Building Stronger Teams Through Individual 1:1s

In the world of engineering, the work we do requires deep thought, problem-solving, and innovation. It is essential that the relationships we have with our team members are on a solid footing to enable ownership, collaboration, and the sharing of ideas. As managers, we play a crucial role in fostering these strong interpersonal relationships, as they serve as the foundation for our teams to deliver their best work.

Unknown unknowns

When it comes to managing teams, establishing regular 1:1 meetings is crucial. These meetings provide an opportunity to form relationships, demonstrate interest in each team member's work, and gain insights into their challenges and aspirations. However, for these meetings to be effective, you must encourage open communication on the topics that matter.?

Two principles that have resonated with me in conducting 1:1 meetings are:

1. Regular Meetings: Actually holding the 1:1 meetings on a regular basis is half the battle. This ensures consistent communication and allows for ongoing support and feedback. I’ve found that scheduling a 15-30 minute recurring meeting (every 1-2 weeks) in the calendar works. Allow the meeting to be moved by either attendee, but it cannot be canceled altogether.?
2. Relationship Building: 1:1 meetings should not be used for work status updates, as other forms of regular individual and project status meetings can serve that purpose. Instead, these meetings should focus on forming relationships, learning about team members, and understanding their perspectives and challenges.?

To encourage open and meaningful conversations, it is important to ask the right questions. Avoid "yes/no" questions or leading questions that have an expected answer. Instead, ask open-ended questions that allow team members to express themselves fully. One effective approach, as mentioned in Michael Bungay Stanier's book "The Advice Trap," is essentially to ask "What challenges are you facing?" and follow up with "And what else?" several times to uncover the underlying issues.?

While this practice is valuable on an ongoing basis, when I started managing a new team, I wanted to find a way to initially quantify the well-being of each team member w.r.t. various important topics. This led me to create a short survey for each team member to complete before our first 1:1 meeting. The survey asked the team member to rate topics on a scale from 1 to 5 where: 1 = terrible; 2 = bad; 3 = OK; 4 = good; 5 = great.

The topics were:

1. Team Culture
2. Personal Productivity
3. Team Productivity
4. Customer Value Delivery
5. Work/Life Balance
6. Career Growth

By asking for a rating on each of these aspects, I gain immediate insights into how team members perceive these important areas. It’s easy to assign a rating, which serves as an ice-breaker to talk about both positive and negative experiences.?

In addition to the above questions about team culture, it can be useful to gauge your team member's understanding of the team and company's objectives and their role. Again, ask them to rate their understanding of the following from 1 - 5.

1. Understanding of the team’s near-term goals
2. Understanding of the team's long-term goals
3. Understanding of the company's near-term goals
4. Understanding of the company's long-term goals
5. Understanding of my role and objectives

It can seem uncomfortable to take the initiative to set up a survey like this. It has been most valuable for those first meetings with new teams. It's a good idea to repeat the survey a few times per year. I suspect that this survey needs to be somewhat informal and not seen as being "on the record" as that can prevent the team-member from sharing openly.?

Team oriented cultures

Openly listening and being aware of the issues of your team-members is the only way you can start to improve things. The remarkable thing is that just the act of empathizing goes a long way to enabling issues to be resolved. Some pain points you may discover will be like unique puzzles and may take much contemplation and courage to resolve. Being aware of an issue puts you in a better place than before, but consider that you may not have to act upon the new information immediately. You can observe and think about it until you have a plan of action that you think will work. Stay curious and seek to understand for a while and a better solution will come to you.?

When your team members feel like you care about their well-being and success, the good ones will start worrying less about themselves and proving their worth and instead will develop a sense of ownership and accountability to their fellow co-workers and the work objectives. It will empower them to contemplate alternative approaches (risks), and have innovative ideas. They’ll go the extra mile to deliver exceptional results because they enjoy their work.?

In many domains, but especially in engineering, there can be differing opinions, tough debates, and intellectual challenges on a daily basis. Having strong interpersonal relationships between the team members is an essential base on which to navigate these challenges effectively. When a team operates primarily as a team and its team-members feel supported and are supportive of each other, everyone can focus on driving to the best solutions without personal agendas clouding their judgement.?

Closing thoughts

I have to conclude that ultimately, the success of an engineering organization relies on the strength of the relationships we build between management and their team in order to foster a level playing field and team-oriented culture. Once you have that framework, your smart team members will collaborate to build amazing things!?