how to prepare for your next one-to-one meeting

Stop wasting your One-to-Ones; your one-to-ones are the most important and effective tool you have in your Manager toolbox.

The reason why your one-to-one meeting may feel awkward has to do with how much preparation you put into it. Today, I want to show you how to prepare for your next one-to-one meeting.

Often times, we’re just trying to make it to the next meeting on time. There’s barely any room in your schedule to get in a bio break, and every call/meeting feels like a rush. But remember, our one-to-one’s should not feel like a check-in session, or a meeting to review the team members tasks. You need to carve out time to prepare for your one-to-one’s.

In our last Newsletter, we discussed how one-to-one’s help build trust; it’s an opportunity to catch issues early on, you can spend time developing your team, align on goals and even use this time to boost retention.

In order to have productive conversations about these topics, you need to be prepared. Which means you need to allocate time to prepare for your upcoming team one-to-one’s.

The worst time to think about what to say in a meeting… is during the meeting.

Start with using a tool like OneNote.

Open OneNote.
Use a blank page - name it: Templates
Create a one-to-one template
Create a Workbook - name it: Direct Reports.
Set up a tab for each direct report. Tab: Team Member Name.

Need a template?

Download my FREE one-to-one template here: https://www.mentorsformanagers.com/store

This is my EXACT template I use in my one-to-ones.

Now that you’ve setup your dedicated team member note page, here’s how you prepare for your one-to-one meeting, using the FREE template above.

Collection of Emails and Information
- Throughout the week leading up to your one-to-one meeting, scan the emails you receive from your team members. Identify emails that require discussion, and make note of them under the Meeting Topics section of the template. You can even insert the email as an attachment, or as an actual page for easy reference.
Identify Important topics to discuss
- Leveraging the template above, make notes in the most relevant section needed for your one-to-one. For example, need to discuss goals? Lean into the goals section of the template. Make notes, add questions, include attachments to strengthen your conversation with your direct report.
Goals, Performance, Skills, and Development
- For topics such as goals, performance, skills, and development, you want to touch on these topics once a month. They don’t all need to be discussed in the same meeting, spread the topics across multiple weeks to allow your team member time to do the work, absorb the information, and come back with updates or questions.