Emily (00:08)

So let's talk about the agenda. It's essential that you have an agenda before you start any 1-on-1. A lot of managers think that this meeting is their responsibility to drive entirely. Well, not exactly. The most meaningful 1-on-1s are at least partially driven by your team member.

This is their time with you as their leader, and they should feel relative responsibility to make good use of it. Just as equally, it is also your job to prepare in advance. If you take away only one thing to immediately improve the quality of your 1-on-1s, let it be this: Get in the habit of preparing an agenda with the other person before you meet.

The 1-on-1 agenda should be a prioritized list of talking points and action items. If your list isn't prioritized, you run the risk of spending too much time on less important items. This is known as bikeshedding. Bikeshedding is a term that refers to the tendency of people to focus on trivial or unimportant items while ignoring more complex or important issues.

The term was coined in the 1950s by see C. Northcote Parkinson, a British naval historian and author who used it to describe a phenomenon he observed in meetings where people would spend a lot of time discussing and debating relatively minor issues, such as the color of a bike shed while ignoring more critical matters. Create your agenda before the meeting and ideally use a collaborative tool where both people can add to it. When agendas are set and followed. Your 1-on-1 is much more likely to be meaningful.

Move work forward and go beyond a simple status update. Now, here's a very cool feature that you might not know about. Agenda setting for 1-on-1s is so important that 15Five has a tool to capture talking points, notes, and action items. And it's collaborative meaning both people can see it and use it in advance or even after the meeting.