At Team Leadology, we know firsthand just how tempting it can be to cancel those touchpoints with your team members. We know you think canceling will give some time back to both you AND your employees, but in reality the cost of postponing one-on-ones is so much more than the benefit of receiving an extra 30 minutes it frees up on your calendar!

Stop Dreading the 1-on-1 Conversations

I know exactly what it’s like because I was a new manager struggling to figure everything out, too. You know you need to connect with your employees, but these regular meetings don’t usually go the way they should. Instead, it’s one of two ways:

1. You go through the motions, reviewing to-do lists, asking the same old questions, not feeling particularly connected or inspired.

OR

2. You’re tempted to cancel because you don’t have time to create another agenda and it’s business as usual, so why not just use that time to crush your to-do list.

Use This Hack for New Managers to Improve your Conversations With Employees

I’ve developed a unique framework that Leadology’s clients use and consistently praise for its effectiveness and ease.

Called the 2+2 Framework, it will help you:

  • Listen and learn about what matters to your team.

  • Build a culture of accountability and empowerment.

  • Address issues before they become large problems.

  • Inspire active engagement and connection to the organization.

The 2+2 Conversation Method for Managers

The 2+2 conversation method is a conversation framework that will streamline your one-on-ones. This means you will put your employees in the driver’s seat to own this conversation and their own workload. And the real value is that you shift from weekly agenda-maker and task-manager into a leader who maximizes the potential of their team and achieves strategic business outcomes.

Here’s how it works:

Each week, make sure your employees come to your one-on-one meetings prepared to discuss:

  • two things that are going well; and

  • two things that could be better.

Put Your Employees in the Driver’s Seat of their Career

The 2+2 conversation puts your employees in the driver’s seat of their own development. After all, it’s their career not yours! The simple framework focuses on celebrating success, preparing for future achievement, and planning for growth opportunities.

To hold them accountable, have them fill out a worksheet prior to coming to the weekly meeting. (You can find a worksheet in this resource!)

Improve Your Manager-Employee Conversations

We’re confident if you use the 2+2 framework you will start to experience the ripple effects — feedback conversations that aren’t awkward, quickly recovering from mistakes, increased trust, and more.

At Leadology, we’ve been using this exact method in thousands of conversations across multiple companies — both large and small, just like yours — and have been able to increase the connection between managers and their teams without adding anything else to their already full plates … AND statistics show companies with engaged employees have 59 percent more growth in revenue per employee as a result.

Here’s to successful conversations.