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Best Practices for Effective 1:1 Meetings · The Leaders Lounge - AASPA Podcast

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to ASP This Promising Practices Podcast Series.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Alexis Christ, Meetings Coordinator with ASPA.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Today we are joined by Cheryl Heinzman, Supervisor Performance Management Growth and Development at Prince William County Public Schools.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, Cheryl.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Alexis, thank you so much.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's good to be here.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Good to have you.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Cheryl, how long have you been with Prince William Public County Schools?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: And can you share a little bit about the size of your district?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Prince William County Public Schools is about 25 minutes outside of our nation, Captain DC in Virginia.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we have over 90,000 students, and we have over 18,500 employees.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so with that, we are a very large division.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: With over 100 schools.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Our promising practice topic for today is best practices for effective one-on-one meetings.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Cheryl, tell us more about this topic and how it can help you or your district.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Just recently we uh become a Gallup district where we are using the Gallup Q12 engagement survey when we talk about our farming culture.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: So with that, in using those studies, you know, Gallup said that if we have effective one-to-ones as supervisors, then our employees are three times more likely to be engaged in their work.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: So to kind of drive this home a bit, we've created Canvas courses for managers and for direct reports.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you're just being able to have an effective one-to-one meeting.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: And what are some of those characteristics?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: What makes a one-to-one meeting different from regular team meetings?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And why are they critical for effective supervision?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, effective supervisors want to be sure that they are cultivating engagement with their direct report.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: And to do that, we need to have ongoing communication and ongoing dialogue quite often.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that can be tough if you have a very large staff.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: So as supervisors, we need to be strategic and having team meetings that are also timely and that are predictable and expected for our team.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: But then in that, we need to be sure that we're pulling out members of our team individually and giving them that extra time.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: And Gallup says that the quality of supervision is the key to affordable engagement and to teach your attention.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: So and be able to keep our employees, be able to keep our teachers in the schools, we need to meet with them also.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes a one-to-one might be that you are untracking an observation that you just had, but you need to allow five to 10 minutes in that that you're using for a one-to-one.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I say that to say that it's a focused conversation that is personalized, that you can take some of the business, if you will, out of it.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it combats disengagement from your employees by at least four times to create a space for honest dialogue, to allow managers to gain insight on the work progress that's going on, on the barriers that they may be encountering, but also to be able to improve the motivation and morale with some recognition with that employee.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: How can managers lead one-to-one meetings in a way that reflects the qualities of leaders, especially equity, inclusivity, integrity, and well-being?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderful qualities of a leader mentioned there.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think firstly we share agenda templates.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Director Fords and managers share the same template for the meetings.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it could be a variety of templates that you use, depending on what the mood of that one-to-one might be about.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Let me be clear too.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: One-to-one can be 10 to 15 minutes every week.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: It could be that you offer a cadence every two weeks, that's 30 minutes, so that you're still allowing that sign to have a wonderful, honest dialogue with the employee and the employee to you as a manager.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Demonstrating equity means that you have a consistent structured timeline.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: If I say I'm going to meet with you Mondays at 10 a.m., then I need to stay with that and always be Mondays at 10 a.m.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: If something happens and the progress of work gets interrupted somehow, I will reschedule the one-to-one instead of making sure that it canceled.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want to dew will decrease the running warp and data if we cancel them instead of scheduling.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Inclusivity, we're going to make sure that we're both at good listening.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to establish those norms in the one-to-one.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to make sure that the voices aren't inviting and that we are truly wanting to know what's going to happen and will be a bad person when we walk away from the one-to-one.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: We want to make sure we're showing integrity by following pool with the commitments that we've made on the agenda.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And whether some of those are personal questions, just to kind of know that we do value and care what matters to the direct report.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: But we also want to make sure that there is some summarization of key working points as why.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that to well to support the well-being, we want to make sure that we are stressing a work role and balance and making sure that the stress level is manageable and that we are emphasizing well-being strategies, not just at work, but also from which coaching strategies be intentionally used in one-to-one meetings to enhance performance rather than simply evaluate it.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: I like this question because on the shared agendas that we share here in Prince One County Public Schools, we are able to apply certain questions that stay there.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: So with my small team that I manage, we do five or six questions each of our one-to-ones for a solid month, and then we change those questions out in the month.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I say that because the questions are always the same.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: So they know what to say, but there's seven questions and they choose two from bolus.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that way my team members know which ones to expect, but they also choose what one bull on to answer.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: So they have the ownership of the media.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the one-to-one is for them that we are exploring possibilities.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: So some of those forward-focused questions that we want to focus on is what progress have you made in your role this week?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: What are you most looking forward to working on this week?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: What obstacles might you be facing in that project or in that role?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then what support might you need for me?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I end every single one-to-one with that very last question.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: What support do you need for me?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Or what is one thing I can do to support you right now, today, or this we will move?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that just allows us to be on an even playing field and to create accountability and psychological trust and know that we can create and set goals and we can uh manage what that alignment is through our organization's goals, what our professional growth plans might be as well.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then we always summarize those highlights.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: We clarify the due dates.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's very important that we make sure that these expectations are set at the beginning of your one-to-one meeting.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you start to meet on the regular cadence, it will just flow that way.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: How can managers use one-to-one meeting to deepen relationships and strengthen trust with their employees?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think the best way to do that is just to really stay in a curious mode with your direct report and just really be able to ask direct questions.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Some of our one-to-one meetings start with a cup of coffee, and we simply do the personal kind of exploration while we're drinking the coffee.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: And once the coffee's done, we flip over to the business side of our agenda.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that just allows us to not meet at the desk, right?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: We're sitting at the same table, we're sitting with the same open-mindedness to establish our thinking for the meeting.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then once the meeting does start, we talk about engagement.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: How are you feeling about your work?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: What's energizing you right now?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: I make sure that I normalize my tone of voice, but though I also want to create some fun inflections as well, so that this is an exciting fund to create that safe space to get honest feedback from each party.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, sometimes there are opportunities to coach, sometimes there's just funds to talk about concerns.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it may be following up on personal milestones in their professional growth plan.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: It may be that we're simply tracking patterns or data over time and we talk about and process that data analyzation in that meeting, and then they feel rewarded when they meet.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then we always make sure that we uh practice the active listening skills and wait for the other person to finish talking before we speak.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: What role does recognition and encouragement play in supervision and how can managers build it naturally into their one-to-one conversations?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great question as well.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: The Center for Creative Leadership has offered a lot of options in the one-to-one meetings and how you might want to handle them as a manager.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that sharing feedback is important.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: And feedback is something that needs to be very specific.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not always just you did a great job yesterday with your project.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: What was it about the project that was great, right?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then what behaviors made it great, and then what impact did it have on the audience?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and in a teacher sense, if I'm running along to a move for a teacher, I'm gonna talk about the impact on student attributes.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna talk about the lesson that they did and improved student engagement, how and why it's gonna be included there.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to be intentional in our conversation.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's again going to increase the motivation for engagement.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna increase our retention that we have, and it's also going to be able to uh celebrate the efforts of that teacher in the next one-to-one to be able to talk about what their expectation was.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Did they feel they met that expectation?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then how did they feel about it?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the recognitions that are self-recognition, but they know now that their manager and supervisor saw those things as well.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then those become important qualities for them to strive to continue to be uh meeting those performance expectations.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: I also think it's important in the one-to-ones, even though it is just the two people, can speak about a team and the fact that these people contribute to the team individual with their individual strengths that they bring to the team, but with their individual roles as well.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: So they do feel like a member, but a contributor.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up here today?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I would just encourage uh a commitment.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's what we've done in our um DHRO office, is that all of our supervisors are having one-to-one and trying to be effective in them in the time that we have with our direct reports.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: We are establishing a regular payance.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're making this a culture of making sure that people feel valued, that our employees are engaged, um, and that we are aligning that with the strength of what we want to be the best strength culture and human resources have.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Cheryl, for sharing your insights and promising practices with our members.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: We invite you to join us next month and every first Wednesday of the month for a promising practices podcast series where we will explore best practices for your district.