“One-on-ones are really the meeting that should never be an email,” says Steven Rogelberg, chancellor’s professor at the University of North Carolina Charlotte and author of the new book Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings.
That’s because one-on-ones—or the routine time a manager sits down with a direct report to check in on their projects, ask about their goals, and talk meaningfully about how they’re feeling on the job—carry real weight in how connected people feel to their work. But according to Rogelberg, who’s spent more than 20 years studying meetings, managers aren’t getting these sit-downs right.
Over the past decade, research has found that employees whose managers regularly meet with them are about three times as likely to feel engaged at their job than those whose managers don’t. These meetings have a ripple effect, too: Surveys show that managers and reports alike say one-on-ones (or 1:1s) can buoy a whole team’s performance.
But Rogelberg’s research finds they have have plenty of room for improvement: Employees rate nearly half of their one-on-one meetings as suboptimal—and most managers overestimate how well they’re running them. “It’s a general human tendency to think we’re better at things than we really are, especially when it comes to the world of interpersonal relationships,” Rogelberg tells Quartz. As it turns out, our closed-door conferrals are no exception.
In that light, maybe managers need an outside assessment. Take this quiz, excerpted from Rogelberg’s book, to get a more comprehensive look at how well you’re approaching your one-on-ones—and to pinpoint how those check-ins could go a lot better.
The quiz
Scoring yourself
All done with the list? Now tally up the number of items where you rated yourself at 85% or higher.
- 26-29: Nice work! You hold great one-on-ones. Focus on honing your habits—and bringing them to every sit-down.
- 20-26: You have a solid foundation here! Target one to three items you’re falling short on, until you confidently do them in every one-on-one.
- 20 and under: You have some room for improvement—but improvement, dear reader, begets opportunity! Read up below on how to boost your sit-down skills.
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Assessment from GLAD WE MET by Steven G. Rogelberg. Copyright © 2024 by Steven Rogelberg and published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.