Creating a Culture of Accountability: How to have effective one on one meetings
How effective are your one on one meetings?
What is the key to high performing staff? Almost any Manager you ask will tell you that it’s regular and open communication – but why do we find it so hard to do?
Do we not have enough time to communicate? Or do we simply underestimate the value of communication with our staff when everything is ‘going okay’?
Whatever the case may be, the key to a high performing workplace lies in the way we communicate with our staff, because for any communication to be effective, it must be regular, scheduled and two-way. Sounds complicated and time consuming? It isn’t, and here are four easy ways to help make your one on one’s more effective.
Make a schedule and stick to it
It’s all very well and good to plan on speaking to your employees sometime during the week, but reality always seems to get in the way of this one, and before you know it the week has passed you by. Schedule a time to catch up with each employee you manage every week and stick to it! Making a commitment to a time and date not only allows you and your staff member to manage your workload around the meeting, it sets up the expectation for you both that you will make yourselves available at the scheduled time to meet.
Don’t hog all the oxygen
Now that you’ve scheduled the meetings to happen, what exactly are you going to talk about? Having a structure for your meeting is just as important as having the meeting itself. A quality one-on-one is a conversation between the employee and the Manager, so make sure you give some breathing space for your staff member to respond and ask questions/raise concerns of their own! One small conversation now could prevent a larger performance management issue down the track, so take the time to be present and listen.
Don’t ‘wait and see’ before you speak
Many of us suffer from ‘wait and see’ syndrome – that is, we avoid having the difficult conversations about potential issues we see arising (such as performance, tardiness, sick leave, attitude changes) in favour of a ‘wait and see what happens’ approach.
This approach not only undermines your efforts to open communication channels with your staff, but it can create risks for the business down the track if the issues that are unspoken become larger ones requiring performance management. Discuss the issues that arise, as they arise.
Celebrate your wins!
It’s sad but true, we often put aside meeting with employees who are performing well in favour of meeting with those that aren’t – but is this practice hurting your business? High performing employees need to be communicated with just as much as underperforming employees do – possibly even more so! Take the time to celebrate wins with your high performers to prevent losing them or even turning them into under performers!
If you have questions about performance issues or if you would like to start working on an effective communication schedule for your business, contact HR On-Demand on 1300 55 99 62.
