This guidance describes some simple improvements most managers can make to help them take better notes during their One on Ones.

Sometimes pedestrian things loom large. One on Ones are the most important recommendation we make. We get LOTS of questions about them. In the forums, from clients, in email, and at conferences. Over the years, we've gotten used to being asked about how to take notes, or, often, how does Mark take notes during HIS O3s?

What's funny about this is the sense we get that some very simple operational details seem to really capture people's attention. Herewith, then, are our simple note taking recommendations that we love and others swear by too.

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This cast concludes our guidance on the right way to conduct One on Ones with your contract employees.

We always recommend one on ones for directs. Always. But, in most organizations there are plenty of not crystal clear relationships. There are project managers, and other managers we do admin stuff with, but maybe we never see them.

It makes it messy. We define your directs as those folks who would think of you as their primary boss, OR that you would write the end of year review for, and be the primary person discussing pay with.

The issue with all of these concepts is that we often have to create things to look at to help us decide, but things like reviews and pay are really PROXIES. What really matters – even though it can be confusing at times, is: whom do you supervise whose work makes a significant difference in your ability to deliver the results that the organization needs?

Which opens the door for contract employees. You supervise their work, and they do make a significant difference in your outcome. Can you, and if you can, HOW do you have Contract One on Ones? And, are there laws to consider?

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This guidance describes the right way to conduct One on Ones with your contract employees.

We always recommend one on ones for directs. Always. But, in most organizations there are plenty of not crystal clear relationships. There are project managers, and other managers we do admin stuff with, but maybe we never see them.

It makes it messy. We define your directs as those folks who would think of you as their primary boss, OR that you would write the end of year review for, and be the primary person discussing pay with.

The issue with all of these concepts is that we often have to create things to look at to help us decide, but things like reviews and pay are really PROXIES. What really matters – even though it can be confusing at times, is: whom do you supervise whose work makes a significant difference in your ability to deliver the results that the organization needs?

Which opens the door for contract employees. You supervise their work, and they do make a significant difference in your outcome. Can you, and if you can, HOW do you have Contract One on Ones? And, are there laws to consider?

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This cast concludes our recommendations on why and how to meet weekly, or regularly, with your peer managers.

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This guidance recommends why and how to meet weekly, or regularly, with your peer managers.

The higher you go up in your organization, the more you realize that you’re actually less and less able to get things done all by yourself. CEOs say they feel like they’re ‘running in oatmeal’ – they can’t make things happen as directly as they used to. When you’re the VP of Sales, you can’t MAKE that new product you just KNOW your customers will buy like crazy. If you’re the Chief of Manufacturing, even a perfectly made product has to be sold by someone else.

Simply put: relationships grow in importance over the course of one’s career. And that means an effective manager, a Manager Tools Manager, will spend time developing and maintaining important internal relationships. There are a lot of ways to do this, but the easiest is to use the Manager Tools Peer One on One Model.

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This guidance recommends how to have effective One on Ones with directs who are initially resistant.

One of the most frequently-asked questions from managers who have not yet tried One on Ones on a regular basis is, what about the direct who doesn't want to have them?

Frankly, there's a part of us that discounts the idea behind the question. [Don't worry – we're still going to address it. ;-) ] There certainly are some managers who, after having bought into an idea, will then project themselves forward and attempt to figure out problems they can foresee happening. But we think far more of those managers who ask this question are simply creating artificial roadblocks around the idea that this won't work for me, or, my team won't tolerate this. We even talked to a manager once who told us his team would "never" go for them after several of his directs were already doing them with their directs because of our podcasts. That's a great example of handling cognitive dissonance – being willing to create a truly artificial reality to support the worldview you want to have.

But okay, what can the rest of us do when someone doesn't want to professionally respond to the opportunity to communicate regularly?

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This guidance addresses how personal One on Ones ought to be – should they be all about family and personal stuff, or just about work?

One of our regrets in producing casts over the years was an emphasis we made about getting to know your directs personally during One on Ones. We over-emphasized the importance of personal information, to the extent that some managers we’ve heard from feel that they are failing unless they know every detail about all of their directs. This guidance is designed to tighten our guidance about the balance between work and personal topics discussed during One on Ones.

What happened was that when we started our casts, in 2005, we were in the process of consulting to some very technical organizations. The managers at several clients knew literally nothing about their directs, and professed no interest in ever caring. So, we were pretty insistent with many of them that they had to get to know them in order to get the best from them. That led to our guidance being skewed based on the client world we were inhabiting at the time. We didn’t even realize it until we heard horror stories of managers insisting directs share really personal stuff – and we’ll leave it at that.

This guidance will help clear up how best to conduct your One on Ones around the work/family balance.

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This guidance addresses questions about the purpose and value of One on Ones, particularly for those directs who challenge the need for them.

Probably one of the most frequently asked questions we get about One on Ones is, what do I do if one of my directs doesn't want to have them? Mind you, this is not the question that managers ask who are already doing One on Ones. They want to know how to handle the usually hypothetical situation of a direct who crosses their arms and won't talk. That's a different answer, for a different time.

This guidance is what to do if you haven't even started One on Ones, and someone says they're not interested, they don't need them, they think it's necessary, we talk all the time, I'm not much of a talker, just read my reports, I'm someone who doesn't need to be managed, I'm too busy, my role is special, the last guy didn't do them, we've never done them before, is everybody else going to do them, why are you singling me out, I don't need you to care about me, I'm not going to share stuff, do I get overtime for that considering how busy I am, who will cover my desk/work/machine/process while we're blabbing.

Those kinds of situations.

Not that they're common. But just in case.

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This cast describes how to refresh your One on Ones with your directs after you've been doing them for 1-2 years.

If you've been doing one on ones for 1-2-3-4 years, and you're like us, your core manager tool may have gotten a little stale. There's certainly nothing wrong with being so comfortable with this systemic behavior that it's second nature. Don't get us wrong – we're not saying you've gotten off-track, or have gradually become ineffective with it.

But over the years we've discovered that being comfortable with a core behavior makes one forget how to be the very best at it. One on Ones are a process, while what we talk about in them is the content. That means we begin to think of them as the content, rather than the process. But like most human systems, weak process begins to infect content. In other words, if we're not sharp in how we run our one on ones, we get less good information. Our relationship building plateaus when it could still be deepening or growing.

So, how to refresh? There are two easy ways to improve our O3 quality easily.

1. Do a Fresh Rollout
2. Focus On YOUR Behaviors
   1. Ask Better QUESTIONS
   2. LISTEN More Effectively
   3. Take Better NOTES

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This cast describes how to start every One on One.

One of the most important lessons for experienced users of the One on One Manager Tool is the value of continuity over instances. One on ones are in a sense like feedback in that no single instance of either is important. It's the commitment and I-can-count-on-my-boss-interacting-with-me-this-way repetition that deliver a major part of the value of these Manager Tools.

Now, look, you can't create continuity while ignoring instances. In order to be admired for one's constancy, one has to repeatedly do things, for a while. But a lot of managers are looking for the silver bullet, the ONE THING, the great idea, that makes management easy. If we had to pick one, it really would be one on ones…but it's not the 30 minute INSTANCE of a one on one that matters…it's the constancy. Constancy is the complement of all other virtues, as the saying goes. Hey, we admit it – one on ones are the slowest moving silver bullet ever invented.

So, what are some of the behaviors we can engage in in each INSTANCE of our one on ones that increase the value of our CONSTANCY? The first is our first question.

1. Ask The Same First Question EVERY Time
2. Write Down The Answer EVERY Time
3. Some Recommended First Questions

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