5 Tweaks For Being Better at 1-2-1 Meetings

When training people to coach on my accredited programme, one of the things we over-index on is observation and feedback.

As a leader, it’s really hard to learn to be better at 1-2-1 meetings because the opportunity for feedback is restricted–not by any protocols, but because of some of the things that happen every day to our brains at work.

If you are the most senior person in a room, the chances of you getting brilliant feedback about what you could do to improve your interactions are slim.

There are 2 key reasons why this happens:

1)????? There is likely to be a filter to any feedback due to the Authority Matrix - when we are with someone more senior, particularly if they have influence over our reward and development, we tend to over-respect their views and position and feel our feedback will somehow damage our prospects or is somehow less relevant, important or valuable–even when the opposite is true

In this situation, feedback is likely to be guarded or overly flattering, even untrue.

2)????? If you have something difficult to discuss, such as underperformance, this could trigger the human threat response–potentially in both of you. This can restrict blood and oxygen flow in the pre-frontal cortex–the part of your brain responsible for great decision making and finding the right words. When your fight/flight/freeze/appease mode is triggered, you might be defensive or aggressive, can’t think of the right things to say, or want to leave the room as quickly as possible.

In this situation, feedback is usually the last thing you want to give or receive.

So how can a senior leader get meaningful feedback when our human wiring gets in the way?

It’s not easy, which is why, even when the primary reason for people coming to one of our training programmes is to become better as Leaders Who Coach, this opportunity for feedback in 121 conversations is just as, if not more valuable than the certificate or qualification:

“The expert feedback I got from the 1-2-1 observations was game changing for me. I understood better the impact of subtle things about my choice of words, body language, tone of voice and the way I evidenced that I was listening. This meant that making just small, granular changes–just one word in a sentence in some cases–had a huge impact on my conversations outside of the training room. My team are more accountable as a result of small adaptions in how I ask questions–and the general mood is lighter, people (including me) are happier and more productive–even though the trading environment has actually got harder and more pressurised.”

When I’m asked to evidence the ROI of my programmes, I can get the data out, but instead I often just connect them with someone in a similar role. The best ROI advertisement I can have is when one leader tells another it has saved them time, money and energy in real life–and so they have invested in the same training for their teams too, so they have a shared language and multiplied the learning.

Having run formal programmes that provide accredited qualifications in coaching and mentoring for leaders for more than 5 years now, I have noticed I feedback on 5 small but powerful things on repeat. So, with an abundance mindset, I thought I’d share them. They It Isn’t Bloody Rocket Science–but they are really bloody powerful tweaks to your sentences when you take them into your real-life practise! ?

1) Replace “Why…” at the start of a question with “What…” “Why have you done that?” becomes “What led you to think that was the right idea at the time?” “Why” can trigger a threat response (less blood to the clever bit of the brain) and therefore excuses from someone in defence mode. “What” is more likely to get someone reflecting on what they can learn with the benefit of hindsight. That they are competent enough to work through what happened this time and that you believe in their ability to grow and learn.

2) Replace “But…” with “And..” “But what about people who can’t do that easily?,” becomes “And what about people who can’t do that easily?” “But” triggers a sense we are being criticised, that the idea won’t work -the threat mode is triggered, poor thinking ensues and we get defensive. “And” will be more likely to suggest there’s a good idea to build on.

3) Replace “Have you thought about…?” with “What/How/Who…”

“Have you thought about who you could ask for help?” becomes “Who in your network could help?”

?“Have you thought about what you will do when people don’t like the idea?” becomes “What will you do/How will you stay focused when people don’t like the idea?”

“Have you…? positions the person asking the question as the expert, checking up so nothing gets missed. For leaders, this means you are inadvertently training people to come and check with you rather than take accountability. Who, what, how suggests that a powerful other believes in you. They are signalling, you’ve got this. Let’s think this out together.

4) Replace a question someone knows the answer to with one they don’t…yet. “What have you done about that?” becomes “What have you done about that which you sense you could push further?” The first question is about history and facts. The purpose is to bring you up to date. The downside is that you are now in a position to give advice–and that becomes what is expected of you. You fall into the same trap. People come to update you and ask for what to do next, rather than take accountability and use you as a sounding board. The second question is about the future and possibilities. The purpose is to keep accountability for the issue with the other person, and to give them the time and support to think it over so that they can think about what to do next.

5) Use their words to get others to do the heavy lifting, rather than you. When we are racking our brains to think of a good question to move a situation forwards, usually that means you are doing the hard thinking. Others come to rely on that. And it becomes exhausting. In addition, you have probably stopped listening in order to think about a good question or a potential solution. Try using a word or colloquial phrase you have heard someone repeat and put a question mark alongside it. Or using their metaphors and asking about them.

“You said you are ‘concerned…’?”

“You said we need to ‘raise the bar’–by how much? And by when?

“You’ve mentioned “It’s like herding cats” a few times. Which cat could herd the others if you got them onside first? 5 small tweaks. Big potential gains. Do you have any other tips we could use and share?

And for more details on our coaching and training programmes–including this powerful 1-2-1 observation, find out more here.

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