Hey there.
Dan Martell here, serial entrepreneur, investor,
and creator of SaaS Academy.
In this episode, I'm going to share with you how
to conduct your one-on-one meetings
with your direct reports, and including
the agenda and the questions you should be asking.
And be sure to say [INAUDIBLE] tell you
how to get access to my one-on-one meeting planner
worksheet so that you can quickly
outline using the framework I'm gonna
teach in this episode with your direct reports.
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So what's interesting for me is, as I coach, you know,
100 plus software founders that are doing between a million
and 10 million in [? ARR, ?] is many of them
don't understand where one-on-one meetings fit
into their world, yet when I ask them
if they've ever experienced these symptoms of having people
underperform that used to be really good performers
or having someone quit unexpectedly on their team
or feeling frustrated that you know somebody could be getting
more out of the person, but they're just not showing up
the way you want them to, those are all things
that one-on-ones are designed to resolve.
If you don't trust me, I mean, I got this from Andy Grove
over a decade ago, who was the founder and CEO of Intel.
He wrote a book called High Output Management.
Highly recommended.
And in the book, he dedicates a whole chapter to one-on-ones.
He said many times, like, one or two hours invested
in one of your direct reports can
produce two weeks of high output management
from that individual.
Ben Horowitz from Andreessen Horowitz
talks about it in Hard Things About Hard Things,
where he says he's fired people for not-- managers for not
doing their one-on-ones.
And even Jason Lemkin from SaaStr fame talks about it,
where he says that one-on-ones are the most powerful tool
a founder has to really align with their executive leadership
team.
So these are all things that I've experienced.
I mean, just a few examples, Mark
on my team back in one of my previous companies,
he was an incredible leader in the marketing team,
and then he just started not performing
and started not showing up on the meetings in the same way.
And there was nothing I could really point
to other than his vibe was off.
And it went on for a couple of weeks,
until finally I just sat down with him
and I went through the kind of one-on-one framework
I'm going to share with you guys today,
and I discovered he was going through a divorce.
And I'll tell you, if I didn't know that aspect of his life,
if I didn't create the space to have that conversation,
it would have been easy for me to just start criticizing him,
holding him accountable to metrics,
you know, whatever, having aggressive--
like you know, just not being happy.
You know, and I don't know if you've ever,
like, put somebody on a short leash or all of a sudden
now you're micromanaging somebody
when truly we need to first-- you know,
Stephen Covey says in The Seven Habits of Highly
Effective People, we need to first seek to understand
before we're understood.
And that, to me, it creates-- the one-on-ones
create the space for that kind of conversation.
Or I had another one of one of my developers, Ryan,
he was promoted to lead engineer,
and all of a sudden now he had management people
and blah, blah, blah.
And as I'm doing our one-on-one, I'm talking to him,
you know, I ask him like, you know, how do you
feel about your new role, and he shares with me that he's just
not happy, that he's a developer, he loves to code,
he loves to solve problems, he wants to do that.
And what's crazy is we thought he wanted that career
path, you know, the team and I, and we created that space.
And then once he got there, he realized,
like, I'm better as an individual contributor.
So understanding how to have that meeting,
creating the cadence for it is going to change your leadership
style.
So let's get into the five strategies
to help you do that properly.
Number one, meeting flow.
So one of the things that you need to have
is a process for having your one-on-ones.
If not, it's just, essentially, a conversation that you have.
You know, water cool conversation, a walk and talk.
But what I like to do is these four things.
I call it CIAF.
It's the one-on-one quadrant framework, OK?
CIAF.
They stand for these things.
Connection.
Connection is about building rapport and relationship with
the person, and asking them questions about their life,
and then inviting them, potentially--
if you ask about them, they're going to ask about you--
to create some connection and relationship.
I is all about inspiration.
Inspiration is about understanding
where they want to go in their career
and helping inspire them to kind of progress to the next level.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs, at the highest level of needs--
after you get, like, food, water, shelter, et cetera--
is self-actualization.
That's what people want to feel they're
getting from their role in your company.
If you don't do that, it's going to be really
hard to get them to perform.
The third is all about alignment.
Understanding what they believe their priorities are
and what you think their priorities are,
and making sure that those are aligned
so that you do that right.
And then the fourth is feedback.
And feedback, for me, is a little different
than what most people think.
It's getting feedback for you as a leader, OK?
So if you're watching this and you have direct reports,
you need to ask them, how have I been showing up
as a boss for you?
Because that's where the feedback comes into play.
And it's both ways.
It's performance.
If you do those four things, CIAF,
you will have a great one-on-one meeting.
And it can be short, 20 minutes, five minutes for each section,
have your questions ready to go.
But we're going to dive in to the specific principles
that you need to make sure that they're even better.
Number two, capture @agenda.
So @agenda is @ sign agenda.
Where does this come from?
I read a book called Getting Things Done by David Allen.
And in there, he talked about the @agenda concept,
where what you want to do is, for everybody that you interact
with frequently in your life, you
should have an agenda doc that you just
add points to their name.
So @agenda is the name of the doc.
And then I'll have all my direct reports,
for example, have their names, and then I'll
add things that I want to talk to them about or potentially
coach them on to that list.
And I use that to guide my one-on-one meetings.
And the reason why is because I don't
think that you should be interrupting
your management, unless it's project-related, for sure.
But if it's like a cue--
let's say you saw somebody get over-reactive in a meeting,
or you heard from somebody else that this happened.
I would just add it to the @agenda item.
And then that way, when you're sitting down with them,
you can ask them about that.
Hey, how did you feel you handled this situation.
You don't criticize, you just create
the space to get some feedback around that specific question.
But you do it using the @agenda doc.
I just use a Google Doc.
And you just add everybody that reports to you,
and just put some bullet lists under their names.
And when you have your one-on-ones,
you clear it out, delete it, and then
you just keep appending it for the next meeting.
Minimum, you should be having your one-on-one meetings
every month.
If you're growing really fast, then more frequent,
maybe every two weeks.
And if you're growing, like, super fast, 30-plus percent
per month, like a lot of my clients,
you want to be doing them weekly.
And those are not weekly syncs.
Those are not strategic meetings.
Those are using the CIAF strategy
so that you just build that space
or create the space for you to connect and kind of tweak
and move things forward.
Number three, skip a level.
So this is a one-on-one skip a level meeting.
So if you have direct reports and then they
have their own direct reports, you
want to actually skip a level, go to their direct report.
Now, this is not for you to undermine your manager, OK?
You want to go through the same process,
but you're trying to accomplish, or the real three benefits
of doing that are three things.
Number one, you want to get some feedback on your manager.
I think it's really important, as a leader, if you're
leading somebody to get a 360 view,
you have your interactions with them,
and maybe the other direct reports with that individual,
but then you also want to have feedback
from their direct reports so that you can get some context
and get a real good 360 view.
So that's one benefit.
The second one is front-line information.
So if you're talking to people in customer support
or in product development or engineering or sales
or marketing, you're going to get front-line feedback
on how the market's responding or how this thing's going on
or what's the support volume looking like,
et cetera, so that you can just get more information,
help guide your team.
And then the third is as an opportunity to mentor.
I think that one of the greatest things and privileges that you
have as a founder as you build a team is those people,
you're responsible for their employment,
and they're looking up to you.
And a well-timed, well-said cue, conversation, suggestion,
belief in that individual, shared with that individual,
can have a dramatic impact.
And I think it's a really great opportunity for you to mentor
and show up as a mentor to that individual
to have an impact in the rest of the organization
by sharing those insights and beliefs with them.
So skip a line is the concept of skipping
past your direct reports and trying
to do that with individuals that might be front-line workers.
Number four, connect the future.
Here's what I've learned.
If people are quitting on you, they're either
quitting for two reasons.
One, they're quitting their boss.
Most people don't quit a company, they quit their boss.
And two is they feel they've run out of future with you
and your organization.
If an individual does not have a vision for their role
and how that's going to kind of progress over time,
then they'll start looking at other opportunities
because they don't understand how what they're doing today
is going to mature into something more interesting,
more meaningful.
And usually, after two to three years,
people are going to start being antsy because they've
learned some new skills.
They've acquired some new abilities.
They've produced more.
They're more capable, and they're wanting
to be rewarded for that.
And if they can't find that within your organization,
they're going to find it exterior.
And that's why we have that inspirational checklist
in the one-on-one meeting format,
so that you can ask them about their career
objectives and their goals and the missing skills
that they need to develop so that you
can build a plan for them to achieve that.
Number five, your performance.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the things
that is so valuable to get from your one-on-ones,
because it really creates a safe place for them
to have that conversation, is to just prompt and say,
hey, you know, if you were me, what's
one thing you would change in our organization?
Or, do you have any questions for me about the product shifts
we made last month?
Or, you know, how am I showing up for you as a leader?
How do you need me to--
what do you need from me to better lead and manage
your initiatives and your projects?
Or, is there any decision that I've
made recently that you don't understand completely
and would love to ask me about?
So those are all really just opportunities
to get feedback from your direct reports,
to take that into consideration.
I'm not saying that gives them an open list of here
are all the 15 things that I want from you, please get
it done by Monday.
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm just saying create the space and the opportunity
for somebody to feel safe.
Because a lot of times, they'll say, no, you're great,
that's amazing, especially in a group setting.
But you actually want to say things
like, hey, I'm only going to get better
if I get real candid, honest feedback from my team.
And that's you.
And I would really love your feedback
on what's one or two things that you
think I might want to consider so that I can become a better
leader for the team and for yourself.
And there's nothing you could say
that's going to hurt my feelings.
I'm asking for the feedback.
You know, would love to hear what you think.
And you've got to say it from that perspective,
because they might be shy.
And the opportunity for you to grow
to become the person who can grow
the business to the next level and lead that company
is going to come from that answer.
So quick recap.
Five strategies to conduct your one-on-ones meetings.
Number one, the meeting flow.
CIAF.
Number two, capture @agenda.
Make that list so you capture that in real time to bring up.
Number three, skip a level meetings
to understand the manager, the front-line feedback,
and potentially mentor.
Number four, connect the future, because if they run out
of future, they will go look somewhere else.
And number five, your performance.
Get the feedback from them on how you're doing, and also on--
give them some cues on how they can be better, as well.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,
I want to share with you my one-on-one meeting planner.
The link is below, so you can click
that to download your copy.
But in it, I walk you through making a list
of all your direct reports.
Ideally, you don't have more than six to seven.
Some of you guys probably have 12 to 15.
You might want to fix that.
But anyways, make a list of all your direct reports.
And then, using the connection, the inspiration, the alignment
and feedback columns, you'll write down
the two things for each one of those reports
you want to bring up in your conversation.
And then create the space by scheduling it
in the calendar at least monthly with those people
to have those conversations.
And you can use that meeting planner to do that.
The link is below, so click that to download your copy.
If you liked this video, be sure to softly tap the Like button.
Subscribe to my channel.
If there's anybody that you feel this video could serve,
feel free to share with them directly.
And as per usual, I want to challenge you to live a bigger
life and a bigger business.
And I'll see you next Monday.
How to conduct?
Oh, this is so good, so good, so good.