Episode 116: The Pushback Episode – 1:1s With Your Employees

Voice Over: You’re about to listen to another episode of What The Hell Just Happened?! Join Paul Edwards and his guests as they discuss and sometimes even solve some interesting HR problems.

Paul: And… I might go off the rails sometimes and talk about whatever I want!

Amanda: Hi, Paul.

Paul: Hello, Amanda.

Amanda: How are you doing today?

Paul: I’m good. Welcome to the podcast. You’re not usually the one who is interviewing me.

Amanda: I know. I’m not usually behind the mic. It’s pretty wild, but I had to, you know, we saw this we have this really great Facebook community – HR Base Camp, as you’re very well aware of. And it has a lot of people on there. And we had one in particular bring up on our post about the podcast we did about one-on-ones maybe three weeks ago, some really, really good feedback on it. And when you read it, you said that you wanted to talk about it because you valued this feedback.

Paul: Yeah, we’re going to call this the push-back edition of One-on-One.

Amanda: Yeah!

Paul: One-on-one meetings with your employees.

Amanda: Yeah, definitely.

Paul: The Pushback.

Amanda: So it’s an office manager. His name is Chris, and he’s great. We love Chris because he…

Paul: Well, Chris has an alias. It’s Kris Kringle.

Amanda: Yeah, it is Kris Kringle.

Paul: I’m saying Santa Claus is pushing back.

Amanda: Santa Claus is pushing back for sure. We love him, though, because he’s very engaged in our community, so it’s awesome. One of the points I kind of want to go through his comment bit by bit with you just so you get a chance to really, you know, comment. So his first good thing that he brought up is that he felt like the guidance we gave was more applicable to larger offices rather than smaller offices.

Amanda: He feels that, you know, one-on-ones flow very differently in that setting.

Paul: Mm hmm.

Amanda: He thinks the main point behind that is he wants better guidance on overcoming that initial awkwardness of starting these up if you haven’t been doing them. For example, how do we introduce that we are doing this to our team in a way that doesn’t make them feel like we’re being intrusive on their personal lives or trying to micromanage them or constantly reprimanding them for little things.

Paul: Okay. So I want to – you may have to even ask me that again because I want to point something out that he said in the beginning, which was this feels like it might work better in medium to larger businesses, not so much in a dental practice. Maybe if you had desks and cubicles and stuff.

Paul: And I want to say that while I fully realize that sometimes there are physical challenges inside of a dental practice, especially a small practice – for example, sometimes there’s not a place for a nursing mother to go to that’s private because there’s only the doctor’s office, or there was only the doctor’s office. And in the last expansion, they turned that into a hygienic space.

[Amanda laughs]

Paul: And there’s literally, you know, not a doctor’s office anymore. So sometimes there can be physical challenges to having a one-on-one space or someplace that you can go and be in. But I also want to be really clear that the guidance that I’m giving is not for an office with cubicles. There are businesses that have spaces like that that do one-on-ones. But in this particular instance, I’d like for everyone to just remember, and I don’t say this in every podcast, but we’re giving out guidance – you have to make the guidance fit for you.

Amanda: Oh, yeah.

Paul: Like, how you – what space you have, how you would do it, where you would do it. It’s always got to change a little bit. So definitely, one-on-ones are more difficult for smaller teams.

Paul: Okay. Now let’s go to the “how do you introduce it?” Right.

Amanda: Yeah. His first thing is, “How do we introduce that we’re doing this to our team in a way that doesn’t make them feel like we’re being intrusive?”

Paul: Are we quoting him? “We’re doing this to our team”?

Amanda: Yes, exactly. “We’re being intrusive on their personal lives or trying to micromanage them or constantly reprimanding them for little things.”

Paul: Okay. So, Chris, we’re not doing this to anybody.

Amanda: Yeah.

Paul: Okay. So if those were your words, that’s one of the best ways for me to get my head wrapped around something new. Sometimes I get to use the right words. This is something that we’re doing with each team member. And the way to make them not feel micromanaged is to set an expectation that this is going to be a positive experience, especially in the beginning.

Paul: So don’t be waiting with your complaints.

Amanda: Okay.

Paul: Don’t start off with, “Hey, we’re going to do this cool thing. It’s a one-on-one where you’re going to get to talk to me, and we’re going to get to know each other. And we’re going to trade some ideas and talk about the first thing I want to do is I want to talk about what you’re doing wrong.”

[Amanda laughs]

Paul: Okay. Because that’s not the context of a one-on-one.

[Amanda laughs]

Amanda: That’s not very fun.

Paul: Yeah. A one-on-one is kind of a solution-seeking discussion.

Amanda: Yeah.

Paul: It’s a professional relationship that we’re developing where we can have conversations about solving problems.

Amanda: Mm hmm.

Paul: No campfires, no Kumbaya. Just real conversations.

Amanda: Yeah.

Paul: Alright. Thanks.

Voice Over: Thanks for joining us for this week’s episode of What The Hell Just Happened? Do Paul a favor: share this with your network. If you have an HR issue or a question you’d like us to discuss on this show, send it to podcast@WTHjusthappened.com. For more HR advice and insights from Paul and his team of experts, you can also join the private Facebook group, HR Base Camp, or visit HRbasecamp.com. Make sure you tune in next week. And remember: better workplaces make better lives.