927: Fixing One-on-One Meetings Improves (almost) Everything with Dr. Steven Rogelberg
Jan 11, 2024
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Dr. Steven Rogelberg, organizational psychologist, explains why one-on-one meetings are critical, discussing their positive impact on employee engagement and talent retention. He shares tips for creating effective agendas and asking for help, emphasizing the significance of meaningful conversations and being a steward of others' time. Prioritizing these meetings is crucial, and subscribing to the podcast offers additional resources.
Effective one-on-one meetings have tremendous benefits for employee experience, engagement, and retention.
To improve one-on-one meetings, managers should prepare, involve direct reports in creating an agenda, and create a psychologically safe environment for open communication.
Deep dives
The Benefits of Effective One-on-One Meetings
Effective one-on-one meetings have tremendous benefits, positively impacting employee experience, engagement, and retention. Good one-on-ones also enhance team performance and inclusion efforts. Managers who prioritize these meetings see the reflection of their team's success, making them a core requirement of leadership.
The Importance of Frequency and Preparation
Research shows that employees, including senior ones, desire more frequent one-on-one meetings with their managers. However, the frequency of these meetings varies widely, with many managers only conducting them monthly or even quarterly. Managers often have a blind spot, thinking the meetings went better than the direct reports did. To improve the meetings, managers should prepare, involve their direct reports in creating an agenda, and focus on creating a psychologically safe environment for open communication.
The Key Practices for Successful One-on-Ones
To optimize one-on-one meetings, managers and direct reports should address common mistakes and establish good practices. These include having a lightweight agenda, rotating topics, involving direct reports in creating action plans, ensuring active listening, and focusing on building rapport. Managers should avoid canceling one-on-ones frequently, as it sends a negative signal to employees. By committing to these practices, managers can foster strong relationships, boost engagement, and improve team performance.
Dr. Steven G. Rogelberg, an organizational psychologist, holds the title of Chancellor’s Professor at UNC Charlotte for distinguished national, international and interdisciplinary contributions. He is an award-winning teacher and recipient of the very prestigious Humboldt Award for his research on meetings. Adam Grant has called Steven the “world’s leading expert on how to fix meetings”.
Dr. Rogelberg’s previous book, The Surprising Science of Meetings: How You Can Lead Your Team to Peak Performance (Oxford) has been on over 25 “best of” lists including being recognized by the Washington Post as the #1 leadership book to watch for.
He was the inaugural winner of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) Humanitarian Award and just finished his term as President of SIOP, the largest professional organization in the world for I-O psychology.