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We took inspiration from The Great CEO within: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZJZbv4J6FZ8Dnb0JuMhJxTnwl-dwqx5xl0s65DE3wO8/edit

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To understand the basis for these meetings, I recommend that all team members read the same book to get on the same page about the purpose and structure of these meetings.

If you lead leaders, Andy Grove’s High Output Management should be the best book. This book is the gold standard for managing a team effectively, but it is not short.

If you lead individual contributors who are unlikely to read a long book like High Output Management, ask the team to read The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson. It’s a very short read (30 minutes) with simple, effective advice. Assigning it uniformly will ensure that your whole team has a common basis for proceeding.

The first One-On-One Meeting should occur soon after the onboarding process is complete. Have the leader and the team members come to the meeting with written, measurable goal narratives for the new team member contributing to the team quest. When the leader and team members reach a consensus on a set of goal narratives (ideally three or fewer), merge these into one list.

Run subsequent meetings according to the following template.

Team member:

1. Accountability (goals and actions):
   1. Last Week
      1. Did you get each of your stated actions from last week done, yes/no?
         1. If not, what blocked you?
         2. What habit can you adopt to avoid encountering that obstacle again?
   2. Next Week
      1. For each of your quests/goal narratives, what one action can you take to advance toward each of them?
2. Coaching (issues and solutions):
   1. Show your quests/goal narratives in traffic light fashion (green-yellow-red).
      1. Green = on-track.
      2. Yellow = slightly off-track.
      3. Red = far off-track.
   2. Show your KPIs in a traffic light fashion.
   3. Show any relevant pipelines (Recruiting, Sales, Customer Success, Engineering Roadmap, etc)
   4. If I were to dig into these updates, what would I discover in your function that is:
      1. Good
      2. Not Good
         1. Please describe the issue in detail and provide your proposed solution. This Proposed Solution should include:
            1. What can you do to solve the issue?
            2. What I (your leader) can do to help unblock you.
   5. Please list any other issues you see in the company, with peers, with the product, in your life, etc.
      1. Please list your Proposed Solution for each. Even if you are unsure of the right course of action, take a stab at a definitive roadmap. It will help advance the conversation.
3. Transparency (feedback):
   1. What did you like that I did as a leader?
   2. What do you wish that I would do differently as a leader?
      1. Please think of the feedback you are afraid to give me because you think it will hurt my feelings. Please give me that feedback.

Leader:

1. Transparency:
   1. Get feedback from your report.
      1. Elicit negative feedback about your actions. Do this any way you can. Ask for it, appreciate it, and act on it. This is the key to making a team member feel heard and valued.
      2. Once you have gotten critical feedback, then either
         1. Accept
            1. If you accept, co-create a written action step that you can take to act on it. Put this action step on your group task manager so your report can see that you do it.
         2. Not Accept
            1. In rare cases, you may receive feedback that you do not accept. That is OK, as long as you know why you do not accept the request.
   2. Give feedback on your report. Declare:
      1. Since the previous meeting, what actions did your report take that you liked? Be specific.
      2. What actions do you wish that your report would do differently? State these as specific future actions. Example:
         1. “I wish you would ask for feedback from your direct reports in your 1-1s.”
   3. Update the team member’s goals:
      1. Ensure that the quests/goal narratives are still relevant.
      2. Ensure that their declared actions for the upcoming week are the straightest line to achieving their quests/goal narratives.
      3. Ensure their proposed solutions are on the straight line to solving the issue.
      4. Ensure they have copied and pasted all their actions (from goal narratives and Issues/Solutions) into the group task manager.

Schedule these meetings regularly, at a fixed day and time. The schedule is usually weekly but can be bi-weekly or even monthly once a team member develops expertise at her tasks if her goals remain consistent over time. Another alternative is to set different paces for Accountability, Coaching, and Transparency. For example, Meet weekly for Coaching and Transparency but do Accountability on a bi-weekly or monthly cadence.

On your day set aside for meetings, schedule One-On-One meetings before the team meeting. Schedule them back-to-back and allot twenty-five to fifty minutes for each one. If there is a serious issue to discuss, such as serious job dissatisfaction, then use your Open Office Hour later that day to address the issue fully.

If a team is small enough, one-on-one and team meetings can be merged, but be cautious about giving negative feedback in a group setting. Unless your team has agreed to radical transparency and actively wants this public negative feedback, shame is likely to arise. Our company, therefore, opts to provide negative feedback only during One-On-One meetings.

That being said, we recommend moving to a culture of radical transparency. Doing so will allow you to merge all One-On-One meetings into Team meetings, which can save you 4-6 hours on your day of internal meetings. See the advice of Nvidia CEO on this kind of structure.

But radical transparency first requires explicit buy-in from every team member and training in how to do it effectively. Conscious Leadership Group runs excellent one-day training in radical transparency. The investment of time may seem large, but it usually pays itself back within a few weeks (e.g., saving a half-day per week).