698: How to Structure 1:1 Meetings, with Steven Rogelberg

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
Many of us appreciate the value of 1 on 1 meetings with employees. For a lot of managers, it’s one of their biggest time commitments. And yet, nobody ever taught us how to do it. In this episode, how to actually structure an effective one on one. This is Coaching for Leaders episode 698. Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential. Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:38]:
Leaders aren’t born, they’re made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. A conversation that almost everyone in our audience is having on both sides is the 1 on 1 conversation. We’re having it with our managers. Many of us are having it with our direct reports as well. We are in the middle of these conversations all the time, and yet, we don’t hear a lot of research backed guidance on really how to conduct a 1 on 1 well, the purpose of it, how to set up the agenda, and the mindset we need to have going into 1 on ones. That’s why I’m so glad to welcome today’s guest.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:18]:
Steven Rolgelberg is an organizational psychologist holding the title of chancellor’s professor at UNC Charlotte for distinguished national, international, and interdisciplinary contributions. He is an award winning teacher and recipient of the Humboldt award for his research on meetings. Adam Grant has called him the world’s leading expert on how to fix meetings. He is the author of Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1 on 1 Meetings. Steven, what a pleasure to have you on.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:01:45]:
I’m really glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:48]:
This is a topic that we are all in the middle of every day, and yet we get very little guidance on it. And you make this point at the beginning of the book that you made a conservative estimate of just how many of these meetings are happening each day in the world, and you came up with 200,000,000 1-on-1s per day at an investment level of 1,200,000,000 US dollars a day. Every single day. It’s a huge number, isn’t it?

Steven Rolgelberg [00:02:18]:
It is. It is. You know, it’s it’s I mean, meetings are just fascinating, right? We’re spending all this tremendous time in them. It’s really one of the most expensive things that organizations do. And yet they spend so little time trying to maximize the value of the investment. Think for a moment about an organization’s IT investment, right? So IT is expensive, not as expensive as meetings, by the way. Meetings are much more expensive than IT. But in the world of IT, we often have someone in the leadership team, that’s a chief technology officer, right? We evaluate it.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:02:55]:
We talk about it. We constantly assess whether it’s meeting our needs. We are connecting with the users and we’re being nimble and making sure it’s serving his competitive advantage. Well, meetings, we just ignore. We just assume that bad meetings are the cost of doing business. And this is for meetings in general, but 1 on 1s also. And 1 on 1s, as I’m sure we’ll talk about, they are the one meeting that should not be an email. They are the one meeting that we need to have.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:03:31]:
But it’s a particular type of 1 on 1, which I look forward to talking to you about.

Dave Stachowiak [00:03:36]:
Yeah. Indeed. And in fact, I heard you mentioned somewhere that that was an alternative title of the book that you had considered, the one meeting that should never be an email. What is it that’s so critical about the 1 on 1 particularly?

Steven Rolgelberg [00:03:52]:
Excellent. So let’s step back and let’s define what I mean by a 1 on 1. So clearly our days are filled with 1 on 1 encounters and conversations, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a particular type of 1 on 1 between a manager and her or his people, where it’s designed to better understand what is on the mind of your people. It’s an intentional act. It’s regular. It’s scheduled. And while the leader is facilitating it and orchestrating it, it is not for them.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:04:32]:
It is for their direct. It is for the direct to share what is on their mind, in their way, in their terms. It is an opportunity to truly see your people. All right. So that’s the concept. Now, in thinking about the advantages or why this is so critical, there’s definitely research that I can share. But really, if you step back, you can intuit a lot of the positive benefits. Think about a moment, think about a conversation where someone in power took a genuine interest in you and how that made you feel, right? The level of attachment you had to that person, the trust, your commitment, your willingness to push and drive, etcetera.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:05:20]:
Well, extrapolate this to your manager and continuous interactions where that manager is focused on your needs. What we find in the research is that employees who have regular one on ones, like I described, are more engaged on the job. They’re more committed to the job. They stay more readily on the job. Now we’ve all heard the adage that people don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses. Well, 1 on 1s are your opportunity to prove you’re not a bad boss. We also know that these things are tied to performance. Because as the employee brings out the issues on their minds, it then provides an opportunity for conversation and discussion, and this can help remove obstacles and help that employee be more successful.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:06:01]:
So there’s a linkage between individual performance. There’s a linkage in team performance And that generally when you have 1 on 1s, people are more coordinated in the team. The other really surprising finding is it’s related to managerial success. So often when I present this content in organizations, people might say, I just don’t have time. Well, the fact is you need to make time because this will actually make you more successful. One of the things as leaders, your success is really determined by the success of those people who report into you. So, to the extent that their success is elevated, that reflects positively upon you. So, these actions really ultimately benefit you.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:06:51]:
Furthermore, there was one interesting finding that emerged was that managers who do these things regularly actually reported more time for deep work for themselves. Namely, they reported being interrupted less throughout the week because employees knew that they always had this predictable time to reach you. So we have this activity here that hits so many of these critical success factors for people and organizations. And if you don’t do 1 on 1s, think about what that signals to your people. Right? Everything we do or don’t do is a signal of who we are and our values. So if we’re not willing to find dedicated time to meet with our people, that is a signal that we really don’t care, that they are just cogs, and their ultimate success or satisfaction or engagement just really ultimately doesn’t matter.

Dave Stachowiak [00:07:54]:
And underscoring that point, one of the lines that leapt out at me in the book was this one. You write, interestingly, “research has not found a plateau effect for 1 on ones where too many one on ones resulted in employee engagement leveling off or decreasing. In fact, it turns out to be just the opposite.” It’s really hard to overdo it as far as investment of time in 1 on 1s, isn’t it?

Steven Rolgelberg [00:08:18]:
Yeah. That was such a surprise to me. So I’m clearly not advocating that there’s multiple of these things done each week because that can quickly move into a micromanagement phase. But the sweet spot of doing these every week yielded the greatest outcomes. Every other week was right behind it. But then there was a drop off. You know, ultimately, these conversations help to build a relationship and trust. And when there’s too much time between them, that just doesn’t happen.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:08:50]:
You know, the story doesn’t keep flowing, right? It becomes very disjointed when these conversations are too far apart. So we have to invest. We have to invest regularly. But here’s the interesting twist. So we know that this cadence is associated with the best outcomes. Well, I also collected research from employees, and this was a global study, multiple countries, where we asked people, how many one on ones would you desire with your manager? And what we found is that regardless or despite having a ton of meetings on their calendar, employees wanted this weekly. And this was across all the countries we studied. And interestingly, more senior people wanted these even more than junior people.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:09:41]:
So here we have a situation where people are desiring it because everyone knows the value of truly being seen, and the employee’s preferences are indeed aligned with the best outcomes. How often does that happen? It’s pretty fantastic.

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:59]:
Yeah. Indeed. And you’ve alluded to this already. You are a big advocate both yourself and the research for having a set schedule on doing this, whether it’s weekly or every other week, and sometimes context may dictate what schedule we pick. But one of the reasons you advocate for a set schedule is to reduce bias. Tell me about the concern with bias.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:10:23]:
So, basically, we tend to have more conversations with people who are generally similar to us. It’s a similar to me bias. And it’s just being human, but we just tend to have that type of a bias. We also tend to have a bias to have more conversations with people that we see more regularly. So, therefore, if we don’t have an intentional plan around our cadences and the conversations we have with our directs, these biases can start to take root more readily. And we start having 1 on 1s with people that we see and like more. And obviously, that can have some unintended consequences. So managers need to step back and think of these 1 on 1s as a critical expression of who they are as a leader, and then say, okay, I’m rolling this out.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:11:23]:
This is an initiative we’re rolling out. And like any initiative that we roll out, we say, here are the parameters. This is what it’s going to look like. We want it to be fair and powerful. We will evaluate it. You’ll ask the directs constantly to keep tweaking it to make sure it’s meeting their needs. And so we can’t just let this be casual. You know, at the end of my speeches, I do this very silly quiz with the audience and they always get a perfect score because I’ve set it all up.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:11:49]:
But basically, the questions are such like, if you have an open door policy, do you need 1 on 1s? Yes. Right? If you see your people regularly, do you need 1 on ones? Yes. Right? If you’ve been working with these individuals for a long time, do you need 1 on 1s? So there’s something magical when you have an intentional conversation that’s focused on someone else’s needs, not your own.

Dave Stachowiak [00:12:14]:
I’m thinking about that in the context of what you said a few minutes ago that the research shows that the more experienced someone is, the higher performer, the more they actually want 1 on 1s.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:12:23]:
Yeah.

Dave Stachowiak [00:12:24]:
And yet, I do hear leaders sometimes say, hey. I am getting some pushback, particularly from the more experienced people of you know, I don’t need as many 1 on 1s, or maybe we can skip them or cancel them. And you point out that that’s often an indicator of value versus time. Tell me about that distinction.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:12:43]:
I’m so glad you brought that up. If your people are saying they don’t want them, that’s actually feedback. That’s feedback. That means you’re not executing these things correctly. And the most typical mistake managers do is they make it into a status update monitoring meeting, where they basically bring the employee in and they want a rundown of the projects. And that’s meeting the manager’s needs. Right? That’s meeting the manager’s needs for control.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:13:12]:
And that’s not what this is about. Managers can get status updates many, many, many different ways. Right? They can do it in team meetings. They can do it through emails. They can do it through all kinds of asynchronous communication. So when employees don’t want these, it’s just because you’re executing it in a way that favors, it privileges you. And what has been found is that we actually and really take a genuine interest. Help me understand.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:13:39]:
Tell me more. How can I help? How can I support you? Right? Where would you see yourself in 5 to 10 years? Whatever it is. But these are types of questions that people love to answer, right? Because these are questions where, you know, you are signaling that you wanna be part of their team and help them be successful and grow.

Dave Stachowiak [00:14:00]:
This probably begs the obvious question that I know some people are asking, well, how do I actually approach the meeting then and make it valuable? And you point out that coming to a 1 on 1 meeting with a plan is smart. And yet stopping short of having a lockstep agenda for the conversation is also helpful. Thinking about that mindset, what’s useful as far as thinking about how do we actually show up with a plan that’s useful?

Steven Rolgelberg [00:14:29]:
What we found in the research was that a lightweight agenda for these meetings actually was related to effectiveness. Because, again, it signaled that intentionality. But what was even more important was the employee driving the plan. That is absolutely essential. Right? Because if we’re saying that this meeting is for you, then giving them voice on how that the types of questions or approach used is consistent with that signal. So the 2 types of agendering approaches that are most effective, one is kind of a core question approach where the manager identifies with the employee a set of broad based core questions, you know, such as, you know, what are your biggest challenges right now? So clearly, while the manager’s asking that question, the employee can take it many, many different ways. So you have these broad core questions that you rotate over time because if they’re always the same, it gets boring. Imagine a relationship with a friend who only asks the same questions.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:15:33]:
That relationship’s not gonna take off. So we are flexible. We change it up. We keep it nimble. We make sure that we balance short term and long term. We make sure we balance individual team and organization. So that’s the first approach. The second approach is the listing approach.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:15:49]:
In the listing approach, you tell the direct that, hey, I want this meeting to make sure it meets your needs. As a result, please come to the meeting with a set of topics that you want to talk about. But here’s the key caveat with this approach. You need to tell them that their topics should be for them, not you, that they should span short and long term, they should span individual team and organization. If we don’t prompt them to think that way, then they will just come to the meeting with sets of topics that they think you wanna hear. So we wanna make sure that we’ve prompted them to think a little differently. So in both of those approaches, the employee definitely has a voice. The leader is helping to facilitate and orchestrate, and then it’s go time.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:16:37]:
And if an employee winds up wanting to spend the majority of time talking about one particular issue, that’s okay. You know, you can remind them saying, hey, just so you know, we’re halfway through. We haven’t talked about other issues. I’m fine with that because this is a meeting for you, but I just wanted to let you know.

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:56]:
Right.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:16:56]:
So we just wanna keep giving control back to the direct, and the manager is helping to provide structure. And the types of sentences coming out of their mouth should just be, tell me more, help me understand, what are your thoughts on how to handle this? Where would you like to see this go? Etcetera. Questions and thoughts that are designed to keep elevating the voice of the other party.

Dave Stachowiak [00:17:20]:
Thinking about those two approaches you just articulated, the core question, like you as manager are setting that core question and then like you said you’re letting the direct role with whatever way you want or the listing approach when you’re working with leaders and helping them to figure out which approach they use, what’s an indicator for you as far as which direction you go, or do you change it up? How do you think about that?

Steven Rolgelberg [00:17:45]:
Yeah. I like it. So I do have some, like, flow charts that I put in the book to help people navigate some of these decisions. But I’ll say this, that ultimately, we want to check-in with the direct to see what works for them. You know, this is why this book was very different for me to write. So my other book, The Surprising Science in Meetings, was definitely all about science and applying it to a vexing practical problem. This book, after the Glad We Met, colon, it’s the art and science. And that’s really different because there is an art here.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:18:31]:
And so I lay out choices for managers to consider, but there isn’t a magic formula. The best formula is making the choice that fits who you are and who your direct is. So the book provides options that you and you can make choices. The book also advocates for frequent feedback loops, right? So if I make the claim that I’m doing this for you, but I don’t check-in with you to be sure that this is really working, then it’s a false claim. And so the more that we do the check-in, we say, hey, okay, is this agenda approach working for you? Here’s another one. Do you wanna try this one instead? And you just make it dynamic. And through those check ins, you’re going to see really exciting, good progress. And let me say add one more thing.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:19:28]:
I found it really intriguing that the regularity of these things was really the most important dimension. So you doing these every week or every other week was most critical. The amount of time in any particular one on one was actually secondary. So if you do these things, even if it’s just 20 minutes, but it’s a really good, high quality 20 minutes, we still observe the benefits. So as managers try to figure out how to fit this into their worlds, that’s a good thing to keep in mind. Quality of minutes is much more important than quantity of minutes.

Dave Stachowiak [00:20:09]:
And it gives us a menu of options of where to go and depending on the person, the context, the season, either approach could work or some combination of them. And by the way, that’s one of the gifts of the book is the pages and pages of questions and examples and checklists and outlines that you have. I mean, for someone who’s thinking about how do I do a better job with my 1 on 1 specifically, It’s worth getting the book just to have those frameworks, and you’ve got a starting point then. And then as you said, it’s an art. You adapt as you go so that if you’re coming at it with the right mindset, then you’re gonna land in a much better place than if you don’t. And speaking of the right mindset, I do regularly talk to managers who will say, I’m ending up having these people are coming to me with sort of these status update meetings, and they the manager’s heart’s in a good place. They’re saying, hey. I really want this to be a higher level.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:06]:
They’re usually saying this to me, not the employee. They I want this to be a higher level meeting. I wanna really focus on a person’s career. I want this to be a meeting for them. I don’t want them showing up with a laundry list. Just give me updates. Like, we can do that in other context to your point earlier. How do you if you’re in that trap where either it’s a person or a lot on a lot of folks on your team are doing the status update kind of things come into a meeting that way, how do you get out of that?

Steven Rolgelberg [00:21:30]:
When a manager either rolls this out or does a reboot, that initial communication is the opportunity to help create a new revised set of expectations. The manager has to explicitly say, this is not a status update. This is not a meeting for me. Don’t do this meeting for me. This is a meeting truly for you. If you want to talk about a particular project, fine, because it’s your meeting. But you don’t have to. You can talk about skills you wanna develop.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:22:02]:
You could talk about problems you’ve experienced that you’ve noticed over time. You could talk about opportunities around the team. So the more that we express these types of statements, then we can break out of what tends to be where the gravity goes. But we definitely can break that cycle. Once an employee sees that you as a manager are not asking about status updates, that you really are genuinely engaging in these 1 on ones on their terms, they won’t be able to help themselves. They will start to make these things more and more meaningful over time. This is so analogous to any relationship we have. When we’re building a relationship with someone, early on, the intimacy and the types of conversations aren’t gonna feel as natural.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:22:55]:
They might not feel as deep, right? They might not feel as meaningful, but we keep investing. And as trust and safety builds, those conversations do become deeper and more meaningful. So we just have to recognize that each one on one is an investment we’re making, and each of these investments build. And like interest from the bank, it’s compounding interest. And, therefore, we can realize these tremendous performance, retention, inclusive outcomes. They will manifest in time.

Dave Stachowiak [00:23:32]:
And you also highlight the value of skip level 1 on 1 meetings in the book too. And, for those not familiar with that terminology, skip level is if I’m the employee, it’s my manager’s manager. If I’m the manager, it’s my direct reports direct report. And I think it’s interesting that this isn’t a practice everyone does. Some people have fear around it, which I’d love to ask you about. But what’s interesting is that in addition to what you find on 1 on ones that employees really want and like these, the same is true for skip level 1 on ones too. People report that they really do want these as well, don’t they?

Steven Rolgelberg [00:24:10]:
They do. We live in a world that can feel very transactional at times, especially as people are working remotely more than they ever have. And these feelings of transaction, these, you know, leads to less commitment to the organization. And so how can you change that? And so when the manager does 1 on 1s, it’s helping the employee to connect more deeply with the manager and the team. When you have a skip level 1 on 1, now you’re creating connection with the broader organization and the organization strategy. And that could be extremely energizing and help the employee have a better sense of how their work fits into the bigger picture. The skip level 1 on 1s are not at all frequent. Right? These could be every quarter, every 6 months.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:25:03]:
They can be quite short. It could be 20 minutes. But I like the regularity of it. I like the whole notion of senior leaders getting out of their office and interacting with people who have their feet on the ground, their boots on the ground to have a better sense of that experience. When you think about that television program, Undercover Boss, right? The value of a boss getting out there and interacting with people who don’t directly report into them reveals important issues. And so skip levels are just this additional opportunity to form connection, to communicate better, both top down and bottoms up, to cement a greater connection to the organization. And I’ll say that it’s also a way, even though this is not the purpose, it is a way to make sure that the employee’s relationship with their immediate supervisor is not highly problematic. We don’t want an employee to suffer in silence.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:26:07]:
And it may be the case that over time, the employee would start to suggest that there could be some issues with their individual manager. And that’s, again, not the purpose of these, but it might happen naturally. And that could be highly informative to the skip level leader. With that said, one of the things I spend a great deal of time on in the book is how to do skip levels in such a way that you don’t render the immediate manager impotent or have them feel like you’re spying on them. And that absolutely can be achieved.

Dave Stachowiak [00:26:45]:
When you think about that distinction of avoiding- and by the way, that’s the thing that I hear from the top people that they say is the thing that stops them from doing skip level 1 on ones. They want to do them, but they say, I’m worried I’m gonna undermine my direct report or I’m gonna step on toes. And when they find a way to work past that, by and large, everyone’s really glad that they did it, but it’s that initial getting over that What do you find is helpful in just that starting point or what’s said in that conversation that keeps that from being as much of an issue?

Steven Rolgelberg [00:27:20]:
It’s the types of questions that are asked and the framing that’s shared. And the fact that you are keeping the individual’s manager very tightly in the loop. And in the actual one on one, the skip level, you’re kind of staying in your lane, right? So you’re not trying to solve the employee’s problem because that could render the manager impotent. And so you are sensitive to not undermining the manager. You’re asking questions that allow for other types of conversations. You know, clearly, if the employee brings up the manager, you’re listening, you’re asking questions, and, you know, you’re tracking whether there’s a theme emerging across people. But in general, your sensitivity to not undermining the manager and keeping the manager very much in the loop on why you’re doing these and how you’re doing them can help mitigate it. It’s similar to the question I get asked, which is, well, if I’m having regular 1 on 1s with my people, you know, weekly 1 on ones, won’t they feel micromanaged? And my response is, they’ll feel micromanaged if you’re micromanaging them, but they won’t feel micromanaged if you’re not micromanaging them.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:28:33]:
So the same thing applies to skip levels. You know, right, managers will feel like you’re spying on them if you’re indeed spying on them. But if that’s not your intention and your questions don’t reflect that, then over time, people will realize that your intention is your behavior, and they’ll stop being so concerned.

Dave Stachowiak [00:28:54]:
This comes back to the mindset we talked about right at the beginning of this is a meeting for the employee right yes the manager gets benefits from it as we’ve discussed but first and foremost the interaction itself is led by the employee. It’s thinking about what’s serving them. And if you stick to that mindset, boy, the tactical things then become a lot clearer, and the art of it comes out and works. If you’re keeping that true, that’s so key in this.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:29:19]:
Yeah. I like that. That’s a great summary. And, you know, and managers really just have to step back and reflect that how good it would feel for them to have other people in the organization in power take a genuine interest in them. Think about that feeling and then give it to someone else. And that’s a beautiful thing. And what’s so interesting about this is 1 on 1s are actually an example where by bringing more humanity into a workplace, which is what a 1 on 1 is in many regards, it’s actually good business. Like, how crazy wonderful is that? Like, how often can we say that? That more humanity is actually good for business? It leads to more individual and collective success.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:30:10]:
I mean, especially in these times post pandemic, where people’s connection to work and organizations in many regards is at an all time low. Right? This is a mechanism for repair and connection. And especially as your workforce tends to not always be co located. The other thing I’ll add, and I think this is very exciting, is we know that one of the greatest predictors of life satisfaction is the helping of others. The more we help others, the more we generally feel good about our lives. 1 on 1s are that helping opportunity. And so it’s another example that by you bringing this humanity into work, you’re elevating others. You’re bringing success.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:31:05]:
But I can’t stress enough. You’re benefiting. You are truly benefiting.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:11]:
Speaking of humanity and helping others, you are really leading by example on this. In fact, you’re not making any money on the book. You’re donating all the royalties to charity. Thank you for doing that. What led you to that decision?

Steven Rolgelberg [00:31:22]:
Well, I hate asking people to buy my book. It drives me crazy. I hate begging people, hey, buy my book, buy my book. And I feel so much more comfortable doing it by giving the money to charity. So everything I make goes to the American Cancer Society. You know, because ultimately I wrote the book to help leaders and organizations and directs. And I just want the content to get out there.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:46]:
Yeah. It’s so interesting how when we really look at things from the other person’s perspective, the other organization’s perspective, the nopler motive as Dale Carnegie would have called it, know, how much more we can do for the world. Thanks for being an example of that. And certainly I’ll make, an ask of everyone who’s listening. If this is something that you find, like me, always wanting to get better at, voice so much more in the book, details, questions, the templates, as I mentioned earlier. Steven, one last question for you. As you have been researching this book, getting out in the world, talking with so many leaders about it, and and thinking about 1 on ones, I’m curious as you did all the research. I’ve had the conversations.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:24]:
What, if anything, have you changed your mind on in the recent past?

Steven Rolgelberg [00:32:28]:
I thought having an open door policy, being super responsive on emails, and being super friendly to my people was enough. And I was wrong That I needed to engage in more intentional behaviors where I provide the opportunity for the employee to be able to express themselves more readily. So that was my mistake. And I didn’t fully realize it until I collected the data and realized that I was falling into many of the same traps that other managers were.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:04]:
Steven Rokelberg is the author of Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1 on 1 Meetings. Steven, thank you so much for your work.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:33:12]:
Why thank you. And, you know, one of the things I think is would be great for your listeners to know, in in many regards, the types of behaviors that you did during this podcast are exactly the types of behaviors that a manager should do when doing 1 on ones. Right? They were prepared, but they allowed the conversation to flow. You know, they asked broad questions that allowed me to kind of take it in many different ways. You listened carefully, you reacted to what I was saying. You were present and focused. And these are the types of examples that managers can take with them when they lead a 1 on 1. So thank you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:50]:
Well, thank you for the kind words.

Steven Rolgelberg [00:33:52]:
My pleasure.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:59]:
If this conversation was helpful to you, 3 related episodes I’d recommend all under the theme of meetings. One of them is episode 358. How to lead meetings that get results. Mamie Kanfer Stewart was my guest on that episode, host of the Modern Manager podcast. Mami and I talked about the why behind meetings. What’s the purpose, and how do you decide who to invite? So many practical steps in that conversation. I get emails still a couple times a month about that conversation with Mamie even though we’ve, had it on in the library for many years now. A wonderful place to start if you haven’t heard it on.

Dave Stachowiak [00:34:36]:
Just generally thinking about meetings, how you do them, why you do them, who you invite. Episode 358 for that. On the big picture, I’d recommend episode 632 moving towards meetings of significance. Seth Godin was my guest on that episode. I’ve been following Seth’s work for more than 20 years. He’s inspired me in many ways on my thinking as a professional, as a leader. And Seth always has smart things to say about how people work well together and that conversation specifically talking about moving towards what he would call the industrial moving away from rather the what he’d call the industrial meeting and moving towards meetings of significance and the mindset that a leader can bring into meeting architecture and bringing people together. That helps us to show up in a way that is really significant.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:25]:
Episode 632, a great place for you to start on shifting your mindset. And then I’d also recommend the recent conversation with general CQ Brown, Jr., episode 691, bringing your strengths to a big job. General Brown, the chairman of the joint chiefs here in the United States. In that conversation, we talked about a whole bunch of things, and one of the aspects we looked at is meetings. How does he facilitate them? How does he help people feel comfortable who are very be very junior in the military sitting down with the chairman of the joint chiefs? And how does he bring his strengths to those conversations to be able to open up dialogue? So many smart things that he’s doing. I think some great tactics that’ll be helpful to you from that conversation. Again, that’s episode 691. All of those episodes, you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website along with many others on meetings.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:16]:
That’s just a few of them over the years. There’s a whole section on facilitating meetings inside of the episode library. To get access to it, go ahead and set up your free membership at coachingforleaders.com. That’s gonna give you access not only to the episode library on facilitating meetings, but every other topic in the dozens and dozens of topic areas inside of the library. So you can find exactly what’s relevant to you right now. I just got an email this week from a listener who said, you know, I don’t often listen to the episodes in order. I actually go into the website and I find what I need right now. And I listen that way.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:55]:
And I wrote back and said, yeah. That’s exactly why we set up the, website the way we have so that you can find what’s most relevant to you. So if you haven’t done that, go over to coachingforleaders.com, set up your free membership. That’s gonna give you access to that, plus all of the benefits inside the free membership, all of the free audio courses, my weekly leadership guide, my book notes, my own personal library, and a lot more. coachingforleaders.com for that. And if you’re looking for a bit more, I’d invite you to discover Coaching for Leaders Plus. Just earlier this month, we sat down, both myself, a bunch of our academy and pro members, and had a conversation with Todd Rogers. Todd was on the show earlier this year, and we were talking about his book, writing for busy readers.

Dave Stachowiak [00:37:42]:
How do you get people to read the things that you’re sending? So many of you told us that that was a helpful conversation. So I invited Todd back for a live conversation with our academy and pro members. And instead of me asking the questions, they asked the questions. We recorded it. It is one of the benefits inside of Coaching for Leaders Plus. Every single month, we have a guest expert come back, talk with our members directly. All of those recordings for the past several years are inside of Coaching for Leaders Plus along with the new recording every single month. If you’d like to find out more and benefit from the whole suite of benefits inside of Coaching for Leaders Plus, just go over to coachingforleaders.plus.

Dave Stachowiak [00:38:23]:
Coaching for leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. This coming Saturday, we have a Saturday cast coming up. I’m so glad to welcome Laura West to the show. She is one of our Coaching for Leaders Fellows and is gonna be having a conversation with me on how to respond to stakeholders when they make requests of your time or resources and you don’t have them. It’s a real challenge that so many of us face in our roles. And Laura and I are talking about how do you actually respond in a way that is helpful. So more on that this coming Saturday.

Dave Stachowiak [00:39:01]:
And then next Monday, Andrew Cooper on the 3 people in your network that will help you grow. Join me for both of those conversations in the next week, and I’ll see you back this weekend. Take care.