Jenny Cole on Getting the Most out of Your 1-1 Meetings (Part Two)

Jenny Cole: 1:02

Hello and welcome back to Positively Leading the Podcast. This is the second in a two-part episode on having one-on-one conversations, but we've got a little bit out of order, so the first episode is a couple earlier. So scroll back through your favorite platform and, if you haven't already listened to the one about the importance of having one-on-one meetings with the people that you line manage, in this episode we're going to get a little bit more practical about what you can do in these meetings and how to streamline them so that they don't take forever, but you get all of the information that you need Prior to one-on-one meetings. So ideally at the beginning of the year, but if you haven't got around to it at the beginning of the year, there's no right or wrong time. I encourage you to spend the first session asking a single, solution-focused, open-ended question that allows the person that you line manage to give you an open-ended answer on what's important to them this year. Let me give you an example. So an example might be if this was the best year ever for you in this role as a teacher or a deputy, whoever you're line managing if this was the best year ever for you in this role, what might be happening? What would you notice If we got to December and it's been the best year ever? What would you like me to see? That's about three questions in one, but it includes a couple of stems that could be useful. If this was December and it's been the best year ever, what would you like me to notice? What would other people be noticing? What else? What else? The idea here is that you, the line manager, asks an open-ended question and then shuts up.

Jenny Cole: 3:03

This is not a conversation where we bat backwards and forwards. This is just trying to understand, from your staff member's point of view, what is floating their boat this year, what's really important to them, what they would like to see, what good looks like, and your job is to ask questions like what else? Tell me more. What would that look like, to get a much clearer picture of what the future would look like if we're doing things really well? Another question could be perhaps for a more established staff member is you've been teaching for a long time. What keeps you energized? Where do you get your learning from? What do you listen to? What do you read? How do you keep up? How do you stay professional? Again, this is just about you listening to see what is important to the other person, and so this is where you get to practice your listening and practice and asking what else Tell me more. So I call that speed coaching or speed dating, where we spend 15 minutes with each staff member once a year to find out what's important to them, what success looks like, what good enough is going to be. If you haven't gotten around to that this year, that's absolutely okay. In a moment I'm going to walk you through the key elements of an effective one-on-one conversation with your direct reports Prior to every meeting. The ultimate is and so if this doesn't work or doesn't happen for you, then that's okay, but I think the ultimate is getting the staff member to reflect prior to coming to the meeting.

Jenny Cole: 4:45

I stole this idea from HPT schools. They call it a teacher update tool or a leader update tool, and you can download a version of that off their website. I've adjusted mine slightly, ever so slightly, and I call it a reflection tool, and I use it for teachers and non-teaching staff. What I like is that it goes through what, essentially, is the agenda for the conversation. First of all, reflection on successes and challenges. Then a reflection on work, life and well-being, then a reflection on hot topics, things that are top of mind for the person at the moment, relationships in focus or tasks in focus, depending on who the staff member is and then a space for a deep dive. You know those questions of practice. How do I, how do I engage those year nines? How do I incorporate five reading groups in my literacy block? Those downloads are available at the bottom of the podcast, so feel free to grab those, but they essentially run in the same order as a check-in would.

Jenny Cole: 6:00

So let's get on to the formal meeting. Again, I don't want those to be terribly long, so start with a check-in and a bit of a personal connection. The better you know the person, the easier that this will be. It doesn't have to take very long. How was your kid's footy on the weekend? How was your mum's birthday? Whatever it is that you know or have a connection with the person about, this might be a time that you do a little bit of a wellbeing check-in. You are not responsible for other people's wellbeing, but reminding people that they perhaps have a goal around getting more exercise, or if they've personally identified a goal about drinking more water or getting better sleep, you might ask how are you sleeping lately, and they can give some feedback. Some of you might ask how are you sleeping lately? And they can give some feedback. Some of you might not feel comfortable to do that, and that's absolutely okay. You might remember me saying last time that these meetings don't need to be minuted. I don't want you to take that to mean that nothing needs to be written down If you're taking the time to meet with someone. We need to be really clear about any actions.

Jenny Cole: 7:17

So the first part of this agenda is to review any agreed actions, both theirs and yours, from the previous time period. You were going to do this, had that go. You said that you were going to review such and such. Did you get on top of that? I promised that I would speak to the year three teacher and see if she could help you out. I spoke to her. Did she get in contact with you? Those sorts of things, reviewing the actions and any accomplishments, and so this moves into sharing successes.

Jenny Cole: 7:54

I really believe in making sure that we encourage people to notice the success that's been made. Education is really hard, you know. Sometimes we don't see progress with our students. Sometimes it just feels relentless, and so I really encourage you to spend time here on what's already working, what's the success, even tiny, and this is an opportunity for you to give some feedback about what you've noticed. I've noticed that your students are much quieter than they were at the beginning of the year. You obviously got your classroom behaviour management under control, whatever's important to you and whatever's important to that staff member. So, reviewing last week's action items and sharing successes and then moving into current priorities and progress. So what are the priorities coming up? In a school, this could look like I've got reporting coming up in a couple of weeks. That means currently I'm data collecting.

Jenny Cole: 9:03

The challenge here is spreading myself thinly across all of the kids plus keeping up with what I've planned to teach, having a discussion around priorities and progress. Or it could be the school has this emphasis on structured literacy. I'm practicing really hard in my class for my students to look at visual cues for choral responding and I'm doing okay with that, but it's a bit hard with these kids. So it could be directly linked to the school business plan or it could just be personal things that the teacher is focusing on. It allows them to talk about workload and helps you be informed of what's really taking up time and perhaps even if they've got a little bit more capacity, to do something else. Of course, in this you'll get obstacles and challenges. So successes and priorities forward thinking is where we're trying to go, but of course, there will be obstacles and challenges, and you can coach your folks through about what do you think you're going to do about that, and you can coach your folks through about what do you think you're going to do about that. What are you planning to try? Have you seen what anybody else has done in that area? Could you piggyback off what they're doing? And, of course, if they are completely unable to come up with any options to get over the obstacles, you might offer some assistance in this area. But I don't want you, the leader, to walk away with an enormous to-do list as a result of these conversations. The idea is to help empower your staff members to think as deeply as you do and to take action and to generate outcomes.

Jenny Cole: 10:56

Feedback and development. I've already said that this is an opportunity for giving feedback about what you've noticed, and I truly believe these one-on-one meetings are exactly the time where you need to be giving deliberate, structured, forward-focused feedback. We talked about people getting just off track and needing a bit of course correction. Again, these meetings are a perfect place to say I notice we're still talking about that. We've been talking about that for a couple of meetings. Now Is there something more that you need? That is, feedback, noticing the patterns in what people are talking about that for a couple of meetings. Now Is there something more that you need? That is feedback Noticing the patterns in what people are talking about, noticing the patterns and feeding it back to the staff member and offering to problem solve a way forward, a real coaching approach. So coaching is not only about what are you going to do, what else, but also here's some feedback. Here's what I've noticed. I'm wondering if this might be appropriate that we can give affirming feedback. I've noticed that and it was brilliant. Thank you so much. That's working so well.

Jenny Cole: 12:10

Do more of that, but also a bit more of the corrective, evaluative feedback in these meetings. Again, these meetings shouldn't be that long, but some might be slightly longer than others depending on what's happening. So let me reiterate where we've come from. We've done a check-in and a personal connection. We've done a review of the last action items from the previous meeting. We've had a little talk about current priorities and progress. We've looked at obstacles and challenge. We've ensured that we've included some feedback.

Jenny Cole: 12:54

So, as the line manager, you are listening intently and asking good quality questions and giving feedback. But I want you to also consider that these meetings are a really good time for the staff member to give some feedback to you. We'll talk about that in a moment. This is the important bit. I want you, as the line manager, to say to the person that you're with looking ahead for the next two weeks or four weeks, whatever the space is. What's coming up? What do we need to think about? What do you need to hold top of mind? What do you need to get rid of? If it's a particularly busy period in the school cycle, such as reporting, you might encourage people to get rid of some things that aren't serving them anymore. You've probably covered many of these things, but it's a good question and, as the leader in the organisation, you're allowed to say we've got these priorities that we've articulated in our business plan. How are you going to incorporate those? What are you going to do with those in the next couple of weeks going forward? So we want to get these as a really nice balance of personal and professional understanding that, personally, there's going to be things that that teacher is focused on and keen on and working on, but not to let side of the fact that they're working towards the school's business plan as well.

Jenny Cole: 14:31

Then a quick wrap up and action items, and that's as simple as saying so what are the actions this week You're going to, I'm going to, and you write those down. You write them down, and so does your staff member. We're modelling appropriate behaviour. We're starting by saying come in having already reflected on what's important to you. Then we're modelling a good coaching conversation, and then we're modelling the fact that if we want to grow and develop, we need to write down our own actions and commit to our own actions, and writing them down is such a powerful way of putting the responsibility back in the hands of the staff. It means, too, at the next meeting, you can say what were your actions, rather than your actions were. That feels a lot more like commitment and less like compliance.

Jenny Cole: 15:36

To me, your job as a leader is to create the conditions so your staff can soar. You want to know what it is that lights them up, floats their boat, and then your job is to assist and provide conditions so that that happens. Your job is then to get out of the way and let them get on with it. So I'm not adverse to asking a question such as I want to make sure that the next few weeks are as successful as possible for you. I'm going to stay the heck out of your way unless you need something from me. Is there some way that I could support you so that you meet those action targets that you've set for yourself? You'll notice we are putting the responsibility for the action and the achievement back on the staff member, but we're saying I'm going to give you whatever it is that you need from me, but you need to tell me what that is and I'm going to provide it. What it doesn't say is what support do you need from me? Because that encourages a list. Instead, you're saying my job is to stay out of your way so you can get on with what I know you can do. Is there anything in particular that I can do to allow that to happen? It's a slight change of emphasis, but I particularly like it.

Jenny Cole: 17:06

So here are some final tips for one-on-one meetings. Your role is to listen actively. You want the staff member to do as much thinking and as much talking as possible, and your job is to guide the conversation using good questions. Your other role is to keep the meeting focused. You could easily, some of you, talk for an hour, an hour and a half with your staff member. That's not what we want. We want to have this steady, rolling agenda that moves quickly, that ticks off things, asks for support, moves on, covers all the things that need to happen in a one-on-one meeting, but doesn't become a chore in and of itself. So listen actively, you stay really focused and even if that means putting a timer on, I suggest you do that on. I suggest you do that In a high trust one-on-one.

Jenny Cole: 18:13

You might be able to use something like a tool like Otter, to take minutes and record that meeting, both the transcript and the audio, and I'm going to put a link to Otter in the show notes for you. But that often is not necessary, but it could be a good way. If you're having really robust conversations with a staff member who has high trust, then recording those meetings might be useful. But at the very least and this is tip number three just briefly document your agreed-upon actions. We just want people to keep moving forward. Number three just briefly document your agreed upon actions. We just want people to keep moving forward, and that includes you. So they are some practical tools and a rough agenda that you can use for a one-on-one meeting.

Jenny Cole: 19:01

I want you to try and keep them short. I want you to do them often. I want you to test and keep them short. I want you to do them often. I want you to test whether they're useful. If you've been a coaching client of mine, you may have heard me say at the end of a coaching call how useful was that for you today? Or what's clearer, as the result of today's meeting, we want action, we want clarity and we want energy. I can't give you any more days in your week, but I do want you to feel energised by the work that you do. So check out the links below and I will talk to you next week.

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