One-on-One Meeting

How do you interact with the people who work for you? In my experience, the best way is to have regular one-on-one meetings with your direct reports. This meeting needs an agenda which the two of you should develop together. If possible ask your employee to be the one to produce the agenda the day before the meeting. There will always be standing items that you will review during these meetings and other items that come up from time to time.

I recommend holding these meetings weekly. This is also the place to delegate work to your employee. That gives him/her an opportunity to ask questions and for the both of you to come to an agreement about the scope of the delegation and the timeframe for getting the work completed. Here are some suggestions for things to review regularly:

• Are you doing anything that is not in your job description?
• Is there anything in your job description that you are not doing?
• Are there items from the last meeting that need to be reviewed?
• What are the items and tasks for the coming week?
• What can we do to improve the company?
• How am I doing as a boss?
• How are you doing as an employee?

I guarantee that your employee will appreciate the interaction and you will get a much better result by having quality communication with your staff.

-barney