Just Thoughts #33: The 1-on-1 framework for better discussions
Describing a 1-on-1 framework that will help you be a better leader, and a guide on how to improve your in work discussions. These past couple of weeks I feel I've done some of my best content work.
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Why should I think this way?
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Headlines this week:
Running One-on-One’s
Content of 1-on-1’s
Structure of 1-on-1’s
Refining your 1-on-1’s
A Political Note
Reflections and Summary of Just Content since #32
What near-future content can you expect from Just Home?
I am proud to support this petition for a unified pan-European startup entity. Let’s unite Europe's startup ecosystems! https://www.eu-inc.org 🇪🇺
Running One-on-One’s
There was a time when I had to figure this out and another when I had to figure out how to teach how to run them. The only thing I can’t teach is that you need to care. As we’re about to cover, there are three reasons to run One-on-One, but when it comes to the third, which is helping people develop and grow professionally, caring about it is essential. As mentioned in the previous blog post, Just Thoughts #32: Thoughts on Performance, Caring about people's development cannot be substituted by any tool.
Caring about the development of your people cannot be substituted by any tool.
It will be a lot harder to run meaningful 1-1’s if either participant doesn’t care about being in the meeting, and even more complex if there is no sense of respect or desire to help people grow. Yes, I’m using the plural “either”. It takes two adults to make them meaningful. I believe the common and the worst misconception of running successful 1-1’s is that the manager's sole responsibility is to make them work. Leadership belongs to everyone (as described in the leadership development framework in Just Thoughts #23), even if the responsibility for making the initiation of having them lies within the responsibility of the manager (the exception may be a mentoring relationship, but that’s beyond the scope of this headline).
Let me explain: when I first found myself in the position of President (a self-selected title to substitute the Vice-CEO title) at Slush, I realized that “you are now at the end of the line”. There will be no one else to turn to. Yes, there is a board, and yes, there is a CEO, but when it comes to running things, they are about as knowledgeable and clueless as me. I had been responsible for leading teams before. Still, the concept of “1'-1’s.” only became apparent after reading Hard Things about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, given to me as a must-read by the Co-founders (as the organization built after handed to the students at Aaltoes) of Slush Miki & Atte.
In the book, Ben tells a story about how he heard of someone not conducting 1-1’s down the line, so he told the VP he’d fire everyone in the line of management if the lack of discipline weren’t fixed. I found this a drastic measure, and as someone who studied software management, I am fond of the “self-organized” organizational style. At the time, I couldn’t describe what purpose 1-1’s serve in a self-organized context, but I decided I needed to figure it out. Nonetheless, if you managed the system, I knew that organization had a more significant impact than any process for running your 1-1’s. Hence, I urge you to read Just Thoughts #3: The Beat of Slush from way back when before implementing your process and 1-1’s structure.
Once you’ve defined your vision, purpose, values, and “beat,” which is the rhythm you create for your organization with the help of meetings, you can start mapping out your one-on-ones. They need to “fit the beat.” based on the culture you’ve created in your organization, your 1-1’s may need zero corrective performance management, or it may become the only forum where performance is managed. Which one would you prefer? The first guarantees a healthier dynamic, but getting there is hard. Otherwise, all organizations would run these seemingly perfect organizations, where no one needs to be told what to do differently in a private setting.
They need to “fit the beat.”
Years after leaving Slush, I found this white paper [EDIT; the more inclusive word for “White paper” is likely “research paper”, as the old word has racial connotations] on what Harvard professors called a Deliberately Developmental Organization, the closest scientific way I’ve seen to describe such an organization. It entails some fundamentals that underline the earlier thought: " The worst misconception of running successful 1-1s is that the manager's sole responsibility is to make them work.”
Adults can grow, and rank does not have its usual privileges → Feedback from the manager can make the manager a better leader and the managed a better professional by seeking support from the manager.
Everyone is HR & “Interior Life” is what is managed →. Supporting your co-workers is not limited to those in leadership positions or those in a “people function.”
Timescale for Growth, Not Closure. Weakness is a Strength; error is an opportunity → Everyone is encouraged to constantly be a better version of themselves in every situation, not just in a 1-1’n setting.
If you’re interested in learning more about DDO, I created an audio file here with the help of NotebookLM. As all frameworks are flawed, this study does not cover managing bias and the underlying communication skills needed by every individual in the organization to run it with less friction.
I’m not going to dwell on DDO’s more than this, but what you should take out of this in terms of 1-1’s is
The impact of managing your organizational or team practices and the culture employed will be more significant than trying to run your 1-1’s to perfection.
Your organizational practices define the rhythm for your 1-1’s, not vice versa.
1-1s should never only be about operational challenges. This is to say that there are different types of 1-1s.
If performance is managed only during 1-1’s, you’re making things hard for yourself.
Content of 1-1’s
We’ve established that 1-1s are part of a system, and your culture may affect the nature of your 1-1s. Hence, understanding how they fit your system is imperative to making them meaningful.
How do we make them meaningful? When I first tried to figure out what to ask during 1-1’s, I came across The Coaching Habit by Micheal Bungei Stanier. The book has seven questions. Arguably, you could ask every question in every 1-1. However, the truth is that it depends on your system, and there may be things you want to cover in your 1-1’s that don’t fit a pure coaching situation.
“What’s on your mind today?”
Personally, anyone who’s had a coaching or advisory-type discussion with me will recognize I always ask. “What’s on your mind today?” - to center people around the moment by allowing them to dump whatever is on their mind in that particular moment, and the last question, “What was the most valuable thing in our discussion?” - to leave the other person with a sense of value created, and personal understanding of what has been valuable, while being able to follow-up with more similar value creation.
“What was the most valuable thing in our discussion?”
Along with spending a lot of time learning how to facilitate meetings and improving meeting practices with our CEO back then, Marianne, that was all I felt I needed to run a good 1-on-1 during my time at Slush. Asking a lot more questions than what you talked about took you far.
Now, how often should you have your 1-on-1s? I didn’t have to figure out this question until I joined Smartly.io at Slush. I just held them “on-demand,” with no regular 1-1s scheduled, as I thought the system did not require them. However, the negative consequence was that I didn’t understand how people were truly doing.
People openly shared many things you wouldn’t otherwise hear in a workplace. Still, combined with the lack of regular 1-1’s and the fact that no people engagement survey was employed, we drove people to exhaustion. You didn’t consider it a problem because hyper-productivity was just part of the environment, and everyone had different stress levels anyway. I’ve had team members come to me from that time who, at later reflection, said they were experiencing some burnout that we didn’t know of.
Suppose the first reason to keep 1-1’s is to create a beat and check-point for personal operational tasks not otherwise captured in your teams or organizations’ meeting practices or other logs. In that case, the second reason is to keep track of how people are doing. In a system where “everyone does HR,” the task of doing this is not only reserved to those in a “people role”. For you to get a sense of what questions to ask, I prompted ChatGPT to act as a leadership coach and give suggestions on how to ask people what they are doing without asking them the question directly here. An example from the answer is;
"What's been energizing or exciting you lately?"
This opens the door to talk about things that are bringing them joy or causing stress.
The third reason to have 1-1’s is to discuss and cover the future growth opportunities of the individuals, team, and organization. Traditionally, these are a natural part of a formal performance review cycle, where the organization or team runs a formal 360 feedback process, and you're supposed to use the input as a self-reflection exercise mapping out your development opportunities. The problem usually is that the organization needs to distribute and handle monetary rewards in conjunction with or directly after such an exercise, which distracts everyone from development opportunities and progress, primarily if no rewards are distributed.
However, at best, personal and organizational development opportunities are continuously part of different meeting discussions, not only reserved for the performance review cycles. The official performance discussions are best viewed as a “backstop” or “fail safe” for larger organizations (as described in Will Larson's An Elegant Puzzle) and a “kick-starter” for better continuous practice for smaller ones.
There are tools out there now, like AI coaches like Pandatron and my former employer’s new startup, Kristo Ovaskas, yet to be publically available Taito.ai, aiming to solve the continuous on-demand coaching and performance management needs of tech-native companies. However, one must remember they won’t substitute the underlying need for leadership and people around you caring about your personal development. If these tools are used to escape the need for leaders to support others instead of augmenting the capability, they’re being misused.
To summarize, the content of you’re 1-1’s should belong to one of three categories;
Operational Challenges
Personal Engagement and Wellbeing
Personal Development and Organizational- / Team Development.
Structure of 1-1’s
When I entered Smartly.io, one of the responsibilities I took on as part of the “people team” was developing team leads or managers. The company had successfully introduced the role to the company when it grew fast from 40 to 80 employees by running a series of workshops involving those interested in the topic to define what the work of a “team lead” entailed, detailing the role. Additionally, the CEO Kristo invited leaders from his network to run a series of talks about leadership and what makes a good leader.
Despite the tremendous initial effort, when I joined as the 187th employee, any systematic attempt to onboard or develop managers and leaders had been forgotten. The level was telling people “good luck” and leaving everyone to figure things out reactively without proactive efforts.
One of the first things I did was build a framework for conducting one-on-ones, as this was the most common question inexperienced team leads faced. Here’s an iterated version of what that looks like using the learnings described above and ChatGPT to populate content.
The whole ChatGPT behind this link is worth checking, as the picture above is only part of the iterated thought process.
The general thought is you can categorize questions according to a 9-grid model consisting of rows;
Operational questions - Cover topics concerning the work to be done and work-related goals.
Personal Engagement and Wellbeing - Cover topics about how people are doing. As discussed in the previous Just Thoughts (#32 - Thoughts on Performance ), people only have 100% capacity to distribute it between things in life and work. As a manager, knowing where people are pays off, even if the non-work-related stuff is not the company’s responsibility.
Personal- and Team Development - Cover topics about individual and team growth in the long term. Done right, you’ll enable your people to leave, and doing this perfectly means you’re treating them in a way they don’t want to go.
Done right, you’ll enable your people to leave, and doing this perfectly means you’re treating them in a way they don’t want to.
Manager Support—This column highlights the importance of managers' interactions and their responsibility to offer help. Your behavior as a manager may also cause many issues, something you should constantly be mindful of.
Coaching for employees: When you coach, you do not try to solve the problems the coaches face but instead help them find their solutions. A notion integral to the “feedback fallacy” is that, more often than not, you shouldn’t be giving feedback as much as asking the right questions in the right way.
The “US” questions: The final column contains questions concerning the whole, not just the individual or the manager. My original draft of this framework had the columns “Me, You, US.” The idea is that in a 1-on-1, you’re covering questions about how I can help you, how you can help yourself, and how we can help each other as a team.
The idea is that in a 1-on-1, you’re covering questions about how I can help you, how you can help yourself, and how we can help each other as a team.
Refining your 1-1’s
For this section, I’d like to remind you that all frameworks are always somehow flawed, but depending on your use case, some are more useful. This one is a tool to get you started and one to analyze what you could try doing differently. Here are some questions you may be having, with answers.
What questions should you be asking?
Any question should and will always belong to one of the nine boxes in the framework. You decide what questions you use; I suggest using AI to help brainstorm suitable ones.
If you're in doubt about where to start, start with the seven coaching Habits questions. Also, consider breaking formality if you’re an experienced leader who hasn’t gotten this right. I prefer doing my 1-on-1s walking, at lunch, or somewhere else than in a meeting room.
How often should you have 1-1’s?
As discussed in the first section of this headline, it depends on how you’ve structured the rest of the rhythm of your team and your organization. As well as how the different topics in the framework are covered outside the 1-on-1’s.
For example, if you’re doing daily standups and every day in a highly trusted team, you likely don’t need to have operational topics in your 1-1s. In contrast, I’ve been part of monthly team meetings where everyone shares “what’s up in life” and openly shares the good and the bad, removing the need for wellbeing discussions in 1-on-1s.
Should I cover all topics in every 1-on-1?
No, you shouldn’t when to cover what topic is highly dependent on your system. This being said, every topic should be covered at some point. The question is only when covering what topic makes the most sense.
For example, in a team that is still “storming” and is not operating at the highest levels of trust, it may pay off to have you’re 1-1’s a day before the team meetings. Then you’ll know what’s up as people may share concerns in private that they wouldn’t in the team meeting. Additionally, covering “US” topics after the survey results of an engagement survey may yield insights into the issues highlighted in the data.
Didn’t Brian Chesky (CEO & Founder of Airbnb and the inspiration behind the concept of “Founder mode”) say you should manage people through the work? What are all these other topics doing in this framework?
Referring to this recent interview, “The Art of Hiring”
He is completely correct but neglects to discuss how the system affects the singular interactions. As described in how DDOs work in the initial Headline, you need to cover all aspects of the nine-grid framework, one way or the other, within your system, that is, your organization or your team. Still, it may not necessarily be in a 1-on-1 setting.
Additionally, if you’re able to hire the best in the world for every single role, you’re not coaching individuals anymore; you're coaching the team. You can read Bill Campbell’s Trillion Dollar Coach for concrete examples. However, that is hardly the case for every single role, every single time. Hence, the notions are discussed in the following question.
Before we go there, I’d also like to address one thing I'm afraid I have to disagree with Brian. His notion of “talking people out of it” is when you accidentally hire achievers with big egos who want to “prove you wrong.” The individuals who take up such tasks with such a motivator usually have deeply ingrained self-esteem issues and may push others down to lift themselves up.
Instead, hire people who are strongly aligned with your mission and purpose, which transcends skill levels and describes the direction you want to take. In my organizational model described in Just Thoughts #2, I call this “the north star”.
Didn’t Karri Saarinen (CEO & Co-Founder of Linear and someone who reported directly to Brian) share Brian's Interview video and say you must care about the work? What if caring about the work conflicts with caring for the people?
They are not in conflict if you care enough to propel people forward. If your work is not up to par with what it should be in this team, I will go out of my way to help you find the next gig because I hired you. Hence, never hire anyone you aren’t willing to do this for. Brian used relationship metaphors in his interview.
Here’s mine: Marry someone you can be friends with even after divorce, as you should hire people you’re willing to develop after you have to part ways with them.
Marry someone you can be friends with even after divorce. You should hire people you’re willing to develop after you have to part ways with them.
I feel no shame in giving that advice, as I’m grateful to have learned this notion before learning it the hard way. The beauty of this thought is it transcends skill level, meaning you’d be blessed if you’re always able to hire the world’s best person for every job. The truth is, that is highly unlikely, but you can always hire people you would like to coach or who would like to continue coaching you even if you can’t work with them directly for whatever reason.
Finally, I look at this founder mode thing; everyone sees it as reserved only for “The Founder.” As far as I am concerned, I want to operate in teams where everyone operates in Founder Mode, so I believe leadership belongs to everyone.
That means that even if I’m the manager, I expect you to help me become a better leader by telling me what I’m doing wrong and for us to have that discussion to push each other to deliver better work. That is why I say the greatest misconception of one-on-one is that it’s only the manager’s responsibility to get them right.
I hope this inspires you to have more meaningful 1-1’s! Please share this post with someone who should read it!
A Political Note
I aimed to keep these to a minimum, as entrepreneurship is the fastest way to create change. However, sometimes, some change won’t happen without “political notes.” In Just Thoughts #21, I covered some thoughts from the aftermath of the Trump vs. Biden debate, making a case for having Kamala Harris before she announced being a runner-up. Her campaign slogan, “Country of Party,” is quite catchy, and it’s pretty scary that the runner-up is someone as criminally accredited as Trump. Also, I hoped Elon wouldn’t be as pro-Trump as he portrayed himself in Lex’s interview I covered in Just Thoughts #26. That thought proved false hope, as Elon had gotten up on stage with Trump a few weeks ago.
Ultimately, you’d hope to see Kamala becoming the first female president of the U.S. The world is ready, and if the problem is that people don’t feel inclined to vote, I’d like to highlight a quote by Chisom Udoze, featured in Just Thoughts #9.
If you think you are too small to make a difference, you haven’t spent the night with a mosquito - African Proverb.
Reflections and Summary of Just Content since #32
I’ve realized that the Monday Just Thoughts / Just Products kickoff, with a podcast to wrap up the week, combined with posting any content the other days from Just Poems, Just About Life, or Just Culture, is at a doable pace.
We’ve also created some automation to post on social media with Luciano Dolenc using Make.com and Buffer.com and a simple Google spreadsheet for content access and review.
Just Thoughts Podcast
Just Thoughts Podcast #4: Summary of Maria 365 showcase - used Notebook LM to summarize a pitching competition from the local startup hub. It made me think about a) who should be covering the Finnish startup scene (the media seats were empty) and b) making my pick from the winners.
Just Thoughts Podcast #2.5 - An interview in review: Revisiting the interview with Rudi Skogman to deliver the translated podcast version. For a second try, and it doesn’t seem to be hallucinating at all. For the type of content created at Just Thoughts, it seems to serve the purpose well.
Just Thoughts special—Just Culture Highlight: I used NotebookLM to create a podcast episode of my book Answer to Love, Life, and Leadership in an AI-driven world. Inspired by the national book where no one was discussing my book and even fewer talks discussed using AI in written Art, I decided to DIY myself. With the national newspaper having a marketing picture of a six-toed baby, everyone thought it was AI-generated when it wasn’t; it made for quite a timely release.
Just Products
Just Products #4 - Using NotebookLM to Translate Content: Just Products with its first podcast episode, where we turned the previously done interview with Jarno Saarinen into an English version. We also compared the NotebookLM summary of Lex Friedman’s interview with the summary I made after listening through the whole interview.
Just Poems
Just Poems #4 - What it takes for 1 to be 2 - Using HeyGen to recite poetry vs. reciting it yourself. Which one is better? What has more depth?
Just Poems #7 - Two Liners. Human vs. AI - Short phrases packing a concept, which is better, created by AI or the human?
Just Poems #8: The Window to the Soul vs. Eyes of Time - Asking AI to interpret and make poetry out of it and getting quite far with it.
Just Poems #9: A Pillow Thought - For someone who’s felt overwhelming sadness, you know that you become a passive soul when the remedy is engagement in life.
Just Poems #10 - Thoughts to poems - I went through the archives and found writing I used to find flow. I took this scribble and used AI to turn it into a poem. It turned out okay; it was quite the way to extrapolate your work.
Just Culture
Just Culture #6 - X - An artist from times past dropped a new song with some lyrics that resonated.
Just Culture #7 - Wolves - A movie review of Apple TV+’s new movie sensation with Brad Pitt and George Clooney. It was worth the watch at home on your couch.
Just Culture #8 - Four Seasons of Slow Horses in Review - I watched it all. I was mainly surprised this sparked the most direct shares compared to any other article in the past few weeks. The Picture generated by DALL-E generated Text-in-Image with a quality I hadn’t seen before. Things are surely moving fast.
What near-future content can you expect from Just Home?
I am excited to announce that I’ll interview the parents and serial entrepreneurs Pierre Jallow and Chisom Udoze in separate interviews. Chisom has been featured many times in Just Thoughts, is a 6x accredited founder, and is one of the leading voices of DEI-space in the Nordics. Pierre is a long-time friend who’s started multiple endeavors and is helping with market expansion across Europe and Africa. Additionally, I’m interviewing Ashish Mohite, CTO of Hyperion Robotics, a startup in the construction industry 3D printing concrete.
Just Culture will also get its podcast series, starting with long-time friends Rony Rex, with whom I started my entrepreneurial journey, and Kalle Lindroth, with whom we set out to create Slush Music. Rony has made a career as a DJ, grinding his way to the top of the electronic music scene in Finland. Kalle “grew up” professionally in the music industry as a singer and songwriter and an integral part of the journeys of the most significant pop sensations in Finnish history: Antti Tuisku and Kääriä.
Furthermore, we’ll have at least one (Teemu Lemetti & Untuvia) and hopefully a few startup founders as guest writers telling their journeys. Just Products will feature the automation we’ve created for the publication with Make & Buffer, and Just Thoughts will build on the performance discussions series by covering a feedback framework.
Just Culture will feature more movie and series reviews. I’ve watched plenty that I haven’t been able to cover. Additionally, I hope to find the time to discuss light festivals, as they have become quite the trend across Finland and are in season. Finally, I’ll write thoughts about marriage and divorce in About Life.
Writing all this, I feel excited. Kicking up gear for the publication reminds me of the stories I’ve been a part of and all of the stories yet in the making. For that, I am grateful.
Want to be part of the journey and contribute to a story or piece of writing? Email me at Nicolas.dolenc@proton.me!
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