Today, as on most Tuesdays, I had three one-on-one meetings with my reports, research communications specialists for whom I am their manager. I’ve tried, over the last couple of years, to approach these check ins—sometimes face to face in the office, often over Zoom or Teams—as open as possible to give my colleagues the opportunity to share what they want.
Still, I know I can do better. Listen deeper. Be more curious.
As it happened, this week’s interview in the Coaching for Leaders podcast is all about the 1:1 meeting. Host Dave Stachowiak interviewed Steven Rogelberg of UNC Charlotte.
Near the end, Rogelberg explains the key point this way:
The manager has to explicitly say, this is not a status update. This is not a meeting for me. Don’t do this meeting for me. This is a meeting truly for you. If you want to talk about a particular project, fine, because it’s your meeting.
A straightforward lesson that I’ll focus on in the weeks ahead.
But that also got me thinking about my own motivations for the 1:1 meeting with my manager, as well as when I meet with my professional coach, my therapist, my doctors and dentist and orthodontist. Over the last year, I’ve come to understand that I’m often unclear about what I want to get out of session or appointment, or timid if I do know. Except that time I insisted over the phone that my primary care physician give me a prescription for an antibiotic because I’d been bitten by a tick—he presecribed a single doxycycline pill, and at a later visit gently explained that there’s not much to worry about with ticks in Chapel Hill (except now there might be with ehrlichiosis).
Anyway, good advice from Rogelberg and others: know what you want before you go in, and make it your meeting.
© Anton Zuiker