Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Leader by Design podcast. Today, I'll give you a simple three question framework for your one on ones that will help you lead a genuine conversation with clear performance outcomes. So stay tuned.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: G'day. I'm Brendan Rogers. I've built a thriving business creating confident leaders who achieved the results they always wanted, along with the lifestyle they always dreamed of. How do you become a confident leader? By focusing on three key areas, developing character, building confidence, and creating connection. This is the leader by design podcast.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in. I'm your host, Brendan Rogers. Now, before we dive into the episode, if you haven't listened to the previous one, episode three, titled one on one meetings, are a game changer. Go and check it out. Now, that episode is prerequisite listening to make sure you get the most out of this episode. If you don't listen episode three before this one, it'll be like trying to read when you haven't even learned the Alphabet. So go on, go and listen. Episode three. Now, I promised I'll still be here when you get back. If you don't, you're not only cheating yourself, you're cheating the people who you're privileged to lead.
Okay, if you already listen episode three, let's get into it. If you went back and listened to it before coming back to this episode, thank you and well done. You're already demonstrating leadership by wanting to be the best that you can be. In this episode, I'm going to build on the foundation of Oneonone meetings, being the leadership game changer to actually give you some skills to start to play the game well. These skills are a simple but unbelievably effective three question framework to straightaway raise your game in oneonone meetings. Now, I need to clarify that the specific type of Oneonone meeting I'm focused on in this episode is the performance Oneonone. This is where every week, or worst case scenario, every two weeks, you, as the leader, sit down with each of your direct reports to drive clear performance outcomes. Done well, this type of meeting should take no more than 20 minutes per employee. Now, in a future episode, I'll unpack in more detail the different types of oneonone meetings. And if you're looking to learn our complete A to Z system on how to use oneonone meetings to maximize the performance of your employees and your business, you can join our waitlist for the master Oneonone meetings program at leaderbydesign au waitlist. Before we dive into the three questions, I want to talk about the power of structure a lot of people think structure is hindering and hampers creativity. In my experience, it's the complete opposite. Structure helps creativity thrive. Now, I'm no artist, but I know that even artists who are highly creative people have structure to their environment. They often have a certain place where they like to create. They have their equipment set out and any materials they need in specific places. Why? Because they know that if they're in the creative flow, the last thing they want to be doing is losing the flow because they can't find brushes, paints, tools, or just general equipment. They need to keep focused and creating. They may even have a structured routine they follow that actually helps them get into the creative mindset they need to create. You might hear them say I hate structure, but they have it all around them in order to focus on being creative. What I've also noticed over the years is that people who say they operate better without structure, and if they truly don't have structure to what they do, they just don't get much done. They deliver very little, if anything at all, and are often frustrated and wonder why they're unsuccessful in what they do now. I love football. Think about Lino Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Both had structure to everything that they did. That structure allowed them to be the two best footballers in the world and arguably two of the most creative footballer players of all time. The power of structure when I look at my own work, whether I'm coaching clients, running a leadership team, off site or workshop, doing a podcast, blog, social media content, or preparing for a speaking gig, I've got structure around how I do them all. The structure allows me to be creative. I know the facts. For me, a lack of structure increases my stress levels, I feel less motivated and it can reduce my confidence. When I start to get like this, I become inefficient. The quality of my work reduces and I've even missed deadlines for clients. I just know without structure, I'm not showing up as my best creative self. Now let's apply the power of structure to your oneonone performance focused meeting. From Gallup research covering many thousands of leaders, they found on average that almost 43% of oneonone meetings are rescheduled and nearly 30% are canceled. The big question is, why do so many get rescheduled or canceled? Probably the most obvious answer is that leaders are prioritizing other things. My research indicates the reasons are varied without any clear picture. When this happens, I just look at my own firsthand experience. And for me, whenever I rescheduled or cancel a meeting, it almost always came down to two things. Firstly, I wasn't clear in my own mind of the intent of the meeting. And secondly, if I wasn't clear on the intent, I definitely didn't have a clear structure to guide the meeting. So what was the outcome? I'd reschedule to give me more time to get clear on the intent and structure. Or if it could wait until the next booked meeting time, I'd cancel it. And canceling would give me more time to get clear on the intent and structure before next time. When I unpack this with other business owners, overwhelmingly their reasons have boiled down to something very similar. Now back to the simple answer. Leaders are prioritizing other things. Well, the truth is, it's always easy to prioritize something else when you aren't clear on the intent of doing something and you don't have a structure to give you the confidence to do it well. So as far as Oneonone performance meetings go, the clear intent is to drive performance in your employees. And if you also have a simple structure that you can rinse and repeat week in, week out, you'll be more confident and you'll prioritize your oneonone performance meetings, assuming you understand how valuable they are. And given you've listened to episode three, you know the value. Let me give you a real life example. A past client of mine who I worked with for a couple of years was feeling stressed, frustrated and disconnected from the team. Results were inconsistent and he wasn't clear on how his team was spending their time and what activities they were focusing on. He was busy as anything, but was resenting work and the team because of the situation. He also thought the only answer was to bring everybody back into the office immediately. We introduced weekly oneonone performance meetings with the exact structure I'm going to share with you. Within a month, his stress levels and frustration had reduced significantly. He felt more connected to the team and he had a much clearer picture of what each employee was focused on for the week and how they were allocating their time. He became less resentful and more appreciative of his employees as they worked together to prioritize the workload, and he found it much easier to delegate as he created deliberate time each week to meet with each employee. The simple act of implementing this framework gave him confidence to lead and the confidence that he was back on track. The financial results took a few more months to stabilize, but it happened. There were definitely ups and downs in the journey, and a couple of employees didn't meet performance expectations so they found other places to spend their time talking about ups and downs. In our next episode, I'll share with you the top five mistakes leaders make with Oneonone meetings. You won't want to miss that one. Structure brings focus, efficiency, quality, confidence, and ultimately leads to people getting stuff done. If you've got a story or a question about one on one meetings, send me a DM and we may mention it in a future episode. Now let's introduce the simple three question framework you can use to give structure to your one on one performance meetings and to drive employee performance. The first question is what have you achieved in your role in the last seven days? Now, if you're doing your one on ones weekly, this question makes perfect sense. If you're starting with fortnightly, then just adjust the question to what have you achieved in your role in the last 14 days? For the sake of this podcast and the ideal scenario, I'll relate everything to doing weekly oneonones. So the question what have you achieved in your role in the last seven days? Is very simple on the surface, but there's an important undertone. Starting the meeting with the wins gives the leader and the employee the chance to reflect on what's been achieved and gives the leader the opportunity to acknowledge their contribution to the team. This combined sets a positive feel for the rest of the meeting. I've also found over the years, starting positively helps build energy and momentum in the meeting and towards the week ahead, and ultimately that helps build everyone's confidence to do well in their role. The most common question I get asked is how many achievements a person should have. Well, I've always liked the power of three. The idea isn't for your employee to start listing off as many tasks as they can think of. The focus is for them to share what they consider to be their three most important and impactful achievements in the last week. As I said, I've always loved the power of three. But when I found out there's a psychological phenomenon related to the primacy and recency effect, where the simplicity of three items makes the information easier to process and remember, I now love the power of three in saying that there's also power in focusing on just one thing at a time. There's a much higher chance of the task being done and being done well. If a leader in their team has no experience doing one on ones, I always recommend to them to just start with one thing the employee shares. Remember, the intent of the Oneonone performance meeting is to drive employee performance. Being consistent with doing your one on ones and following a structure provides the foundation for progress. Normally, within a month, I find the leader is ready to step up to the power of three. As we move to the second question, the importance of the power of three or the power of one will become more obvious. Why? Because what's agreed in question two should form the basis of question one in next week's oneonone. This is where ongoing accountability to agreed performance happens. So the second question is, what are you focused on achieving in your role in the next seven days? This is the question that gets both the employee and the leader looking forward. Make sure you set and agree clear attainable goals for the period. The conversation around answering this question is crucial for prioritization. As the leader, you must help your employee understand where to focus their energy most effectively in the next seven days. To be clear, the single most important point to note for the leader with this part of the meeting is that whatever's agreed as key tasks to achieve, it's the leader's opportunity to ensure the employee's individual focus is aligned with the broader goals of the team and business. If the leader knows there's another activity or activities that the employee should focus on, ask the question. It might be saying something along the lines of I know you're part of the team improving the sales process. Is there something related to that which should be one of your focus areas for the week ahead? Other times it might be the leader giving a directive, something like I need you to complete the sales report and send it to me by the end of the week. I need this to be one of your key achievements for the week. Either way, during this part of the meeting is the time where the leader has the opportunity to ensure the employee's individual focus is aligned with the broader goals of the team and the business. If you don't take the opportunity, the reality is you'll be paying one of your employees to focus on things that you know aren't providing the best value for the business. Whatever the one or three activities are agreed as the focus for the week, I always suggest to the leader to get the employee to write them down and email them through to the leader. This should be done within five to ten minutes of the meeting. Finishing the process of writing it down and emailing it through creates a level of commitment from the employee. As I said earlier, whatever one or three key tasks are agreed during this part of the meeting, the check of them being done, which creates a process of accountability, comes when the employee confirms the following week that the one or three key tasks have been achieved in the last seven days if they've been done. Excellent move to question two. If any haven't been done, take the time to ask what happened and what will stop you achieving it by the end of this next week. The focus is to remove any barriers for something not being done. Now feel free to share your disappointment if you feel it's needed and make it clear that you expect it to be done in the next seven days. If you want to learn more about having difficult conversations in oneonone meetings, make sure you join our waitlist for the Master Oneonone meetings program at Leaderbydesign au waitlist now let's move to the last question. A key leadership principle of mine is helping employees succeed. This is the premise for question three. What help do you need from me to achieve your goals in the next seven days? This question helps demonstrate your role as a supportive leader. It opens the door for your employees to ask for any resources, guidance or support they need to succeed in their role. The single most important point for the leader to understand here is that it's your job to remove any obstacles and to ensure your employee has what they need to succeed. For this one, I prefer the leader to write down whatever's been agreed and when you receive the email from your employee with the key focus activities, just reply with the agreed points for any help needed. Again, the process of writing it down and emailing it through creates a level of commitment from the leader. Success is a two way street. If both the leader and the employee do their part in the process, success is inevitable. Implementing this framework into your Oneonone performance meetings will transform them. You'll see your employee relationships grow stronger. The trust between you will build and employee performance will improve within the first month. Make sure you create a quiet and safe environment for each of your oneonone meetings and ensure all agreed actions are followed up. Your commitment to follow up and lead with accountability is the key to long term, sustained success for you, your employees and your business.
All this can be achieved through your Oneonone performance meetings. Be clear on the intent to drive employee performance and use the simple three question framework to guide each meeting. Before we wrap up, let's reflect on how the three question framework not only enhances your Oneonone performance meetings, but also significantly contributes to your journey as a confident leader. Applying this framework religiously develops your character through listening, showing empathy and supporting your employees success. It builds your confidence in managing and guiding your team, coaching them and developing accountability and the regular focus time each week creates connection with each employee you lead. This holistic development across character, competence and connection is essential for becoming a leader by design. So what action should you take from this episode? Well, here's a quick checklist you can use to put this into practice. Firstly, meet with your employees and share how you're introducing one on ones end, the three question framework you'll use and allow some time for Q and A. Secondly, book weekly or fortnightly 20 minutes slots in your calendar with each of your employees. Thirdly, have them and use the three question framework.
Next, be consistent. Don't cancel or reschedule unless some major life event happens.
Next step spend five minutes reflecting after each meeting and write down what you did well and where you can improve. Next step implement one improvement each week and the final step is repeat steps three to six in line with your weekly or fortnightly meeting cadence, and I guarantee you'll be amazed with the results. The beauty of this three question framework lies in its simplicity and effectiveness. It will revolutionize the way you have oneonone performance meetings. Now I never get tired of hearing how this framework has worked for others, so send me a DM and share your story. And if you're looking to learn our complete A to Z system on how to use one on one meetings to maximize the performance of your employees and deliver consistent results, join our waitlist for the Master 101 Meetings program at Leaderbydesign au waitlist and if you love the show, please leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Just by doing that, you can help other business owners as the algorithm will push the show out to more people. And in our next episode, I'll share with you the top five mistakes leaders make with one on one meetings. You won't want to miss that one. Until then, always remember, leaders aren't born. They're designed by developing character, building competence, and creating connection. Be a leader by design today in.
[00:18:04] Speaker C: The hybrid working world, I've seen too many business owners and their businesses suffer because of poor performing employees, leading to below average results. If you want to improve your employees performance to deliver consistent results for your business, you have to master Oneonone meetings. The doors to our Master Oneonone meetings training program are opening soon. I'll teach you how to improve employee performance and deliver consistent results using oneonone meetings. To be one of the first people notified when the doors open, go to leaderbydesign au waitlist. Don't wait, sign up now.
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