One-to-one: find the management style that best suits managers and employees

How to manage a team with efficient one-on-ones?

With this One-on-one template, organize regular catch-up meetings between managers and team members, whether you’re in the office or working remotely. This meeting between an employee and a manager is an important time to listen to each other and take stock together, which is precious for your team management.

At each meeting, you co-create the roadmap for the next 3 months:

• First, you define clear goals,
• Then you set the course and find solutions together, so the employee can move forward and achieve their goals.

On the whiteboard, the employee also shares: 

• Their feelings about what has happened since the last meeting
• The actions taken
• The stumbling blocks
• Any important information and issues they would like to share. 

You keep track of all the discussions at every one-on-one. And, using Questions, you can of course ask for more information between two key dates to keep each other informed!

What are the benefits of one-on-ones for team management?

Like individual performance reviews, one-on-ones are key to successful team management. Besides looking after the group, good team management is also about considering each team member individually and taking into account their personal feelings.

One-to-one meetings are an important time to support employees in their individual progress. Indeed, to maintain a high level of engagement and efficiency, it’s important that every employee trusts their manager.

What's more, efficient communication is vital to manage a team. Much as employees must be able to approach their manager directly to move forward, the management must know each member of the team well to be able to entrust them with the right missions.

Finally, this team management tool makes full use of the flexibility of Klaxoon’s whiteboard. Everything is written down and saved at each meeting, so you can create a roadmap together, which will help you improve the professional relationship in the long term.

How to organize a One-on-one with Klaxoon

First, invite your employee to the Board. When they log in for the first time, both the manager and the employee send their photo and fill in their name, first name and team name. 

Then, start by defining the quarterly goals, including a deadline as a Dimension. Next, identify the actions to be taken to achieve these goals, and spread them over the next 3 months. Use the connectors to link each goal with its associated actions.

Depending on your own team management style, choose the frequency of your one-on-ones with your employee: weekly, monthly etc. At each quarterly sync-up, you can take stock of your employee’s feelings over the last few months (motivation, workload, team discussions etc.) and follow up on the action plan. 

Note all these items on the whiteboard and turn completed actions green for more clarity. Each one-on-one is an opportunity for a debriefing about the day-to-day life of your team. The purple “Share and discuss” area is available, even asynchronously outside of your sync-ups, to share feelings, new ideas, stumbling blocks, etc. Using Questions, the employee and the manager can contact each other to ask for help on a topic, or give more information.

Now, the quarterly one-on-one meeting is a bit special: 

• First, take stock of your previous discussions, starting with the employee’s feelings over the past quarter (motivation, workload, relationship with the team). 
• Next, review their achievements together. Describe your achievements in ideas placed in the red area, and change their color based on your assessment: yellow for "in progress", green for "completed" and red for “stumbling block”. 
• Finally, use the Focus area to agree on 3 key actions or ideas to bear in mind for the next quarter. 

This way, the One-on-one template becomes the ideal workspace to manage your team every day!