The Secrets Behind Great One-on-One Meetings

These regular meetings improve team communication, identify fixable issues before they transform into big problems, and increase employee loyalty.

Wonderful idea. But when you’re sitting there, staring at each other, what are you supposed to say?

As individuals, we all want to feel good about the work we do. Whether we work for a huge company or a tiny mom-and-pop business, each of us wants to create quality products, and to know that our contributions make a difference.

We want to be appreciated for that work, too, by the people around us: our colleagues, project managers, the company executives, customers. When we stumble, we want someone to help us figure out how to resolve the problem, or at least to act as a sounding board while we figure it out ourselves. And that’s all just as true whether we’re at the beginning of our careers, in our first internship position, or we work from an executive suite.

Every company wants to attract the best employees, people who share its values and are committed to excellence. The organization wants its people to be loyal, creatively productive, and engaged with their work. To accomplish that, its managers need to help those people make the right decisions about what to work on and how to do so efficiently.

These goals don’t need to be in conflict. In fact, there’s a business process that can give each of us a stepping-stone toward that ideal situation: a regular one-on-one meeting with the person ...