Episode 112: How to Prevent Awkward 1:1s

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’m gonna go off the rails sometimes and talk about whatever I want.

Nora: Hi, Paul.

Paul: Hi, Nora.

Nora: How are you doing?

Paul: I’m doing really good today. Last time… I don’t know the order that we release our podcasts, so it may be in a future one, Nora tricked me. She’s probably the first one who has successfully tricked me. Now, I’m on high guard. Alright, Nora, what’s the question?

Nora: Beware when you invite compliance people into your podcast…

[Nora laughs]

Paul: I know. I can’t fake my way through anything with you guys.

[Paul Laughs]

[Nora laughs]

Nora: I don’t think I’m gonna trick you on this one. You’re an expert.

Paul: That’s what someone says right before they trick you.

Nora: You’re an expert in this area, and I really just want your guidance on this. It was honestly something that I struggled with a little bit when I managed, and it’s one-on-ones. We get a lot of new managers that hear about this, they wanna do it, and they just want some guidance on how to do it. I think functionally it probably works out a bit differently in a dental practice than it does here at CEDR, but fundamentally it’s the same process. One issue that I would have sometimes at these meetings is, what to talk about. I like to use it as an opportunity to get closer to my employees and understand them better, see how they tick, and all that.

Paul: Which is a really good function of a one-on-one.

Nora: Yeah and mostly I just want to hear from them. But some people aren’t talkers.

Paul: A lot of people aren’t talkers.

Nora: Yeah, so, how do you keep things from getting awkward? How do you keep the conversation flowing?

Paul: We polled our members, our managers, and owners, all kinds of medical practices, and we were really surprised. The question we asked is: are you doing some form of one-on-one, where we defined that you’re setting aside 20 to 30 minutes at least once a week or once every two weeks in order to have a conversation with an employee? 40% of our respondents said that they are actually doing these in some form or another.

And I was really caught off… I was stunned. I thought that was a super high number. It told us that it’s important. And it’s something that we’ve been doing at CEDR. I do wanna share with everybody, and you, Nora, that I struggled with this at first, and my question was exactly the same: what am I supposed to do? Some of my direct reports – and that’s who comes to you in a 1:1, so, if you’re a manager of a practice, you need to know that – you can’t have more than seven one-on-ones a week. So, that presents a challenge unto itself. Who’s gonna be the direct report, and who’s gonna be doing the one-on-ones? And you really shouldn’t be doing seven. That’s too many in and of itself.

Okay so, back to the one-on-one and what you should be doing. The first challenge is that some people don’t wanna talk that much. The second challenge is that I don’t feel a connection to everybody who’s my direct report. And that’s okay. I don’t want to say we’re not friends, but we’re not friends. We know a little bit about each other. But really, the construct of a one-on-one, the way that I learned it, which we had someone who worked here and he introduced it and I owe him a debt for introducing it, even though it took me about three years to get them figured out – and once I got it right, it was like, Eureka. This is how I like to start the one-on-one: ‘how are you doing? What’s going on? Did your cat make it? Your cat didn’t make it? Oh no’. Just spend a minute. It doesn’t have to be about the cat. It could be about kids, a new car, a motorcycle, could be about just something personal because that’s the connection that we can have with one another. And connection is good.

And… A little bit of that in the beginning, a few minutes, sometimes it’s less than a minute sometimes it’s ten minutes because that’s what’s going on. That’s a good way to connect…

Nora: Right.

Paul: Alright thanks for asking that question.

Nora: Yeah!

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