Once you add the first member to your team, your biggest issue from that point going forward is communication. This program is about solving that problem because once you have someone working with you or for you, all issues become people issues. Everything is about communicating where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, and understanding one another when things don’t go exactly as planned.
Transcript
Welcome to this program on one-to-one meetings. I am Lee Rosen. Once you add the first member to your team, your biggest issue from that point going forward is communication. This program is about solving that problem. Because once you have someone working with you or for you, all issues become people issues. Everything is about communicating where you’re going, how you’re going to get there, and understanding one another when things don’t go exactly as planned. Communication is the issue.
You can tell that there are communication issues, people issues in a law firm. When you see conflict, that’s an obvious indicator of a problem. When people are butting heads with other people. But you can also tell that there is a communication problem, that there are people problems in a law firm when you see lagging growth, when you see disorganization, when you see upset, unsatisfied clients.
And most obviously, you can see these communication problems when you see turnover of employees. That’s the big red flag. That’s the big sign. When you see that people are coming and going, what’s happening is that progress is slowing dramatically. It’s like the business is hitting the reset button over and over with every person leaving and with every new hire. It makes it very difficult to grow. It makes it very difficult to layer progress on top of progress when you have this turnover problem.
It’s hard to move from a few hundred thousand dollars in revenue, to a million dollars in revenue, to several million dollars in revenue if you’re constantly starting over with new people. And that’s what one-to-one meetings are all about. One-to-one meetings are an approach that you can take to head off communication problems. They solve the relationship problems, the people problems, the communication problems, before they even happen.
One-to-one meetings are exactly what they sound like. They are one team member, the manager, sitting with another team member, the employee, and talking things through. They are scheduled. They take place at regular frequent intervals. They are the systematic approach to preventing and eliminating the problems that I just described. They work.
In fact, it’s hard to imagine, especially once you’ve adopted and implemented this approach to communication, that there’s any other system that can solve the people problem. It’s hard to imagine that anything works better at helping people get along and work well together other than sitting down and talking. And the reason it’s hard to imagine anything better is that there’s really not anything better. Talking one-to-one solves the communication problem. It helps you work through the people problem. It brings people together, so that they can work together, so that they can move together toward the goals and objectives and grow the business.
Now, you may imagine that you’re already communicating well. Lawyers look at me and they say, “We talk all the time.” That’s what I hear when I pitch this idea. But when we drill down, we discover that the interactions between manager and employee are often haphazard. They happen when the manager deems it necessary, or sometimes when the employee gets really desperate. They don’t happen regularly or frequently. They happen sporadically, intermittently, on the way here, right before this deadline, on the way there from the car. They don’t open the door to input and interaction. More often than not, the, “We talk all the time,” thing really means we communicate in rushed ways, in public ways, and nearly always about the urgent task at hand. “We talk all the time,” is not in fact something that most lawyers and most law firms can say about the people that that they’re working with and have it mean what I intend for you to understand when I talk about one-to-one meetings.
So in this course, we’ll talk through the details. The ins and outs of a systematic, documentable, repeatable system for making this communication happen on a regular, and frequent, and effective basis. We’ll talk through the step-by-step, the actions you need to take to implement these meetings with your team and then to keep them moving forward. To keep going, to sustain this over time, indefinitely, forever. We’ll talk about the why and the how of one-to-ones. We’ll talk about the basics of where, and when, and the agenda. We’ll talk about kicking this off in your firm and the resistance you may encounter. And we’ll cover some do’s and don’ts, and we’ll talk about the words that you can use to conduct powerfully effective one-to-ones. And then finally, we’ll talk about what you should do after you meet with your people and how you can keep this system going forever.
Once you have one-to-ones underway in your life firm, I promise you’ll find yourself happier with your work. Getting along with your people, solving these people problems, solving these communication problems has that kind of impact. You’ll also find that your people are happier with you.
Most importantly from a business standpoint, you’ll find your business running more smoothly. You’ll discover that the business is moving forward, that it’s overcoming obstacles, and that it’s making progress that is layered upon progress. This is how small businesses get bigger. This is how businesses get stronger. This is a key piece of what will enable you to achieve your vision. Let’s get started.
Why should you begin conducting one-to-one meetings with your team? I think I made the case pretty strongly in the introduction to this program. Communication is essential if you’re going to solve the people problems in your law firm. These meetings are about building relationships and building trust before you need it. You don’t want to only be meeting with your team when big and huge, and bad things are happening. That’s no way to build a successful functional team. One-to-ones build the relationships, build the trust before the bad things happen. So that when something goes wrong, you have a team that can work together. You have people that understand one another and know what it takes to get things done. So that you can deal with those difficult situations. You’ve built trust. And what ultimately happens when you are taking steps in advance to build those relationships and to build trust is that fewer, dramatically fewer of those bad things happen in the first place. That’s the beauty of this. So you want this process in place so that you are building trust, so that you are building those relationships long before anything goes off the rails.
These regularly scheduled meetings, these one-to-one conversations are the meeting of the employee. These are the employees meeting, not the manager’s meeting. These meetings are for addressing and dealing with all of the pressing issues, all of the brilliant ideas or frustrations that may not fit into the format of email, or bumping into someone in the hall, or status reports, or case status meetings. These meetings are a chance for a manager and the employee to actually connect and communicate about the things that are important to each of them, but may not be found in the crisis of the moment. These are the bigger picture, longer term issues that need to be addressed. And at its core, this is the employee’s meeting. This is who it belongs to. This is who owns it. If you can see it in that way as the employee’s meeting, not as the manager’s meeting, then you are at the core of what you need for the meeting to begin building trust.
It’s easy for it to feel like these meetings are not critically important. Because we spend our days rushing from urgent task and project to urgent task and project. And often in an odd sort of way, the bigger picture issues, the longer term issues feel small. They don’t feel like they’re critical because they’re not urgent. They’re not important in this moment. They’re just important for the overall success of the business.
And because of that, when we’re rushing from thing to thing, it’s easy to skip the meetings. It’s easy to put them on the back burner. But it’s critical that you not let that happen because the power of these regular one-to-one meetings is that they are ongoing communication that happens in small doses. It’s a chance, an opportunity in a low pressure environment for there to be feedback and communication on everything from the business goals, to personal goals, to the overall big picture and vision. And it’s that little low-key, ongoing communication that enables the business to pull everybody into alignment and to move toward achieving those goals and that vision. So while it may not always feel like these meetings are essential in the moment, they are absolutely essential for the long-term success of the firm.
These meetings will have a powerful impact. They’re going to allow for ongoing improvement of the employee. They’re going to be an opportunity for manager and employee to catch things, to find things that are going on that are not quite right. Whether it’s about the relationship, or the manager’s performance, or the employee’s performance. They allow the two people to come together and catch the small problems before they become bigger problems. They allow the two people to come together and recognize the things that are working well and to take those things to the next level. To give praise and feedback, and to have both parties to the meeting articulate their needs, and goals, and desires. The bad things that we worry about are dramatically, dramatically less frequent when your team is in alignment, is connecting regularly, and is building these relationships.
When you spend time together with your team in a one-to-one meeting, talking to each person individually, it’s very difficult not to build trust. You’re going to spend time talking, being interested in one another, hearing the questions, hearing the complaints, coming to understand the employee’s goals, and personal life, and fears, and ambitions. And what happens is that you learn about that other person. And the listening, the paying attention, the coming to understand builds trust. And what goes on is that each party to these meetings, the manager and the employee over time gets more interested and more invested in the success of the other. You’re going to find that these meetings change you. They will have a dramatic impact on the employee, but they will also change you. And they will help you to be more successful at helping the employee and vice versa.
So in this program, I’m going to give you some very specific information about setting up and conducting these meetings. But what I’m hoping to do is to provide you with options, not a prescription that you must follow. I don’t want to dictate for you meeting length or specific agenda items. I want to give you ideas so that you can take what you’re learning in this course and find the approach, the techniques, the system that feels right for you and for your law firm. And so that it fits well within the culture of your business.
Each person, each manager, and each employee, but each manager needs to find their own specific approach to making one-to-ones work for them. So don’t view any of what follows as a strict prescription, view it as guidelines, and take it, and turn it into something that works for you.
What is happening in a one-to-one meeting? The primary focus of the meeting is the team member. Not you, not your work, not your issues. The primary focus is on the team member. That’s unusual for a business work meeting. It’s typical that when we call a meeting, we have an agenda of issues, of items, of problems that we want to solve. And this meeting is not like that. The primary focus is on the team member. Not you, not your work, not your issues.
So what is happening in the meeting? What is going on? Well, communication is what is going on. This meeting can have many components. It does have many opportunities for building trust, building relationship, building communication. It will be a forum for discussion, for problem solving, for conflict resolution, and for planning that will leave the team member, the employee feeling listened to and empowered to take action.
It will be a routine time for discussing the work that is going on, and to make agreements for work that will be done in the future. It’s a time for prioritizing and discussing issues that have arisen. It’s an opportunity to exchange substantive information, to clarify processes and procedures, and to talk about and follow up on things related to the work that’s underway.
It can be a coaching session that helps individuals to learn, to grow, and to be more productive. It can be an opportunity for you and your employee to work together to achieve the objectives of the employee. Whether those objectives are personal or professional. And this can be a vehicle for you helping every person in the company to overcome issues that may be getting in their way. Those issues might be conflict or personality clashes, people issues at work. Or, they may be issues at home that are blocking the employee’s progress.
What you’re doing is helping every individual that works with you to grow, and to develop, and to resolve issues and concerns that are getting in the way so that together, you can move from where you are now to where it is that you’d like to go. This is your chance to come together, to communicate, to build relationship, to get on the same page so that that vision that you have created for your business or your piece of this business is able to come to fruition. So you’re spending your time communicating, working through everything that needs to be worked through. Getting the problems out of the way, and understanding together what the solutions are for achieving that vision.
The basics of a one-to-one meeting are pretty simple. We’ll work through them one at a time. This is every manager in your law firm and every employee. As you launch this kind of program, the objective is to have every manager talking to every employee. You don’t want anyone left out of this process. And you want these meetings to be regularly scheduled. This needs to be something that happens. Now, we all know that life gets in the way. This needs to be one of those very high priorities. And if a meeting gets bumped, it needs to be rescheduled. But these meetings need to be regularly scheduled. We’ll talk about frequency as we go forward. And they need to never be missed. They need to be that important. Obviously, in a busy environment with litigation or whatever it is, you have outside deadlines being imposed. You’re going to do some rescheduling, but don’t miss these meetings. Make them happen.
I like to, when we talk about not missing things, like no one ever leaves the child at school overnight. We always get there at some point and pick the kid up. Same thing here. These meetings need to be that important, and they need to never be missed. As we talk further, I think you’ll find that that will be less and less of a problem. But in the beginning, it is a problem. And they need to not be missed.
The primary focus of these meetings is on the team member, on the employee. Remember that. And it is critical that notes be taken, and that follow-up be done if follow-up is required as a result of the meeting. So regularly scheduled, never missed. Primary focus is on the team member. And there must be notes taken and follow-up. The follow-up is critical.
So how often should these meetings take place? There’s no prescription. I have some suggestions, but you have to do what works well for your firm and your culture. For the most part, my prescription is that most managers should meet weekly with each team member. Once a week. Some managers, but not very many will find that they can do this biweekly. A few managers will find that this works well monthly. But in my experience, especially in the beginning, but I think forever, most managers really ought to be doing weekly meetings at a regular time. And it should not be missed.
Where should the one-to-one meetings be held? That’s a surprisingly important question to answer. I think we talk about a meeting. And it seems like well, we’ll do it wherever. No big deal. But when I don’t talk to people about this, what I find is that these meetings end up happening in less than ideal circumstances. So let’s talk this through.
First of all, these meetings, these one-to-ones should not take place in public. These are not meetings that should happen in front of other people. Absolute privacy is not necessary. We’ll talk about that. But the key here is that it not be done in a public place. This is not something that ought to happen in a cubicle area where you’re speaking over other people and everybody can hear everything. That’s not okay. It needs to not be in public.
Now if you have an office, then that’s where you do it. You go into the office, you sit down, you close the door. That’s the gold standard. Face to face, one-to-one, in the office, door closed. Not everybody has an office. If you’re in an open space, you have a cubicle, that’s fine. Do it there, just do it with sensitivity. You know that you can have conversations in that public space without everybody hearing it. Use that approach. It’s less than ideal. But if that’s what you’ve got, that’s what you’ve got.
Now, I’ve talked to lawyers who are in an open space plan. And instead of doing it at their desk, they’ll go do it at a Starbucks. And again, that’s a public place. It’s not private. But it doesn’t have to be a private space. You can have a quiet, confidential conversation in a Starbucks if that’s what you choose to do.
You should probably not schedule a conference room. That that tends to take on an air of formality. I think you are better off doing it at your office, doing it at your desk, or going out and doing it at Starbucks. The conference room changes it a little bit.
Now, can you do it over the phone or on a video conference? Sure. In the world we live in today, it’s fairly common for people to work remotely. Go for it. A video conference is great. In fact, in a lot of ways, a video conference really gives you incredible focus on the other person. A phone is fine too. But watch out for interruptions. Make sure that if you’re doing it by phone or if you’re doing it by video conference, that that doesn’t make it easier for people to interrupt you and to disturb the meeting. This meeting needs to be uninterrupted if that’s possible. And you want to be careful to plan for that.
If you’re working remotely together, these meetings will likely result in you needing to share some documents or images for one reason or another. So if that’s the plan, be sure to create some sort of shared document space so that you can pass that information back and forth as part of this process. But that gives you some ideas. The bottom line here is that it needs to not be in public, but absolute privacy is not essential. But think that through and figure out a way that you can do this, that you can repeat over time so that you’re not doing this in front of other people, and that you are having at least some element of privacy in the process. That’s important.
When should you do your one-to-one meetings? It doesn’t really matter what time of day or what day of the week you have these meetings. The key is that it’s a regularly scheduled meeting and that you always keep the appointment. This is fairly obvious, but I want to say it anyway. When you go to your team member and say, “I need to reschedule this meeting,” or, “I need to cancel this meeting.” I think that’s probably worse. What is your team member going to say? Well, they’re going to say, “Okay, not a problem.” And they’re going to be as happy as they can be about it. I mean, some folks will even act like it’s a good idea that you’re canceling.
But the reality is that the person that you are blowing off. I know that sounds harsh, but I think that’s what that person on the other end of the conversation is receiving. They are hearing that the meeting is being blown off. And what they are understanding when you do that is that you have valued something else over the time that you had scheduled with them. And you are prioritizing the other thing over the employee. If it has to be that way, it has to be that way. But do not be oblivious to the fact that you just sent that message to the person with whom you were trying to build relationship and trust. You are damaging that relationship and trust. So understand that that’s the impact you’re having.
So if it is going to happen anyway, if you absolutely must miss a meeting, then try to reschedule it. Try to reschedule it for the same day, and be apologetic. Make it clear that you understand that the meeting is a big deal and that this is important to you. And that you value this time, and this meeting, and this discussion. And do everything in your power to get the timing back on track.
So when should you schedule these meetings? It does not matter as long as the way you schedule them makes it clear that this is important, that this is valuable, that this person matters. You don’t want this to be done on an ad hoc basis. I talked to a lot of lawyers that say, “Well, I don’t really schedule the meetings. We squeeze them in between other things.” Well, the other things are scheduled. And that tells you that they are important. If these meetings are not scheduled, that sends the opposite message. So don’t do this on a random basis. Schedule them, make it consistent, work toward always making them happen. You don’t want it to feel like something that is not important. That’s exactly the opposite of what you are trying to achieve.
These meetings need to happen. They need to not be canceled if at all possible. Let them rise to that level of importance. I think you get the idea, the meetings matter. And if you’re going to not do them, if you’re going to cancel, if you’re going to reschedule, acknowledge that they matter. That’s what you need to do. And the apology that you deliver is important. It matters. People understand what you’re saying. If you have to do it, treat the cancellation with that reverence so that everybody understands that you’re missing something that matters to you too.
Let’s talk about resistance to one-to-one meetings. And I want to talk about resistance from you as well as resistance from your team members. I have advocated for these meetings for a long time, and I’ve encountered a fair amount of resistance from lawyers with whom I have been consulting. Let’s talk about that for a minute.
First of all, this is a big deal. This is a time-consuming process. Let’s assume we’re going to talk about the length of the meetings here shortly, but let’s assume that you invest an hour with each employee each week. And the meetings may not last an hour. But between your note taking and follow up. On average let’s say it takes you an hour, could be longer, depending on how you structure it. And let’s say you have 10 employees. Well, that’s 10 hours a week. That’s a lot of time. Realistically with everything else that’s going on in your day, if you have 10 employees and you do one-to-one once a week which is what I think is useful, you’re taking more or less two days out of your work week. If you spend five hours on Monday and five hours on Tuesday, and then deal with the upset phone calls or whatever else you’re dealing with in between, you’ve lost two days of your week. I say lost. You could argue that you’ve invested two days in your week.
And I get it. I hear you. When you imagine your week and think, “How will I deal with two days going away? How am I going to manage that? What am I going to do about that? How will I replace the work that’s being done during that time?” Well, what I tell people and what I’ve learned over time is that you don’t have to do these meetings. You can decide that this is not the way you want to spend this time. But understand that you are also deciding that your business will not grow. These meetings are that important. These meetings are the way you bring your people together. This is the way you solve communication problems. It’s the way you solve people problems. It’s the way you layer progress on top of progress so that you’re not dealing with turnover, and training, and all of that hassle and expense. And what is really a setback when you don’t have this system in place. So these meetings enable you to grow. So yes, it’s time-consuming. But it is also the path to building the vision that you have created.
So how do you find the time? How do you make this work? Well, there are some things you should know that I have learned from doing these meetings from experience. And I want you to take advantage of some of these insights. Because what you will find is that ultimately, one-to-one meetings are time savers. If you will launch the program, if you will do this, if you will stick to it, then these one-to-one meetings will save you time, not cost you time.
So first of all, here’s how they save you time. They cut down dramatically on daily interruptions. Once your team understands that they’re going to be sitting down with you, that they will have your undivided attention once a week, you will get significantly fewer quick questions. There will be fewer people standing outside your door, fewer people jumping on you when you’re walking to your car, or trying to get you to get off the phone when you’re in the middle of an important call. You will get fewer emails about pushing you, or reminding you, or asking you about trivial things. Those things will get saved up for these one-to-one meetings. That’s the first way that saves you time.
The other thing that happens is that you save a huge amount of time by eliminating the turnover. It is very difficult to calculate the cost of hiring and retraining these folks that you are having to deal with because of the turnover that you’re experiencing, because you lack the communication and failed to build in advance the relationship and trust that would slow or stop that turnover.
And finally, these meetings save you time because you avert disasters. Now some of those disasters are things like employee revolt over a personnel policy. Because you’re more connected to people, you understand and deal with those issues before they get blown out of proportion. But more significantly, by having a team that works well together and that moves in the right direction together toward the goals, you eliminate the disasters that come from poorly managed clients. You eliminate the disasters that come from failures of your service delivery system. By having a team that works well together, you save huge amounts of time by not having the client meltdowns that you would have otherwise had.
So these meetings feel in the beginning like a huge time suck. Over time, what happens is that these meetings become a huge time saver. They truly end up saving dramatic amounts of time in ways that you don’t necessarily expect at the outset. What I have found is that our team as a result of the building of trust and relationship through this process is able to make much better decisions on their own without the input of the manager. So that the manager does not have to be involved in all of the detail and all of the issues that they were involved with before. This is a time saver, not a time suck. In the beginning, it won’t feel that way. In the end, you’ll wonder how you lived without it.
How long should these meetings go? How long should a one-to-one last? I’m going to give you some different ideas for possibilities. But I will tell you that I have read and consulted with quite a few folks that have these meetings happen in their businesses. And the fact is in one form or another, these happen in most every successful business. There is no exact number here, but it’s useful to have some guidance, some guidelines. I think over time, what happens is that the time for these meetings evolves a little bit by employee. There are some folks who just need more time in order to build a relationship and trust. And there are some folks who need less time. I think you have to be careful about those who need less time, because what happens I think is that you’re not building relationship and trust when there’s not substantial time devoted to the meeting.
But on average, I would say that most folks are committing 30 minutes to these meetings. And they each look at them a little differently. But more or less, I think that the people that are conducting these meetings are looking at 10 minutes of the meeting being focused on the employee. 10 minutes of the meeting being focused on issues that you’re bringing, the manager is bringing to the meeting. And then 10 minutes is focused on the future. On career, on growth and development, on vision issues. But generally, I would say that 30 minutes is the typical time that’s devoted to these meetings.
Now do they sometimes drag in to 40 minutes, 50 minutes? Sure. Especially if something particularly sensitive comes up. In the beginning, a 30 minute meeting feels really fast. It feels short because the whole thing is new. And there might be lots of pent-up stuff to talk about.
Ultimately though, 30 minutes I think for most folks will work out to be a pretty good time limit or time to devote. Shorter than 30 minutes really does not work. It is just too hard to do everything you need to do in 30 minutes. And longer than 30 minutes eventually becomes unnecessary unless there is some sort of disruption, some sort of chaos that is going on in the business or in the personal life of the employee. What you really want to do is take at least 30 minutes devoted to this process, devoted to this meeting, and make it a really valuable 30 minutes for the employee, as well as for you.
Sometimes with a 30 minute meeting, you’ll have an employee walk in who right off the bat says, “I have nothing to say today. We don’t need the time.” And I would encourage you if and when that happens, that you give that employee some space. We’ll talk about some questions you can ask. Sometimes, the employee telling you that they have nothing for today is a sign that they have a lot from you today. That may be a sign that something is really off the rails. It may be that they have nothing for you today because they’re busy sending resumes out. It may be that they have nothing for you today because there is a problem of epic proportion that they don’t want to talk to you about. Give it the 30 minutes. Give them the space. Give it time so that you can see what comes up, what comes percolating to the surface.
If however, you are consistently getting the sense that 30 minutes is too long with your employees, and our experience is that some lawyers will really have very little to say. They will resist, especially in the beginning, having these conversations. I would encourage you to use the idea that they have very little that they want to talk about. That there is now this open space in this 30 minute meeting that we’re going to have one way or another. I would use that as an opportunity to dig deeper, to really begin building that relationship, to use that time to find common ground. What you don’t want to do is let the, “Everything’s okay. Everything’s fine,” statement from your employee go without a response. You want to take it to the next level, and you want to build that relationship. So don’t go shorter, and don’t let the employee take that meeting down shorter than 30 minutes. Everybody loses in that scenario.
When you have that situation though, when you have that especially lawyer who just has nothing to say, and this meeting is over almost before it starts. I would encourage you to pass some ideas, some techniques that you can use to get this moving. And that may be especially important in the beginning. I would prepare, and we’ll talk about preparing for the meetings more. But I want to give you this idea now. I would prepare some topics related to what’s happened in the last week. Especially once you realize who the members of your team are that are resistant to sitting down and talking with you. I would look for things during the week. I would put them on my list, and I would ask about them. Not things they’ve done wrong, possibly things they’ve done right or issues that people are encountering in the law firm. But I would look for things that can spark the conversation.
Another option is to prepare to talk about something that you’re dealing with that’s going badly. To go ahead and talk about something. Whether it’s in your professional life or if it’s in your personal life, something that’s going wrong, and see if you can’t get some discussion going about that. But I would encourage you to have a backup plan so that you can get that conversational ball rolling.
And you will know it when you see it. You will know you’re encountering resistance, you’re getting pushback. The meeting is going short. The meetings are starting off with a, “I don’t really have anything to say. I don’t know why we’re doing this.” And you’re going to get that especially from some lawyers. It’s just the nature of the game. They’re not going to want to go deeper with you. But it’s the only way to start that relationship. Talking about the thing that you’re struggling with may be an important part of what it takes when you express some vulnerability. You may open the door, at least a crack, and be able to use that to get that conversation started.
But to sum up, 30 minutes is probably about the right amount of time ultimately. Don’t let it go shorter than that. Longer will usually become unnecessary. Even with the employees that initially go along, eventually that too will come down into that 30 minutes zone. But ultimately, it’s your call. You’ve got to do what works in your culture for your law firm, and that will help you achieve your vision. So take all of that as some guidance for formulating your own particular plan.
What’s on the agenda for these meetings? How do you structure the actual meeting? This is important. It’s especially important in the beginning. Once you’ve been meeting one-to-one with a lawyer or an employee for years, the agenda will be sort of memorized. Everybody will know how the meeting is going to go and how it will work. But in the beginning, it’s important to have a fairly formal agenda.
And I would encourage you to adopt some sort of agenda and then to ask the employee to take it and run with it. I would let the employee modify the agenda in whatever way works for them. Because again, ultimately, this is employee’s meeting. And you don’t know specifically what they need to talk about, what they want to talk about, and you can’t read their mind. So it doesn’t make sense for you to be the one setting item by item the agenda. You tell them what your objective is and give them some structure and some framework, but let them run with it.
And that sends a powerful message about who owns this meeting and who this meeting is for, and lets them know that you’re serious, and that the time with them is important. So help them understand some structure and use your position to tell them that you want them to run the meeting. Give them the overview, but then really push for them to be the folks who lay out the agenda with specificity.
And I want to give you some ideas here, sample agendas that you can play with. But you can let this evolve in whatever way works for you. One approach is to take the 30 minutes and to divide it. As we discussed earlier, the first 10 minutes is their 10 minutes. The second 10 minutes is your 10 minutes. The third 10 minutes is the future. And just to give you some ideas, their 10 minutes should be whatever they want. It’s not your agenda. It’s what is important to them, because this is how this relationship of trust gets built. So each meeting will be a little bit different, because each of your team members will have a different idea of what they want.
So that could be their 10 minutes. Then your 10 minutes again is whatever you want, whatever work-related issues are important. Whatever it is that you need to talk about. And then finally, that future piece could be app helping them with issues they’re dealing, with career planning, with feedback about whatever it is that is coming up down the road. Might be that this is someone who wants to go to graduate school, that wants advance training, maybe somebody that’s working toward a different position in your law firm and wants help with that. Maybe that they’re working on personal issues, trying to figure out how to invest, or save, or whether they have children. They’re putting together that plan for their future. This is an opportunity for you to be of value and assistance to them in that situation.
Keep in mind that you’re the manager, they’re the employee. Somehow, you’ve managed to get into a position of authority. You’ve learned things, you know things. This is your opportunity for you to pass along some of those lessons. They may not always be interested in taking them and running with them, but you’re able to at least give them some feedback that they can use as they plan their future. So that’s one possibility for the agenda. Their 10 minutes, your 10 minutes, and the future.
Another way to put it together as simply item one is the most important issue we need to discuss today as directed by the employee. Just that number one, the most important issue we need to discuss today. Item number two, issues and topics in the job. Number three, issues and topics for the employee’s growth. Number four, issues and topics for life outside of work. So this is four items on an agenda that are all about the employee and their agenda. That’s another way to set this up.
A third way to set it up. Six items on the agenda. Review the work in progress, identify and resolve work issues, identify and resolve personal development issues, other issues or items to discuss, items to carry over to the next meeting. And then the final item is confirming or scheduling the next employee development meeting. So six items on that agenda.
Every law firm is going to approach this in a slightly different way. And that’s fine. These agendas, if one of these works for you, go for it. If something else works for you, go for that. If you’d rather work this through with the employees, that’s fine too. But it is helpful to have an agenda, a big picture agenda that you can use to give the employee some guidance so that they can take this draft and apply their specific needs and interests to your bigger picture agenda. That will be helpful. That will facilitate this in moving forward. So bottom line on this is that I’m suggesting that you create a format and that you then let the employee apply the specifics to the agenda so that they can then run the meeting.
The components of a one-to-one meeting. The agenda will vary. And as I indicated, I think that there’s a lot of usefulness to having the employee build and develop the agenda based upon the guidance that you provide. But regardless of the actual structure of the meeting, there are a variety of topics that are going to come up in one way or another. And the things that you want to address and work through. And either in this meeting or in subsequent meetings, resolve. So let’s hit some highlights there. And then let’s talk about one issue that is the topic of debate for a lot of lawyers as to whether this ought to be included in the one-to-one meeting or ought to be in a separate discussion.
So key things that need to be dealt with. First of all, number one, you need to identify the key objectives of the employee. You need to know what matters to the employee. The only way you’re going to know if there is an issue here that matters is if the employee either puts it on the agenda and you understand that it’s there, or if you push on that and say, “Hey, what’s our goal? What is your most important thing for today?” You need to push a little bit to find out what those things are. Don’t expect the employee to blurt them out. Maybe eventually they will, but that’s part of the trust-building. So you want to know what is the employee’s objective for this discussion? If there’s anything that really is at the top of the list.
Through the meetings, you want to identify and resolve work issues. That’s number two. Work issues need to be identified and resolved. And that’s fairly obvious. Those things need to be dealt with. Number three, you want to identify and resolve any personal development issues. You want to look at what skills the employee has, and doesn’t have, and what they need to have, where they need to go to get those skills, how you can be helpful to that. You want to be sort of thinking about their ability to do the work, and whether there are things that need to change for them to be better prepared to do that work. So that needs to be a factor here. These meetings are a great opportunity for figuring out ways that you can help the employee to move into the work, or position, or role that they’re seeking to move toward. This is a perfect place to grow the team.
Next on the list here is other issues. These may be issues within the office. These may be issues at home. You want to know if there are other issues and make sure they get discussed. Now again, I’m not giving you an agenda here. We have an agenda, but the agenda is going to encompass these issues. So if there are personal issues that need to be resolved, if there are conflicts between your policies and the employee’s life. For instance, working hours issues or what you can do on the phone at work or can’t do on the phone at work. Are they having problems with the school teacher not being able to place a call to the office when they, the parent need to be talking to the teacher during work hours? Whatever those issues are, this is your chance to get those things identified and resolved.
And the other two sort of basic things you want to make sure happen at these meetings is you want to know if there are new issues that are not resolved, that need to be carried forward to the next meeting. Identify those things. That should be a piece of every meeting. And you want to make sure at the end of every meeting that you schedule the next meeting, if it’s not already on at a standard time.
So those are key things, but then there’s this one final thing that we should discuss. And that is the issue of whether the work itself, the projects, the cases, the tasks ought to be on the agenda at this one-to-one meeting. Some law firms will combine the one-to-one with what they might call a case status meeting, where you’re going through the list of open matters and discussing them. And some law firms turn that into two meetings. Different firms do it differently. A lot of firms will do a one-to-one, but their case status meeting will be an entire group, a practice group or whatever that will meet together. But you need to think through whether you want that kind of discussion to be integrated with a discussion of the kinds of issues that we’re talking about here.
And I think the real struggle is that case status meetings may not, at least in some law firms, be a place where there is a lot of relationship and trust built. And if that’s the case in your firm, then it probably makes sense to separate the case status meeting from the one-to-one. But that’s food for thought. You want to decide how to handle it. If I had my druthers, I would separate the two. I would not do the case status meeting as part of the one-to-one. I would have two separate discussions and have sort of a box drawn around each, and kind of separate them. But that’s just me, and your culture, and your team may dictate otherwise. So give that some thought. But these are some of the main things that you’ll be working through in these meetings. And you’ll be following the agenda that the employee sets, but these are things that will in one form or another, come up during your discussion.
Do’s and don’ts of one-to-ones. Let’s focus right now on the don’ts of these meetings. These are things that you do not want to do. And there are three things that I think are important to talk about. One of them we’re revisiting from a prior section. But I want to give it its due here and have you continue to think about it. So the number one don’t is don’t limit the meeting to status. It is very tempting for these meetings to turn into case status or matter status meetings. It is incredibly tempting. The employee sits down. Knows that if they start talking about the cases, that you will be concerned about, that you’ll be worried about that. And they can draw your focus to it. And that will turn the focus away from them. That is not what you want to let happen with these meetings. You may well talk about the status of matters. As we have discussed in an earlier segment, you might even do that in your one-to-one meeting. But that is a subject of great debate.
So don’t let the meeting turn into a meeting that is purely about status. The one-to-one meeting should be used for much more than that. A good one-to-one should be a time to grow your employee. This is a time to touch base on the big picture stuff that is hard to convey over email. This is not about the details of the matter you’re dealing with at the moment. This is an opportunity to build trust, and to coach your employee through career development issues, and coach them through any other situation that they’re dealing with. To offer your assistance and to be valuable. And if you let the meeting become the case status meeting, none of that will happen. And the gains that we’re talking about making will be lost, and you will not get all the benefits of these meetings. And if you are already thinking, “I’m doing these meetings.” But when you really think about what goes on in the meetings, it’s a case status meeting. Then you’re not doing it. You’re doing something different, and that is not what we’re talking about. So do not limit these meetings to status. They should and can be much more than that.
Second thing not to do is don’t use the one-to-one to offload your own to-do list. It’s very tempting to when an employee is sitting in front of you and you have this long list of things you have to accomplish to give in to the urge to delegate all the stuff on that list and to ask for help. That’s a fine meeting to have, and I’m all for you delegating. But that is not the point of this meeting. Resist the urge to clear off your own to-do list during the one-to-one meeting.
Be cognizant that you’re trying to build a relationship here. You don’t want this meeting to be perceived as a opportunity for you to dump work on the employee. That’s not a relationship builder. The employee is not thinking, “Oh good. I get to walk in there for my ‘one-to-one’ and have a bunch of new stuff dumped on me.” That does not create the right environment for helping an employee to grow and develop, and for helping the two of you to build trust, and to add to the relationship that you’re creating. So don’t use the one-to-one to dump your to-do list onto the employee.
Finally, don’t limit the meeting to a discussion of work. Split the meeting so that you can cover personal issues and work-related issues. The reality is that your employee doesn’t get asked very often in their life in or out of work by someone who is actually paying attention to what they’re saying, how things are going. Here is their chance to have somebody pay full attention to what they’re saying, and to listen hard to the issues that they’re dealing with in their personal life. Sometimes, you don’t need to offer a solution. Sometimes, you don’t need to have the path to organizing things, or straightening things out, or the next step. Sometimes, all the employee needs is for someone to listen. So you want to do that and do it hard.
These meetings give you an opportunity to know more about your employee’s life, their spouses, their children, what’s going on with home life, how their health is, what their goals are, what their ambitions are. This is your chance to take the relationship deeper, to listen hard, and to build trust. When you’re learning about their personal lives, you’re finding the things that you have in common, the things that you share. They were grilling out this weekend. So were you. They went to this concert. You went to that concert, or you’re a fan of that music too. Use this opportunity to really learn about the personal. Don’t make it all about work. So those are some of the don’ts. I think those things will keep you on track as you move forward.
Prepare for your one-to-one. Don’t just show up at the designated time. Don’t just walk in ready to roll without any preparation in advance. We’ve talked extensively now about the agenda, hopefully prepared by the employee with your guidance. But you need to be ready for moving forward with this meeting. You need to have some ideas in your head before you sit down. That’s especially true with the resistant employee who says, “Yeah, I don’t have anything this week.” Well, that’s fine. If that’s going to happen, you need to have some things.
So before the meeting, look at the notes you’ve been taking all week about that employee. This will become easier and routine for you as time goes by, because you’ll be thinking about these meetings. But are there issues that you’ve identified earlier in the week that should be on the agenda? And look at your follow-up notes from the last meeting. That’s the perfect place to start. You want to look and see what issues were carried over? What issues are ongoing? “Hey, how did that doctor visit go?” Or, “Hey, how’s your class that you’re taking at night to help you with this issue or this thing you want to learn?” Follow up on those things.
And have notes about the things that you want to be sure to communicate with this employee. Are there things you’ve been trying to give positive reinforcement about? Are there things that the employee is doing that you’re focused on? Have those notes in front of you so that you are able to communicate those in an organized way when the time comes on the agenda.
Also, this is your chance to communicate firm issues firm developments, firm changes. If something is in the works, this is your chance to talk it through so the employee has a heads-up and knows what’s coming. You want to use this opportunity and you need to be prepared to do that because you’ve prepared in advance.
So all week long, you should be thinking about and adding to your list of things that are going to be important to talk about at this meeting. Think about the positive feedback you can give. Think about any feedback you can give positive or not. And be very cognizant of what has been happening during the week that relates to things that you discussed last week, so that you are prepared to discuss them with the employee this week.
The more preparation you do in advance, the more thinking you’re doing about what’s going to happen in this meeting, the better the meeting will go. But be careful that you don’t walk in so prepared, that seize control of the agenda. Remember, the employee may have something important about which nothing. There may be some issues that you aren’t clued into, whether they’re at work or at home. And you want the employee to drive this agenda. This is your opportunity to build relationship by listening. This is your opportunity to build trust. So don’t take over the meeting. Give the employee the space to drive the meeting forward.
Ask, don’t tell. One of the most powerful and effective things you can do to have great one-to-ones is to listen more. Now, sometimes that’s challenging because some employees won’t talk. They don’t just spontaneously erupt in conversation, especially at the beginning of these meetings when they’re new for your firm. But the goal really is to do a lot more listening than talking. Even the items that are on your agenda, the things that are important to you, those are opportunities for questions. They’re not necessarily opportunities for you to be talking the whole time. So be thinking about asking, not telling.
When you’re listening, when you’re asking, you’re going to gain a whole lot of understanding and insight into what this employee understands, what they don’t understand, what they’re worrying about, what they’re thinking about. and the things that they’re not focused on. You’re going to hear what they’re not paying attention to and what doesn’t matter to them. And that can be as illuminating as anything. You are discovering the gaps. You’re figuring out where the cracks are. And you are only going to do that if you are listening. You really want to be listening instead of talking.
So think about questions that you can ask during the meeting. Have your backup plan if the employee doesn’t have a verbal volcano of discussion. Things you can ask as you move forward. And it can be about business or personal. And you can ask, “What’s on schedule? What’s not on schedule? Are there things that you are worried about, questions you have about your projects? Are there things you feel like I really need to be updated on right now? Are there things you’re stumbling around with? Shifting gears to the personal, tell me about your family. What are you planning for this weekend? What kind of plans do you have?” You can ask bigger picture things. “What are your goals? What are your longterm plans?” You can zoom back in on work issues and say, “What could we have done differently so we wouldn’t have had that problem or that outcome?” Or, “Tell me what you’ve learned on this particular matter that you’re working on.”
And then there’s always the sort of general overriding, “Do you have any good ideas? Any ideas good or not? Any suggestions, any things you think we can improve on?” You’re a good question asker. This is your chance to ask more than you tell. This is your chance to listen to more than you talk. That will move you most efficiently forward on this continuum of building trust. That’s how you will build this relationship. Ask, and then listen. Don’t be the person who’s doing all the talking.
After the one-to-one, there are some things you want to do after the meeting is over. And very briefly, you want to make notes. During the meeting, you may need to jot some things down. But afterwards, you definitely want to jot things down. If you’re doing a handful or more of these meetings each week, they blend together. It’s really hard to remember the details of one meeting from the next. So spend some time taking notes and documenting the issues and the progress on those issues. Really important to have a good record of what goes on in these one-to-one meetings.
The second thing you need to do is to take note of the reaction and mood of the employee. Do that at the end of each meeting, and include it in your notes. How are they looking and feeling? How are they reacting? Or do they seem happy? Do they seem not so happy? How’s the stress level? Just how do they look, things are going? When you’re listening, what sort of reaction are you having to that? What’s the feeling that you’re getting for them? You really want to get a sense of whether this meeting is helping them to move in the right direction. And you will only get that if you take a moment and think about it. Your thoughts on this will guide you going forward, but that will only happen if you stop and do some thinking about what their reaction is to the meeting.
And go back through the meeting in your mind. Go through that agenda and think about when they looked energized and when they looked not really energized, when did they look apathetic? When did they look engaged? When did they look disengaged? What issues caused what reaction? Give that some thought and add it to your notes before you wrap up your time focused on this one-to-one.
And then finally, follow up. And ideally, you’ll follow up on the same day. There will be issues that come up, there will be questions that come up in this meeting that need to be addressed. It could be that the employee mentioned something that needs follow up by you, or maybe you need to call somebody. Do it, go ahead and do it. And let the employee understand that you were listening and that you’re taking care of it. If the employee asks a question, let’s say the employee asks a question about health insurance or the employee is wondering if the firm will reimburse them for this CLE, or this cell phone, or whatever it is, answer that question and do it today if you can possibly do it. It really sends the message that you are paying attention and that you are prioritizing their issues, the employee’s issues. And by doing that, you send a powerful message.
Remember, all of this is about building trust, building that relationship so that you’ll have that communication. And the follow-up is a really impressive way to demonstrate all of that.
Remind yourself to go big picture. These meetings will from time to time become very much about what’s happening right now. There will be a personal issue that dominates, or there will be a personality conflict at work that dominates. Or there will be some event. Maybe you have an employee studying for a specialist exam, or whatever it may be. There will be the issues that tend to dominate these discussions. And they’re very much sort of current issues that need to be focused on and need to be resolved. And that’s perfect. It’s great that the agenda consists of those items.
But you want to remind yourself that every so often, and that might be every three months, every six months, that it’s time to go big picture. To not let this week’s meeting get too bogged down in the issue of the moment. And to think about the longer term goals and the things that are necessary for the employee to get there.
There might be for instance, a good example is educational goals. The employee really wants to learn about a particular thing, or learn a new skill, or whatever it may be. That’s going to require months, maybe years of time to achieve. So there needs to be a meeting every so often, the focus of a one-to-one on those bigger picture things. And if you don’t force yourself to do that, if you don’t force the focus to that direction, it won’t happen. Because the week-to-week issues will dominate.
So I would encourage you in driving the employee to create the agenda to say, “Okay next week, why don’t we not use the regular focus, not the regular agenda? Let’s do the big picture. Let’s talk about where you want to be a year from now, two, three, four, five years from now. And let’s talk about what things we can do together to help you get there.” And put it on your calendar so that you remind the employee in advance that that’s going to be the focus. And then spend your meeting really looking at the longterm, not so much at the short-term issues that are typical of the average meeting. So remind yourself, do it every so often, but cause these meetings to go much bigger picture rather than focusing on the small details.
The kick off. Getting one-to-one started can be awkward. It’s something new that you haven’t been doing before. People stress out about all change. And this change will feel very personal. The idea that in a firm that has not had meetings in a office with the door closed to talk about the employee, when that idea is introduced and now we’re going to do it. That’s a pretty big change. Change is difficult. There’s just no easy way to adopt this without there being at least some awkwardness. It’s the nature of the game.
So I want to give you some suggestions on how to kick this off in your team. It’s something new, it’s something different. And the smoother you can transition from where you are to where you’re going, the less disruption there will be.
So what do you do? Well obviously, this depends on the size of your team. In a much larger team, it’s going to be very different than a very small team if it’s a you, and one assistant or you, and an assistant and an associate. This is going to be a little more straightforward and easy. But if you’re in a larger organization, it’s a little more complicated, more people are involved.
But fundamentally, what I would suggest is that you hold a meeting, and that you explain the process. You explain what you’re doing. And then you more or less immediately get it underway. Change that doesn’t take place for a while, I think it’s even scarier. So you want to go ahead and do it. If you’re going to announce these meetings today, then in the next couple of days, the meetings need to start.
Now if it’s just you and one employee, obviously you can do this in a one-to-one discussion. But if you’ve got a few people, I think that it makes sense to bring everybody together and kick off the one-to-ones and explain what you’re trying to do and how it’s going to work so that there are no surprises. You want to have everybody understand the change that’s coming before it happens. That will result in the least amount of disruption from the change.
So at this meeting, discuss what everyone can expect. Explain that this will be a regularly scheduled meeting, how they will be scheduled, how much time they will take, what the agenda will look like, how the employee will be involved in preparing the agenda. Explain the privacy issues related to the meeting so that no one is surprised about when and where and how the meetings are handled. And you’re basically providing an overview of what a meeting will look like. Give everybody a sense of how this should work. That will improve the likelihood of it working that way dramatically.
And explain the purpose of the meeting. Explain that this is about helping the employee to develop professionally and personally. That you’re going to do that by working together to overcome obstacles and to work things through. And that this meeting is a place to discuss work issues, personal issues, whatever topics the employee thinks are important and need to be on the agenda. And explain the relationship between the personal, and the professional, and the actual work. And explain how you plan to handle that in your law firm. We’ve discussed extensively whether to integrate or divide the actual work with these one-to-one meetings. And you need to explain how that’s going to work in your firm.
And overall, you want to make it clear that this is an opportunity to communicate so that everybody is working together, moving in the same direction, helping one another to achieve their goals. And this is the place that that will happen. So work through the logistics, make sure everybody understands it and is on the same page, and answer any questions. And expect, do not be surprised, expect that you will encounter some resistance and some fear. All change results in some resistance and some fear. Don’t let that throw you off. Expect it. It’s coming. It’s just part of making change in your law firm. And if you have decided, and I hope you have that these meetings are an important path to growth, then you understand that you’re going to have to work through and manage the resistance and the fear that you encounter.
Finally, this kickoff meeting is an excellent opportunity to address the employee reluctance and the responsibility that you’re giving them with respect to setting the agenda. It’s normal for employees to defer to the manager in a meeting. And in most settings, they’re going to be deferential. That’s just the way this tends to work. Even with lawyers, sometimes shockingly.
So you’re going to have to tell your people that you want them to set the agenda. Now again, you’ll give them a framework. You’re not going to make this any harder than it needs to be. But make it clear to them that this time is for them. And in this discussion, give them a good idea of what these meetings are going to look like. Make it clear the types of things that are going to be talked about, what your role is, what their role is, work that through. So if you are asking them to come to the meeting prepared to talk about their goals, and their questions, and discussion of the priorities of the law firm or career development, tell them that that’s the sort of thing the meeting is for and that they should be thinking about those things.
Explain to them what your role is in the meeting, that you’re there to listen and to offer help. Explain so they know what your part is. And make it clear to them if this is the way you’re setting it up that their role is to be the leader in the meeting. That they are there to be the talker. That they are there to be getting the value from the time spent in this meeting. Don’t hide the ball, lay it out for people. Explain the way you see it and the way you think it can be useful to everybody, and make it as explicit as possible.
The more people understand where you’re going and what this is going to look lik, the less fear you will encounter. And therefore, the less resistance you will encounter. So kick it off with a lot of information, a lot of advanced notice, help people understand where we’re going, and then go ahead and get it going. If there is fear, that fear will dissipate quickly once they sit down in the room with you and realize that you actually are interested in what they’re saying, and you are going to listen, and you’re going to be helpful, and you’re going to follow up on the issues that they raise.
Conclusion. Let’s wrap it up. That’s it. We’ve worked through all of the elements of a one-to-one. Now, it’s time to make meetings happen. That’s your assignment. That’s what you need to do. You need to find your way, find your format, find the approach, the agenda, and the style that’s comfortable for you and that fits with your law firm and you culture. And expect that in the beginning, you’ll struggle a little bit to find the time to have these meetings. You’ll struggle a little bit with some resistance from yourself and from some of the players in your law firm when you try to get this started. Expect that. It’s normal, it’s coming.
But before long, you will realize that you’re saving yourself and your team tremendous time. You’re saving yourself from tremendous difficulties, and conflict, and upset, and everything else that keeps you from achieving the goals that you’re trying to achieve. In fact, before long, you’re going to wonder how you ever functioned without one-to-ones, this essential form of communication.
What you’re going to discover very soon is that instead of you having push these meetings forward, you’re going to see your people pushing the meetings forward. You’re going to notice it when they’re scheduling their meeting early, because they’re going to be out on holiday or vacation. You’re going to notice that they’re worried about missing the meeting when they know you’re going to be out of the office. They will be so engaged with this process, that they’ll be distressed if anything changes with respect to the meetings.
Now I know that it is hard to imagine the meetings becoming an essential element of the way you do business. But it happens. And it happens really fast. And it happens even with the lawyers who in my experience are the most resistant, the most skeptical, the most cynical. Even the lawyers are worried about missing their meetings.
So now, you need to go forward. You need to kick off the meetings. You need to get things started. You need to start adding these meetings to your calendar and making this happen. One day, you are going to look back on the day you launched one-to-ones in your firm as a very significant day in your history. It will mark a turning point. It is a change that is going to make a very big difference. So do it. Kick it off. Have your first meetings, then keep it going. Don’t miss meetings. Don’t skip meetings. Don’t flounder. Don’t doubt. We all need a kick in the pants sometimes, even after we’ve gotten things going, to keep it going.
So don’t get caught up in any negativity. These meetings are going to make a big difference. They are going to work. They will get you where you’re going. They will help you to achieve your goals and to bring your vision to life. Good luck with your one-to-ones. I’m here to answer questions. I’m available if you need me. And I wish you the very best of luck with building the trust, building the relationships, and discovering how the communication between you and your team impacts the growth of your law firm.