Dan Martell - November 25, 2019


How to Conduct a 1 on 1 Meeting With Your Direct Reports


Episode Stats

Length

13 minutes

Words per Minute

197.5938

Word Count

2,584

Sentence Count

154

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Dan Martell talks about the importance of having one on one meetings with your direct reports and why they are so important. He shares examples from his own experience with one-on-one meetings and explains how you can use them to your advantage.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey there, Dan Martell here, serial entrepreneur,
00:00:01.840 investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.
00:00:03.520 In this episode, I'm going to share with you
00:00:05.320 how to conduct your one-on-one meetings
00:00:07.160 with your direct reports, and including the agenda
00:00:10.400 and the questions you should be asking.
00:00:11.880 And be sure to stay at the end where we're
00:00:13.320 going to tell you how to get access to my one-on-one meeting
00:00:16.080 planner worksheet so that you can quickly outline
00:00:19.760 using the framework I'm going to teach in this episode
00:00:22.200 with your direct reports.
00:00:30.000 So what's interesting for me is as I coach 100 plus software
00:00:40.020 founders that are doing between $1 million and $10 million
00:00:42.320 in ARR, is many of them don't understand where
00:00:44.880 one-on-one meetings fit into the world.
00:00:46.800 Yet when I ask them if they've ever experienced these symptoms
00:00:49.260 of having people underperform that
00:00:51.200 used to be really good performers or having someone
00:00:53.900 quit unexpectedly on their team or feeling frustrated
00:00:57.960 that you know somebody could be getting more out
00:01:00.700 of the person, but they're just not showing up the way
00:01:03.480 you want them to.
00:01:04.440 Those are all things that one-on-ones
00:01:06.240 are designed to resolve.
00:01:07.920 If you don't trust me, I mean, I got this from Andy Grove
00:01:10.660 over a decade ago, who was the founder and CEO of Intel.
00:01:13.920 He wrote a book called High Output Management.
00:01:16.740 Highly recommend it.
00:01:18.000 And in the book, he dedicates a whole chapter to one-on-ones.
00:01:20.900 He said many times, like, one or two hours invested
00:01:23.880 in one of your direct reports can
00:01:25.860 produce two weeks of high output management
00:01:29.400 from that individual.
00:01:31.160 Ben Horwitz from Andreessen Horwitz
00:01:33.580 talks about it in Hard Things About Hard Things,
00:01:36.720 where he says that he's fired people for not
00:01:39.420 managers, for not doing their one-on-ones.
00:01:41.640 And even Jason Lemkin from Sastafame talks about it,
00:01:44.580 where he says that one-on-ones are the most powerful tool
00:01:47.980 a founder has to really align with their executive
00:01:51.580 leadership team.
00:01:52.480 So these are all things that I've experienced.
00:01:54.520 I mean, just a few examples.
00:01:56.140 Mark on my team back in one of my previous companies,
00:01:59.540 he was an incredible leader in the marketing team.
00:02:02.620 And then he just started not performing
00:02:04.620 and started not showing up on the meetings in the same way.
00:02:06.900 And there was nothing I could really point to other
00:02:09.080 than his vibe was off.
00:02:10.240 And it went on for a couple of weeks
00:02:11.720 until finally I just sat down with him
00:02:13.120 and I went through the kind of the one-on-one framework
00:02:14.880 I'm going to share with you guys today.
00:02:16.360 And I discovered he was going through a divorce.
00:02:18.680 And I'll tell you, if I didn't know that aspect of his life,
00:02:21.080 if I didn't create the space to have that conversation,
00:02:23.200 It would have been easy for me to just start criticizing
00:02:25.580 and holding them accountable to metrics, whatever,
00:02:29.460 having aggressive, just not being happy.
00:02:33.080 And I don't know if you've ever put somebody on a short lease
00:02:35.860 or all of a sudden now you're micromanaging somebody
00:02:38.560 when truly we need to first, Stephen Covey says,
00:02:41.360 in the seven habits of highly affected people,
00:02:43.500 we need to first seek to understand before we're
00:02:45.280 understood.
00:02:46.240 And that, to me, it creates the one-on-ones,
00:02:48.340 create the space for that kind of conversation.
00:02:50.080 Or I had another one of one of my developers, Ryan.
00:02:54.520 He was promoted to lead engineer.
00:02:58.360 And all of a sudden, now he had management people
00:03:00.220 and blah, blah, blah.
00:03:00.940 As I'm doing over 101, I'm talking to him.
00:03:03.580 I ask him, how do you feel about your new role?
00:03:06.280 And he shares with me that he's just not happy.
00:03:08.560 That he's a developer.
00:03:10.160 He loves to code.
00:03:10.960 He loves to solve problems.
00:03:12.060 He wants to do that.
00:03:13.260 And what's crazy is we thought he wanted that career path,
00:03:18.100 the team and I.
00:03:19.460 And we created that space.
00:03:20.720 And then once he got there, he realized,
00:03:23.060 I'm better as an individual contributor.
00:03:24.940 So understanding how to have that meeting,
00:03:27.560 creating the cadence for it is going
00:03:29.380 to change your leadership style.
00:03:31.540 So let's get into the five strategies
00:03:33.140 to help you do that properly.
00:03:34.520 Number one, meeting flow.
00:03:36.480 So one of the things that you need to have
00:03:39.200 is a process for having your one-on-ones.
00:03:41.020 If not, it's just essentially a conversation
00:03:42.800 that you have, water cooler conversation, a walk and talk.
00:03:45.820 But what I like to do is these four things.
00:03:47.860 I call it CIAF.
00:03:49.560 It's the one-on-one quadrant framework, CIAF.
00:03:53.360 They stand for these things.
00:03:54.480 Connection.
00:03:55.020 Connection is about building rapport and relationship
00:03:57.580 with the person and asking them questions about their life
00:04:00.180 and then inviting them, potentially,
00:04:01.740 if you ask about them, they're going to ask about you,
00:04:03.620 to create some connection and relationship.
00:04:05.960 I is all about inspiration.
00:04:07.980 Inspiration is about understanding
00:04:10.220 where they want to go in their career
00:04:12.140 and helping inspire them to progress to the next level.
00:04:17.020 Maslow's hierarchy of needs at the highest level of needs
00:04:19.960 after you get food, water, shelter, et cetera,
00:04:22.020 is self-actualization.
00:04:23.800 That's what people want to feel they're
00:04:26.120 getting from their role in your company.
00:04:28.460 If you don't do that, it's going to be really hard
00:04:30.200 to get them to perform.
00:04:31.980 The third is all about alignment,
00:04:34.480 understanding what they believe their priorities are
00:04:38.280 and what you think their priorities are
00:04:40.300 and making sure that those are aligned so that you do that
00:04:43.960 right.
00:04:44.220 And then the fourth is feedback.
00:04:46.060 And feedback, for me, is a little different
00:04:49.240 than what most people think.
00:04:50.200 It's getting feedback for you as a leader.
00:04:53.520 So if you're watching this and you have direct reports,
00:04:55.980 you need to ask them, how have I been showing up
00:04:59.240 as a boss for you?
00:05:00.680 Because that's where the feedback comes into play.
00:05:02.980 And it's both ways.
00:05:03.800 It's performance.
00:05:04.540 If you do those four things, C-I-A-F,
00:05:07.940 you will have a great one-on-one meeting.
00:05:10.420 And they can be short, 20 minutes, five minutes
00:05:12.420 for each section, have your questions ready to go.
00:05:14.680 but we're going to dive into the specific principles
00:05:17.240 that you need to make sure that they're even better.
00:05:20.440 Number two, capture at agenda.
00:05:22.780 So at agenda is at sign, agenda.
00:05:26.340 Where does this come from?
00:05:27.280 I read a book called Getting Things Done by David Allen.
00:05:30.460 And in there, he talked about the at agenda concept,
00:05:32.480 where what you want to do is for everybody
00:05:34.900 that you interact with frequently in your life,
00:05:37.120 you should have an agenda doc that you just add points
00:05:41.080 to their name.
00:05:41.840 So at agenda is the name of the doc,
00:05:43.640 And then I'll have all my direct reports, for example,
00:05:46.160 have their names.
00:05:46.880 And then I'll add things that I want to talk to them about
00:05:49.580 or potentially coach them on to that list.
00:05:52.040 And I use that to guide my one-on-one meetings.
00:05:55.160 And the reason why is because I don't
00:05:56.660 think that you should be interrupting your direct leaders,
00:05:59.960 your management, unless it's project related, for sure.
00:06:02.300 But if it's like a queue, let's say
00:06:03.860 you saw somebody get over reactive in a meeting
00:06:06.980 or you heard from somebody else that this happened,
00:06:09.800 I would just add it to the add agenda item.
00:06:11.660 And then that way, when you're sitting down with them,
00:06:13.620 You can ask them about that.
00:06:15.640 Hey, how did you feel you handled this situation?
00:06:18.580 You don't criticize.
00:06:19.560 You just create the space to get some feedback
00:06:21.420 around that specific question.
00:06:22.940 But you do it using the at agenda doc.
00:06:25.480 I just use a Google doc.
00:06:26.740 And you just add everybody that reports to you
00:06:28.380 and just put some bullet lists under their names.
00:06:30.480 When you have your one-on-ones, you clear it out, delete it,
00:06:32.900 and then you just keep appending it for the next meeting.
00:06:35.160 Minimum, you should be having your one-on-one meetings
00:06:36.920 every month.
00:06:37.800 If you're growing really fast, then more frequent,
00:06:40.080 maybe every two weeks.
00:06:41.020 And if you're growing like super fast 30 plus percent
00:06:43.460 per month, like a lot of my clients,
00:06:44.980 you want to be doing them weekly.
00:06:47.000 And those are not weekly syncs.
00:06:48.760 Those are not strategic meetings.
00:06:50.620 Those are using the CIAF strategy
00:06:54.220 so that you just build that space or create the space
00:06:57.260 for you to connect and kind of tweak and move things forward.
00:07:00.700 Number three, skip a level.
00:07:02.320 So this is a one-on-one skip a level meeting.
00:07:05.020 So if you have direct reports and then they
00:07:06.800 have their own direct reports, you
00:07:08.660 want to actually skip a level, go to their direct report.
00:07:11.000 Now, this is not for you to undermine your manager.
00:07:13.880 You want to go through the same process,
00:07:15.840 but you're trying to accomplish, or the real of the three
00:07:17.840 benefits of doing that are three things.
00:07:19.740 Number one, you want to get some feedback on your manager.
00:07:23.380 I think it's really important as a leader,
00:07:25.340 if you're leading somebody, to get a 360 view.
00:07:27.680 You have your interactions with them
00:07:29.160 and maybe the other direct reports with that individual,
00:07:31.220 but then you also want to have feedback
00:07:32.940 from their direct reports so that you can get some context
00:07:35.700 and get a real good 360 view.
00:07:37.760 So that's one benefit.
00:07:39.080 The second one is frontline information.
00:07:42.000 So if you're talking to people in customer support
00:07:44.960 or in product development or engineering or sales
00:07:47.460 or marketing, you're going to get frontline feedback
00:07:50.360 on how the market's responding or how this thing's going on
00:07:54.420 or what's the support volume looking like or et cetera
00:07:57.380 so that you can just get more information to help guide
00:08:00.040 your team.
00:08:01.420 And then the third is an opportunity to mentor.
00:08:03.740 I think that one of the greatest things and privileges
00:08:07.400 that you have as a founder as you build a team
00:08:10.060 is those people, you're responsible for their employment
00:08:13.760 and they're looking up to you.
00:08:14.900 And a well-timed, well-said cue, conversation, suggestion,
00:08:25.360 belief in that individual, shared with that individual
00:08:28.760 can have a dramatic impact.
00:08:31.380 And I think it's a really great opportunity for you
00:08:33.200 to mentor and show up as a mentor to that individual
00:08:36.400 to have an impact in the rest of the organization
00:08:38.980 by sharing those insights and beliefs with them.
00:08:41.700 So skip a line is the concept of skipping past your direct
00:08:45.140 reports and trying to do that with individuals that
00:08:47.540 might be frontline workers.
00:08:49.060 Number four, connect the future.
00:08:51.220 Here's what I've learned.
00:08:52.520 If people are quitting on you, they're
00:08:55.900 either quitting for two reasons.
00:08:57.320 One, they're quitting their boss.
00:08:59.080 Most people don't quit a company, they quit their boss.
00:09:01.400 And two is they feel they've run out of future
00:09:04.640 with you and your organization.
00:09:06.020 If an individual does not have a vision for their role
00:09:10.340 and how that's going to progress over time,
00:09:16.100 then they'll start looking at other opportunities
00:09:18.340 because they don't understand how what they're doing today
00:09:20.780 is going to mature into something more interesting,
00:09:23.420 more meaningful.
00:09:24.380 And usually after two to three years,
00:09:26.180 people are going to start being antsy
00:09:27.900 because they've learned some new skills.
00:09:29.540 They've acquired some new abilities.
00:09:31.620 They've produced more.
00:09:33.200 They're more capable and they're wanting
00:09:36.420 to be rewarded for that.
00:09:37.740 And if they can't find that within your organization,
00:09:39.740 they're going to find it exterior.
00:09:41.400 And that's why we have that inspirational checklist
00:09:45.760 in the one-on-one meeting format so that you can ask them
00:09:49.220 about their career objectives and their goals
00:09:50.980 and the missing skills that they need to develop
00:09:52.920 so that you can build a plan for them to achieve that.
00:09:55.740 Number five, your performance.
00:09:57.960 As I mentioned earlier, one of the things
00:09:59.800 that is so valuable to get from your one-on-ones
00:10:02.300 because it really creates a safe place for them
00:10:05.360 to have that conversation is to just prompt and say, hey,
00:10:08.760 if you were me, what's one thing you
00:10:10.620 would change in our organization?
00:10:12.180 Or do you have any questions for me
00:10:14.760 about the product shifts we made last month?
00:10:16.960 Or how am I showing up for you as a leader?
00:10:24.300 What do you need from me to better lead and manage
00:10:27.420 your initiatives, your projects?
00:10:28.680 Or is there any decision that I've made recently
00:10:31.180 that you don't understand completely
00:10:32.920 and would love to ask me about.
00:10:34.900 So those are all really just opportunities
00:10:37.060 to get feedback from your direct reports,
00:10:39.460 to take that into consideration.
00:10:41.080 I'm not saying that that gives them an open list of,
00:10:43.340 here are all the 15 things that I want from you.
00:10:45.040 Please get it done by Monday.
00:10:46.060 That's not what I'm saying.
00:10:47.180 I'm just saying create the space and the opportunity
00:10:50.300 for somebody to feel safe.
00:10:51.240 Because a lot of times, they'll say, no, you're great.
00:10:53.180 That's amazing, especially in a group setting.
00:10:55.180 But you actually want to say things like, hey,
00:10:57.420 I'm only going to get better if I
00:10:59.460 get real, candid, honest feedback from my team,
00:11:02.780 and that's you.
00:11:04.080 And I would really love your feedback
00:11:06.180 on what's one or two things that you
00:11:07.820 think I might want to consider so that I can become a better
00:11:10.920 leader for the team and for yourself.
00:11:13.080 And there's nothing you could say
00:11:14.300 that's going to hurt my feelings.
00:11:15.540 I'm asking for the feedback.
00:11:18.000 Would love to hear what you think.
00:11:19.780 And you got to say it from that perspective
00:11:21.660 because they might be shy.
00:11:23.300 And the opportunity for you to grow,
00:11:25.160 to become the person who can grow the business
00:11:27.720 to the next level and lead that company
00:11:30.080 is going to come from that answer.
00:11:32.000 So quick recap, five strategies to conduct your one-on-one
00:11:35.040 meetings.
00:11:35.540 Number one, the meeting flow, CIAF.
00:11:39.220 Number two, capture at agenda.
00:11:41.140 Make that list so you capture that real time to bring up.
00:11:43.640 Number three, skip a level meetings
00:11:45.660 to understand the manager, the front line feedback,
00:11:48.520 and potentially mentor.
00:11:50.120 Number four, connect the future, because if they run out
00:11:53.120 of future, they will go look somewhere else.
00:11:54.960 And number five, your performance.
00:11:56.960 Get the feedback from them on how you're doing
00:11:59.520 and also on give them some cues on how they can be better
00:12:02.840 as well.
00:12:03.640 As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,
00:12:05.260 I want to share with you my one-on-one meeting planner.
00:12:08.060 The link is below, so you can click that
00:12:09.740 to download your copy.
00:12:11.240 But in it, I walk you through making a list of all
00:12:14.320 your direct reports.
00:12:15.200 Ideally, you don't have more than six to seven.
00:12:17.640 Some of you guys probably have 12 to 15.
00:12:19.880 You might want to fix that.
00:12:20.840 But anyways, make a list of all your direct reports
00:12:23.520 And then using the connection, the inspiration, the alignment,
00:12:28.500 and feedback columns, you'll write down
00:12:30.660 the two things for each one of those direct reports
00:12:32.320 you want to bring up in your conversation,
00:12:34.340 and then create the space by scheduling it in the calendar
00:12:37.820 at least monthly with those people
00:12:39.700 to have those conversations.
00:12:41.060 And you can use that meeting planner to do that.
00:12:42.720 The link is below, so click that to download your copy.
00:12:45.400 If you like this video, be sure to softly tap the Like button.
00:12:48.700 Subscribe to my channel if there's anybody
00:12:50.760 that you feel this video could serve.
00:12:52.700 Feel free to share with them directly.
00:12:54.200 And as for usual, I want to challenge
00:12:55.580 you to live a bigger life and a bigger business.
00:12:57.620 And I'll see you next Monday.
00:13:00.640 How to conduct.
00:13:01.660 Oh, this is so good.
00:13:03.040 So good.
00:13:03.860 So good.