable. However, we were able to turn it into a fun game to incentivize the habit, where the winner would choose the spot for our next team outing!
Framework 2: Are you satisfied? If not, what’s missing?
This framework is based on the idea of prioritizing the pursuit of happiness. Most people are self-aware enough to know if they are enjoying their work or not. A little prodding can then help them also know what needs to change, for them to be more joyful.
Here’s how it works:
- Set up a few metrics of satisfaction that you think are crucial for your team. For example satisfaction with the “daily work”, “team environment”, or “company”. Ideally, just pick 1–2 metrics.
- For each metric, frame your question as “Rate your satisfaction with X on a scale of 1–5”. Any responses that are less than a 5, ask them to brainstorm what might be required either internally by them or externally by perhaps your enablement, that would improve that score.
I’m always amazed at how well this simple question works. As a manager, I’m doing a couple of things. One is I’m watching for trends over time, to see if my team is often frustrated and if usually it’s by the same things. That is a fantastic opportunity for me to work on finding solutions. It also gives me ammo to highlight issues that bubble up in my team to my superiors, while including possible solutions.
I always feel that the first step to solving a problem is to be aware it exists. And this format is great to build that awareness at scale. As an analyst, the partly quantitative aspect of these questions is also super appealing. What’s more fun than plotting your employee’s happiness over time :D
There are always some employees who will respond with “5s” all the time for all the questions. Not necessarily because they are super satisfied. Usually it could be a sign of unwillingness to talk about issues. For them, you can accept their answer but try breaking down the metrics into more component parts to ensure more specific questions. Otherwise, pick a different framework!
Framework 3: Rainbows & Clouds
Isn’t the name itself super happy? It’s pretty much as fun as it sounds. You ask your employees to share something that brought them joy (aka a rainbow) and something that was frustrating (aka a cloud), that occurred since the last time you met. Simple and elegant.
Here again your aim is to draw out concerns that you need to tackle, and recognize the moments of pride that your employee feels. You can create the space to make the rainbow and cloud be along very narrow boundaries (eg. a specific project) or make it wide and inclusive (eg. including their personal life and not just work topics).
The rainbows are moments of joy that need to be recognized and celebrated. It can be a great space for you to remember where you need a shine a light and improve visibility for the awesome work your report is doing. It can also be a moment to understand the things they are enjoying about work. The clouds give opportunities to understand and acknowledge issues, and hopefully come up with plans to improve on them.
This framework is also something that very easily converts to a team building exercise, as it can be done in a group. The main advantage would be that it improves an understanding across the team about each individual’s wins and issues. Celebrating wins and sharing frustrations is a fantastic way to bond. Just be sure it doesn’t end up being a marketing pitch where everyone feels the need to highlight some over the top achievement. If that happens, I’d suggest ending it immediately, as the inauthenticity make it stop being helpful.
Which framework should you choose?
At the end of the day, all of these frameworks are meant to increase awareness and give you as a manager clear action items that can improve employee engagement. If you’re already getting useful feedback from your employees, then that’s great! Very often however, 1:1s become super tactical and mostly about project updates and blockers. In some cases, a manager may not feel the need to set any direction, and just talk about whatever the employee wants to talk about. Some people will use that opportunity very well, while others might need a lot more direction and structure.
Moving away from the vague and providing clarity on what you need to hear from them, to best be their advocate, is crucial for employees that need a framework to help make their thoughts more coherent.
Different strategies seem to work for different people. Based on your comfort level, you can try them out and see which one feels like the best fit. Sometimes, a mix of frameworks spread out at a regular cadence might be the best solution. Your employees might have their own preferences, and you can even pick something different for each person individually. The idea is to incorporate it into the recurring agenda, so there is a space built for getting specific insights about your team’s satisfaction, whenever required!
I hope these suggestions were useful. Do share your stories of how it went, if you happen to try these out.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
