009: One-on-One Flow

So far, I’ve held five 1:1’s, and while I feel more confident about them than when I started, I still have a lot of learning ahead of me, but I find the process exciting. One of the things I’m doing to improve upon them is continually tweaking the flow. My general flow right now looks something like:

• Chatting about life or whatever: with being fully remote, I find these moments to be impactful.
• I loop them into the relevant discussions brought up in my weekly manager meetings. I generally stay away from status updates, but I have found in this situation that it generates constructive conversations. Your mileage may vary.
• Questions
• Feedback: both for them and so they can give me feedback about what I’m doing.

I schedule each one for thirty minutes, but I give enough wiggle room so that we can talk for longer, so it’s not uncommon to have them go for an hour. I separate my 1:1’s to all not be on the same day to help with this, and it gives me the chance to reflect on them, try something new the day if I need to, and repeat. This part here has probably made the most significant improvement for me. I can ask a question on Monday, see how it does, and then change up how I do it the next day rather than trying to scramble for the next meeting that starts in five minutes. Trust me. I’ve had some duds, and I plan on talking about them at some point.

This is my flow for now, and I’m sure it’ll continue to change. I’m always down for feedback and ideas to improve this process, so if you have any, I’m happy to hear them! Stay safe, everyone.

I’ll see you tomorrow.