 Running effective one-to-one meetings at work, I think, are one of the most important things to get right if you want to firstly develop your team members, secondly improve the effectiveness and happiness of your team, third retain your best staff, and fourth, get promoted as a manager. In this video, I'm going to take you through nine tips to improve the effectiveness of your one-on-one meetings with your team and here is a quick preview of what I'm covering. These are all trial and tested approaches that I've used for years and at the end of the video I'll share some example agendas on what you could cover in your meetings. My name is Jess Coles and I've spent 25 years working in corporates and household names through to SMEs at all management levels. I've been managing teams of up to 35 people for over 25 years and I've won best team prizes at national and company level. If you're new to this channel, Enhance.training provides online business courses to help professionals, managers and business owners improve their performance. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. So let's start with our first tip. Aim to build trust from the start. The more your team members trust you, the more useful your one-on-one meetings are going to be. Trust will get you useful, honest discussion and feedback rather than only being told what the team member thinks you want to hear. There are lots of ways to build trust. Some pointers include make sure you do what you say and your actions and words are consistent. Be open and honest in how you deal with your team. Praise more than you criticise. Ask for your team members input and actively listen and take action on that input. Focus on developing your team members rather than controlling them. Admit when you've made mistakes and try not to repeat them. And build personal relationships with your team members as well as professional ones. Building relationships and trust takes time and effort. Make this a priority. My second tip for one-on-one meetings at work is to be clear about the purpose of the meeting. Having one-on-one meetings with employees is a perfect time to help them grow professionally as much as you can. Coach them into your team members to improve what they do. As they get stronger and better they will be able to deliver more personally and collectively as a team. This in turn reflects well on you as the manager and leader of the team. For example an obvious reward for you would be to add more people to your team. Use each meeting to discuss and debate different approaches to solving specific problems. Get your team members thinking by asking questions and help them get to their answer. Obviously share with them your answers if needed and together choose the best approach. You'll be helping to set the stage for each individual to work at their best and keep improving. My third tip for one-on-one meetings is to book a regular time in each of your diaries and stick to it. We're all busy at work and the pressures on each of us keep rising. It is so tempting to cancel or delay your one-to-one meeting. Don't. This sends completely the wrong message i.e. you're not that important to me. You want to consistently send the message you are very important to me. Book in your one-to-one meetings into the diary for the same time each week or every other week at a time that suits you both. You are much less likely to miss or delay meetings with a consistent time booked in. From my experience an hour is a good amount of time for each meeting but do book the amount of time that works best for both of you. My fourth tip for one-to-one meetings is to ask your team member to bring their agenda. Ideally both of you would agree and set your agenda before each meeting. In practice this is hard to achieve. I would suggest that you write a short set of bullet points and email this over to your direct report and ask them to also create a short list of what they would like to cover and email that to you. Then at the start of the meeting you can both spend a few minutes creating a joint list of the most important areas that you'd like to cover. This gives each of you an input into the agenda. You may find that similar themes keep coming up at which point booking a set structure for part of the meeting may be useful for both parties. Make sure your team member sets part of the meeting agenda whether you do it ad hoc just before the meeting or you have a set structure. For tip 5 start and finish the meeting with a positive, a win or a genuine compliment. Celebrating successes is so important. Everyone wants to be appreciated. In fact lack of appreciation is cited as the top reason people leave their jobs. So make the effort to celebrate your team member's successes. Start and finish the meeting with a positive, a win or a compliment that the team member has earned. And be specific, not general with these comments. My sixth tip for one on one meetings is to use the time to solve problems. Spending the time in a one to one meeting to share information is a bit of a waste of time in my view. The time would be much better spent jointly solving problems that you or your team member are facing. This turns the meeting into a useful working session with really useful outputs. Many managers ask their team members to bring problems and a solution with them to each one on one meeting. This forces a team member to problem solve and think through a solution. You the manager can give feedback, input and coach the team member to improving the solution if needed. By solving problems in the meeting, you're reducing the workload and working together, which further helps build your professional relationship. My seventh tip for one to one meetings is to review the team members progress on achieving their objectives. Flex how often you do this based on the individual and how they best work. You know, quarterly for self starters through to every other week for those that need additional help worked well for me. This is a great way to set out and maintain your expectations for the team member. By reviewing objectives, you are keeping yourself and the team members focused on achieving the objectives, and you can hold the team members to account. When you have regular checkups on progress, it is much easier to gauge the level of support each person needs. And this also gives you a great opportunity to feedback on the individual's performance so they know where they stand. Make sure you prepare specific examples to discuss and explain why you think this is an example of good performance or performance that needs improving. My eighth tip is to actively listen during the meeting itself. Learn to speak less than your team member during the one on to one meetings. A good tip is to wait at least a few seconds before you start speaking to make sure the other person has finished speaking rather than just pausing. It is amazing what you can find out by actively listening to what is being said. But actively listening, you're also reaffirming that your team member and what they're saying is important to you. This demonstrates your appreciation of them. Make sure you ask about how they're feeling, gauge their morale, and if they're happy at work. And also ask about their workload and the challenges that they're facing. Find out what they're thinking and feeling. My ninth and last tip for your one on one meetings is to ensure that you both leave the meeting with clear action items. Leave the meeting with action items, setting out what is going to be done by whom and by when creates valuable output from your time together. I suggest that you take notes during the meeting of all the key points raised and agreed upon. This allows you to follow up after the meeting to check that if your team member needs any additional support and to check, of course, on their progress. And as promised, on screen now are different sets of potential agenda items that you could include in your one to one meeting agendas. As mentioned in tip four, some people find a set structure useful, whereas others work better with a flexible agenda identifying the topics to discuss for each meeting. Work out what is best for you both to get the most out of your one on one meetings. So in summary, how to run effective one to one meetings at work is such an important skill to develop. If you want to develop your team members, keep them happy and deliver as individuals and as a team within the business. Do try different approaches to find out what works best for you and each member of your team. Flex the meeting style to each team member. Enjoy making your one to one meetings even more effective. And if you have any thoughts or suggestions of what works well for you, then please leave a comment below. I'd love to hear from you. And as always, if you like this video, please hit the thumbs up button below and subscribe. Thanks for watching and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.