1-1 Meetings

Welcome to the psychological safety newsletter and thanks for subscribing. You are amazing. This week discusses 1-1 meetings, diversity, experiments, scrum masters and design principles.

1-1 Meetings

Every great manager I’ve ever met adhered to a strong and principled practice of regular 1-1s with members of their team, even when they were at a very senior level and had a lot of time pressures to deal with. I believe that 1-1 meetings, and the social signal that is sent by a manager ring-fencing dedicated time for team members is absolutely essential for the wellbeing, belonging, performance, and psychological safety of team members. Whilst psychological safety isn’t necessarily an outcome of a strong 1-1 practice, the fact that team members know that their manager dedicates focused time for them lays a foundation of security, even if they have nothing urgent to discuss (and of course, let’s not mistake urgent for important!).

Here’s my take on 1-1s. 1-1s are an investment in the future of your team members: you’re investing in their wellbeing, their capability, and their trust – so that when something happens that they need to tell you about, they will – without having to worry about asking for your time first. 1-1’s are great for handling the stuff that is non-urgent, but most important.

Prioritising the time

First of all, 1-1s should be regular. I usually aim for weekly at first, when joining a new team or a new member joins, and I may extend to every two weeks if both I and the team member feels that is best. It’s worth bearing in mind that holidays, unplanned work stuff, and the “real world” can result in 1-1’s being postponed or skipped, so my approach is to err on the more regular frequency, because we can skip one without it causing too much of a gap between 1-1s. A month between 1-1s is too long, in my opinion, which means if a 2-weekly 1-1 is cancelled, another should be scheduled asap. The default 1-1 practice should be that it’s in the calendar and dedicated; if the team member wants to skip or postpone, it’s their choice. The manager should avoid postponing or skipping unless it’s absolutely unavoidable.

If a manager can’t find the time to do weekly 1-1’s, the problem is not the frequency of 1-1s – it’s simply most likely that they have too many direct reports.

As a manager, if there’s a problem, personal or organisational, I want to find out about it as soon as possible, not just when my team member manages to find a free slot in my calendar. That dedicated 1-1 time between manger and team member is a pretty explicit statement of “you matter to me”, and what you care about matters to me too.

Some managers, instead of scheduling regular 1-1s, have an “open door” policy and encourage team members to book time in their calendar. I don’t believe this is effective: some team members will feel safe and comfortable in booking time, whilst others (such as junior members, neurodistinct folks, or people who feel less centred in the team) will feel too much of an imposition on their manager’s time, reluctant to book a 1-1, and avoid doing so unless it’s very urgent. People who are already checked out, unsafe, anxious or stressed won’t book that time – and they’re exactly the folks you need to speak with.

And in any case, many of my most effective or transformational 1-1 conversations have been with team members who didn’t think they had anything to discuss. Before you know it, you’re talking about big life goals or something personally important and impactful that makes a big difference. 

It’s good practice to allow at least 1 hour for a 1-1 meeting. Sometimes we might not need all that time, but it’s important for it to be there in case we need to use it. I also try to make sure there’s a buffer between 1-1s and other meetings, because a lot of stuff can come up, and it’s important for me to have some time to write it up, take some actions, or simply switch context. 

Creating the right environment

Now that we’re highly remote and virtual, this applies a little less, but I still try to make sure that as often as possible, I hold 1-1s outside the office environment. People (including myself) are more likely to talk about the really important stuff and feel more relaxed to open up, in an environment that feels less formal and “worky”. A cafe, library, or local open space such as a park are all great places. In fact, walking 1-1s can be really effective too.

This feels like I shouldn’t have to say it, but I’ve seen it far too often: managers who feel that they are too busy to focus 100% of their attention on the 1-1 and the team member. Glancing at their phone, checking email, or responding to a chat message all send very clear signals to the team member that they’re less important than the manager or the “work”. This is probably one of my cardinal sins of management, and I see it all too often. Set the scene to avoid distractions – turn off notifications on your phone, close your email, turn off chat messages, and set your status to “away”. This is your team member’s time, nobody else’s. Give them 100% of your attention.

Structuring 1-1s

There are myriad ways to approach preparing for 1-1s. You might go agenda-less, and simply discuss whatever comes up. This sounds lazy and unproductive but actually can be really powerful. You might want to use a tool such as Lighthouse to highlight topics in advance, but I’m not the biggest fan of Lighthouse as it can spark anxiety in team members when they see what subjects the manager has logged for discussion. I sincerely believe that the agenda for a 1-1 is primarily owned by the team member, not the manager. My favourite practice for this is 15/5 reports: weekly structured reports that take the team member less than 15 minutes to write, and 5 minutes for the manager to read. The questions and topics in a 15/5 are usually set by the manager, but are person-centred – usually focusing on wellbeing, morale, achievements, goals, and other open questions. 15/5s are a great habit to build, provide a psychologically safe “pulse” for the team, and facilitate effective 1-1s by giving strong signals about what’s important to discuss.

Personally, I believe 1-1s are *not* the place to discuss projects, delivery, KPIs, OKRs, SLAs or other factors related to output and delivery. The team member may ask for help in solving a particular work problem, or they may highlight a challenge that they’re facing in getting work done, but 1-1s should not be a time where the team member feels they may be chased or pushed on work matters. It may be necessary to discuss aspects of work and projects, but the context should always be positively focused on the team member. Think growth mindset, rather than deficit mindset. As a manager, if you have a problem with a project falling behind or a task slipping, schedule another meeting to discuss it.

Good topics for 1-1s include self-development, learning, morale and wellbeing, their personal life and goals, concerns (and successes) related to the team, plus how you can better support them as their manager. A key point here is to ask your team member for feedback, or advice (I prefer advice) in every 1-1. Initially, and maybe most of the time, they won’t feel the need to provide any – but if you make asking for feedback a habit, when they do have some feedback, they know you’ve provided space for it, that you want to receive it, and you’ll get it. And a potentially controversial point – I don’t think 1-1s are the time and place to give your team member feedback; remember that feedback should be timely, so if you have some specific feedback for your team member, it should be provided to them as soon as possible after the issue it’s in respect to.

Responding to individual needs

A manager may want to use coaching practices and skills in 1-1 sessions, in addition to the advisor, mentor, and advocate role that they play by default. Just be careful to make it clear when switching roles: sometimes people want advice, sometimes they want a friendly ear, and sometimes they want the time and space to come up with their own solutions. It can be frustrating to have someone coach you if all you want is a simple answer to a problem!

1-1 Meetings Checklist

1-1 Meetings should be:

• Regular
• Dedicated
• Unrushed
• In a comfortable space
• Focused on the team member
• Structured (or intentionally unstructured)

People and relationships are the most important aspect of organisations, and 1-1’s are one of the most valuable practices for managers, and therefore should be one of a manager’s highest priorities. A person-centred, regular, and continuously improving 1-1 practice is one of the most effective ways that a manager can lay strong foundations in a group and set the scene for a psychologically safe, high performing team.

This newsletter is sponsored by Conflux.

Conflux is the leading business consultancy worldwide helping organisations to navigate fast flow in software. We help organisations to adopt and sustain proven, modern practices for delivering software rapidly and safely.

Many organisations today are stuck using ways of working from a bygone age. In this article, Sophie Weston, Principal at Conflux, takes a look at why knowledge work needs a new approach in which psychological safety is a key ingredient.

Psychological Safety In the Workplace:

I love these five experiments for establishing team psychological safety, by Meg Saxby. As you know, I love to frame everything as an experiment, and these experiments directly address psychological safety, so I’m all in 🙂 I particularly like Meg’s framing of “safety loops”.

Here’s a great open access paper that highlights that gender-diverse teams produce more novel and higher-impact scientific ideas. Mixed gender research teams are underrepresented in the literature, and yet their studies tend towards the more novel and innovative.

Kyle Craighead has written a couple of pieces in Leadersread.net on “How to Build Psychologically Safe Teams.” Here’s part 1, and part 2. Great, comprehensive guides to the literature on psychological safety for leaders.

Here’s an episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox podcast, on Psychological safety for teams, with Stephan Wiedner. Stephan also highlights the power of the coaching stance in fostering psychological safety.

Things to do and try:

I love these design principles by the folks at Bromford. Design principles like these are a great way of help to ensure that we “do the right things”, and “do the things right”.

This week’s poem:

The Niagara River, by Kay Ryan 

As though
the river were
a floor, we position
our table and chairs
upon it, eat, and
have conversation.
As it moves along,
we notice—as
calmly as though
dining room paintings
were being replaced—
the changing scenes
along the shore. We
do know, we do
know this is the
Niagara River, but
it is hard to remember
what that means.

Mission statement

The mission of this newsletter is to make the world of work a better, safer, more inclusive and equitable place. We work towards this by sharing, as widely as possible, new research and opinion, case studies, news, practices and methods related to psychological safety. 

This includes topics such as inclusion, human factors, facilitation, safety critical environments, systems thinking, leadership and management, diversity and equity, mental health, organisational dynamics, culture, ethics, and more. 

A core goal is to amplify the voices of minoritised groups and those who are less represented in this field. This includes (but is not limited to) voices of people of colour, neurodiverse people, LGBTQ+ people, women in leadership and tech, and more.

Another goal is to share insights and best practices across different domains: for example, so that those of us in tech may learn from healthcare, and those of us in education can learn from aviation.

I believe knowledge is worthless unless it’s accessible. A key principle of this newsletter is to only share content that everyone can access. This excludes content behind paywalls, research papers that are not open-access, and proprietary tools that don’t open source their algorithms (preventing us from observing how systems make decisions about us). There may be some exceptions to this principle in practice, for example, where authors are able to share original texts of papers.

Whilst this statement will evolve this over time, the core principles of equity, amplification, and progressive & humanistic leadership shouldn’t change.