How can you get the most from one-to-one meetings at work?

In this solo episode of the Happier at Work podcast, host Aoife O’Brien, career and culture strategist for busy global leaders, dives deep into the secret to running effective, meaningful one-to-one meetings. Drawing on her own experiences, both positive and negative, Aoife explores why so many one-to-ones fall flat and how this underutilised tool can drive productivity, engagement, retention, and trust within your team. Aoife offers actionable advice and frameworks you can use whether you’re a manager, leader, or individual contributor looking to get the most out of every conversation.

In This Episode, You’ll Discover:

• How to leverage the "Four P’s" framework: Progress, Priorities, Problems, and Personal.
• How to tailor the structure and frequency of one-to-one meetings to suit individual needs.
• Tips for structuring the conversations.
• How to avoid using one-to-ones as simple status updates.

Related Topics Covered:

Communications, Meeting Employee Needs, Connection at Work

 Connect with Aoife O’Brien | Host of Happier at Work®:

• Website 
• LinkedIn 
• YouTube 

Related Episodes You’ll Love:

Episode 222: How to Build Authentic Connections and Personal Branding with Alyssa Jaffer

Episode 235: Empowering your Career and Overcoming Hurdles with Aoife O’Brien

Episode 254: How to Progress your Career with Purpose with Rumana Shaikh

About Happier at Work®

Happier at Work® is the podcast for business leaders who want to create meaningful, human-centric workplaces. Hosted by Aoife O’Brien, the show explores leadership, career clarity, imposter syndrome, workplace culture, and employee engagement — helping you and your team thrive.

If you enjoy podcasts like WorkLife with Adam Grant, The Happiness Lab, or Squiggly Careers, you’ll love Happier at Work®.

Mentioned in this episode:

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Have you ever left a one to one meeting thinking what was the point of that? Or maybe you're the one who was holding the meeting and you feel like, oh, I was a bit in over my head there. I didn't really know what to talk about. I know certainly in my own experience, I have experienced both of those things. So I've been at the receiving end of what I felt was not really a very well structured, not just a one off one to one meeting, but a series of one to one meetings that felt really unstructured to me. I wasn't really sure what to do. But equally, I've been the person who I don't know if this is what we should be talking about. How do we make better effective use of our time? My name is Aoife O'Brien, and you're listening or watching to the Happier at Work podcast. I'm so delighted to have you here today.

I am a career and culture strategist for busy global leaders in large organizations like in FMCG, in technology, and in finance. And today, I wanna talk all about how to have better and more effective one to one meetings. I think it's something that we can all relate to. We've all been there. And I don't want to lay the blame on anyone. I want to provide a great structure that people can actually use whether you are the one who's who's having the one to one meeting, whether you are the employee or or whether you are the one who is the manager, the leader who wants to take better responsibility for having more effective one to one conversations with your team. So in today's podcast episode, I'm going to share some frameworks that I use. But you might be thinking, like, why is this actually important? Like, for me, it's so, so important because it's such an underutilized tool to be able to drive productivity, to drive engagement and retention for employees.

Managers are actually they account for about 70% of the variance in people's experience at work. So your direct manager has such a huge influence on your overall experience. And I think one to ones can either be a really great opportunity to enhance that experience or can really, really detract from it. So on the positive side, it drives trust and performance, engagement, and retention. But when they're doing really badly, aside from being a waste of time, it can actually lead to distrust, lack of communication, disengagement, and sometimes people might actually leave as a result of the experience that they're having with their manager. This is especially important for client facing leaders as well. There are some common mistakes, and I'm sure people who are listening today or watching today can relate to this. And I know I certainly can.

So one of the experiences I had was it felt much more like a status update. So I was going to my leader at the time who was very senior in the business, and I was basically sharing a task list of what I've been up to and the progress that I was making on all of those tasks. Now he did step in at one time, and I got the impression that he felt it was my responsibility to be running the meeting even though he was more senior to me. But he let me know that one of the other leaders who he was having these regular one to one catch ups with, their conversations were very, very different to mine. I'm really glad that he said that because it gave me the opportunity to think about in those meetings what is it that I actually want to share. But make it more than just a status update. Don't show up unprepared. So do a bit of homework.

What is it that you want to get from the meeting? What is it that you have to share with the person? Do you have some feedback to share? Do you need to get an update on something in particular? Don't make it all about your agenda. There's two people involved here. And for me you know, when people often ask how often should we be having these one to one meetings, to me, it's very much driven by the individual employee. How often do they want to meet? And it should be based on their agenda, but don't assume that they know what they should be talking about. So maybe between the two of you, you can come up with a a an agenda that you can use on a regular basis. Don't cancel on a regular basis. If you've been on the receiving end of that, okay, once in a while, okay, it's understandable. Circumstances change.

Priorities change. But if you cancel someone repeatedly and you don't show up for these meetings, it just sends this signal that you're they are not that much of a priority for you. You don't really have anything to say or to share, and it really diminishes people's experience of work. And I I remember being definitely on the receiving end, but I also think that I was on the giving end of this of canceling meetings because we just felt on both sides, we didn't really have anything to update each other on. And I think that's, to me, a sign of a really, a manager employee relationship that's not really effective, that's not working really, really well. And, you know, I take ownership for that myself. Another thing to not do is to avoid difficult conversations. So, you know, it is an opportunity.

It's a safe space. It's a one to one meeting. You're not out in the open. You're in a private space that you can catch up individually with someone, and now is the opportunity to have those difficult conversations. On a slight side note, if you're on my mailing list, there's over a thousand people now, a thousand busy leaders just like you on my mailing list, then you will know that I have an upcoming webinar all about how to have those difficult conversations. So if you're not on my mailing list, I'll put a link in the show notes to get on to that so you get access to this. As I mentioned, I want to talk about a framework that you can use and just make things really easy for you to think about. So think about the four p's, progress.

What kind of progress are they making against their goals? How it's not a status update, but more how are they progressing, but also an opportunity to share what's going on for them. You can talk about priorities. What's top of mind for the person and share your own priorities. And if any priorities have changed on your end because I know we're all busy and sometimes priorities change. They get shifted from the top, but we need to communicate that those priorities have changed. It's an opportunity to make sure that you're both aligned on the priorities that the person should be working on. You can also bring up problems here or any challenges or blockers that the person is experiencing, be that with client relationships, internal politics, all of those kinds of things that get in the way of us doing our really, really best work. And it's an opportunity not to solve those problems immediately but to provide a listening ear so that you're listening to what they're saying without necessarily jumping in to solve the issue straight away.

And I'll come on to more about that in a minute. The other aspect that you can talk about is personal development, and I think this is probably the one thing that would, if we run out of time, this is the thing that's gonna get left off the agenda. But it's so important to talk about, well, what are their goals and how are they progressing towards their career aspirations? Is the work that they're doing currently in line with that? Is there something that they would like to be doing more of or less of? It's an opportunity to get out and get those things out in the open and actually talk about them. And, again, it's an opportunity for someone to share. And you don't have to talk about all four of these p's in every single meeting, but make sure that they're at least in the back of your mind and that you don't leave it too long between talking about very specific things and especially when it comes to personal development. I think the one thing that probably gets left off a lot of lists at the moment, being able to talk about those things. Now there are some approaches that you can take, and I absolutely love the coaching approach to these kinds of meetings. And, again, probably when I was working in, corporate environment, I didn't know about these things.

I didn't know about a coaching approach. I didn't know that there were these specific tools that you can use to build better relationships with people. Now a coaching approach essentially is asking questions to help other people to solve their problems. So ask open questions, you know, and you can ask people to elaborate on what it is that they're talking about. You can also use silence as a tool because usually, people want to fill the silence. And if you use it strategically in those meetings as a tool, what you might find is you get more information than actually you thought you might get to begin with. It's a great opportunity as well to give and ask for feedback. So feedback can go two ways.

And, again, you know, slight side note, I did run a session on how to deliver effective feedback as a webinar, about a month ago or so at the time of this recording. And if you want access to that, I can give you access to that if you join my mailing list. So anyone who's on my mailing list will have access to that recording. And, again, how do we make sure that we think about and structure these in a really logical way? For me, I'm very logical and very methodical. So it's thinking about the preparation that is required. What prep do I need to do in advance? How can I make this how can I set a really clear agenda? How can I make this the best use of time for both of us? Make sure to protect that time so you have it marked in your diary. It's not gonna get booked over. You're not gonna cancel or reschedule.

Make sure that it's really clear that this is a really important meeting to have. It's an opportunity to connect with your employee and talk to them about what's going on. And then prioritize. So make sure that you make the time for that, that you show them that they are a priority, that you're able to clearly share what you are prioritizing as well at the moment, and then personalize it. So different people will have different approaches. Some people might like something that's very structured. Other people might prefer kind of an informal chat. But find out from people what they like, something that I'm always so conscious of and and share with the organizations I work with.

They're they're always looking to learn, like, what's that company doing or what's that other company doing? But, actually, the way you find out what the best thing to do is in your organization is by asking people and actually listening. So it's so important to do that. And it's you can do that at a wider level, but you can also do that at an individual level. How does that person like to be managed? How do they like to have their one to one conversations? Now, again, for the people who are on my email list, I've put together a resource for this. It's a one to one template that you can use to structure your one to one conversations or at least to have a think about it in order to prepare better for those conversations that you're going into. It's for leaders, but it will work as well if you're an individual contributor. So if you'd like access to that, I'll put a link to how to sign up to my mailing list down below. And I suppose the final thoughts that I want to leave you with is the importance of these one to one conversations.

If that wasn't clear from everything that I've said from this entire podcast, then I don't know what is, but they're so, so important. The one to one experience is so it it and now it enables us to connect with people on that personal and human level. And as I mentioned at the start, the variance in people's experience is influenced 70% by the relationship with their manager. It's so important to keep these, and you can use it as a strategic tool to to drive engagement, to driving it to drive engagement, to drive retention, and to drive productivity in your team. And who doesn't want that? I really, really hope you enjoy today's podcast. I'd love to know what you took from us. Maybe if there's one thing that you're going to do differently, do let me know. If you think there's someone else who could benefit from listening to this or from watching today, then absolutely let me know.

Don't forget to leave a comment or leave a rating or review on your favorite platform, and I'll be back with you again for another solo episode in a couple of weeks.