1 on 1 meetings are important, you already know it.
You might have those once every 6 months or maybe you do them on a weekly basis. it’s always hard to get your team members to open up instantly and tell you what is on their minds.
Very rarely those meeting goes as planned. Even if you got some kind of a check list of things you’d like accomplished in this meeting, it’s very hard to be effective.
You’d like to use those meetings to give some kind of a feedback to your guys from time to time. Either regarding their performance on a certain task or project or even their overall behavior working with peers or other stake holders within your company.
Those issues are not easy to discuss but ARE very important. how would you bring it up without upsetting your team member?
Here’s a small but VERY effective tip, I’ve used in the past.
Let’s say for example you’d like to address your team members’ performance on his / her last project. they didn’t do well.
He or she might have missed the time estimates and / or deadlines and the overall quality of the delivery was below average at best.
Present the following question to your team member: “How would you rate your work on the last project from 1 to 10”?
After taking few seconds to think about an answer that would be truthful but still won’t cause him or her to look bad, most people would give themselves a 7 or an 8.
There’s a catch here. As a manager you don’t really care about the grade given, it’s all about creating a discussion. If a grade other then 10 was given you should follow with this question: “Why a 7 (or any other grade for that matter)? What would have caused this task to be rated as a 10?”.
This will create an open discussion and will enable you give that feedback.
Try it and let me know what was the result in the comments.
Good Luck!
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