Improve Employee Retention by Adding One-on-Ones to Your Onboarding Checklist
Reading Time: 6 minutesFor managers, the first 90 days of a new hire’s employment are a singular opportunity to secure their buy-in to your company’s values and culture. Yet often, employees never even make it to the end of onboarding. According to a Jobvite survey, 30% of employees have quit a job in the first 90 days. Clearly, managers […]
How to Use Psychology to Create a Great One-on-One Meeting Agenda
Reading Time: 6 minutesGreat one-on-one meetings are like jazz: spontaneous, collaborative, and exhilarating. Bad one-on-one meetings are like someone talking to you about jazz: stuffy, pedantic, and unproductive. Yet even though we’ve all had good and bad meetings, it can be challenging to pinpoint exactly what makes them different. For managers, that can make good one-on-ones feel like […]
6 Common One-on-One Questions Everyone Hates
Reading Time: 6 minutesAs a manager, one-on-one meetings with employees are when you do some of your most important work as a leader. Your tools for doing that work are the one-on-one meeting questions you ask employees. Here’s something your employees won’t tell you: some of those questions aren’t working. There’s a place for difficult and even unpleasant […]
How to Get More Out of One-on-Ones with Your Manager
Reading Time: 5 minutesIn the day-to-day grind of work, it’s easy to get so caught up in doing your job that you lose sight of your career. One-on-one meetings with your manager are an opportunity to break out of that pattern to talk about your professional goals and invite real feedback about how to reach them. Simply put, […]
How I Stopped Being a Dreaded “10x Manager”
Reading Time: 6 minutesIn July, a Twitter thread about 10x engineers turned into a minor viral phenomenon, though probably not in the way the original writer intended. Most of the tweets came from developers eager to poke fun at the whole concept of engineers who are supposedly 10 times more productive than their peers. Life as a 10x […]
What Improv Theater Teaches Us About One-on-One Meetings With Employees
Reading Time: 6 minutesTo most people, an evening at an improv show sounds like the emotional antithesis of a one-on-one meeting with their manager. But since you are a manager, it’s your job to change that perception and bring the energy and enthusiasm of an improv performer to your face time with employees. If you’re skeptical about that […]
The Right (and Wrong) Personal Questions to Ask New Employees
Reading Time: 7 minutesGood managers know that successful onboarding doesn’t just mean setting up a new hire with a desk and an email account; it’s about building the foundation for a trusting and productive workplace relationship. Like any new relationship, it starts with learning who this person is and what will help them thrive. The best way to […]
8 Dos and Don’ts for Your Next One-on-One Meeting [Plus Free Template]
Reading Time: 6 minutesSuccessful managers know that one-on-one meetings are the bedrock of their employee relationships. But if you’ve spent any time in the workplace, you know that all too often, one-on-one meetings: Don’t get scheduled in the first place Are the first thing to be cancelled when it gets busy Are happening, but they’re not even close […]
Performance review examples for a manager’s 5 toughest scenarios
Reading Time: 6 minutesPerformance reviews can be scary, especially if you’ve got bad news to deliver or you’re not sure what to say. So we gathered advice from experts on the exact performance review phrases and questions that will get the job done. These 40+ performance review examples will help you deal with the 5 most common scenarios […]
3 questions to have a more successful performance review meeting
Reading Time: 5 minutesDuring your performance reviews, do you ever feel like Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty listening to their teacher? No matter how hard you try, you just can’t focus on what your manager is saying. Why? Because when you walk out of that meeting, nothing’s changed. What happens in your performance reviews doesn’t seem to affect the […]