Portfolio of Keith Elder

Mastering the One-on-One

by Keith Elder

How Often

  • Leaders
    • Once a week for new hires.
    • Bi-weekly for all others.
    • Tips - To assist with onboarding and transition, leaders should meet with new hires once a week until they settle in. Typically this takes a month or so. For new hires, I developed "Koffee with Keith," which is a time where I check in with new hires and cover various onboarding topics.

Protecting One-on-One Time

Cancellation should be a last resort. Team members look forward to chatting with their leaders, so protect this time on your calendars. If a one-on-one must be moved, be sure to give prior notice in order to allow time for discussion of any issues that require immediate attention.

Topics for Conversation

  • Get to know them
    • Family, pets, interests, etc.
  • Learn their super powers
    • All team members posses a super power. Learn their super powers to better leverage their talents and to help them develop others.
  • Avoid story, feature, or work updates
    • Status updates can happen and do happen sometimes. But, this is a time to check in on them. Sometimes team members want to show their work. Take the time to celebrate but do not allow that to take up the entire time.
  • Start. Stop. Continue.
    • If you are having trouble coming up with feedback use the stop, start, continue method. What do you wish the team member would stop doing, start doing, and continue doing? This is a great way to put yourself into a retro mode for feedback.
  • Responsibilities, TRAC, and Career Progression
    • Be sure to cover the responsibilities of their role and the process to promotion as noted in the Engineering Guidebook.
  • Performance and Feedback
    • Feedback should be given early and often during one-on-ones. Do not wait until review time to provide feedback about their performance.
  • Listen
    • Not all one-on-ones should be the same, so mix it up. Team members need time to grow, so having a conversation every couple of weeks is not going to be productive. It will just serve as a source of frustration for the team member.
  • Let them be in the driver's seat
    • Ask them to bring questions.