It’s a good idea to regularly meet one-on-one with the key team members in your remodeling business. The tricky thing is that these meetings can easily turn unproductive.
When you meet one-on-one with people like your production manager, estimator, designer, or office manager, you can quickly start talking about ongoing projects and get stuck lamenting about that cranky client or the mistake Bill made (again) out in the field. I’ve seen these meetings quickly become unfocused, drag on longer than they should, and not be productive.
I wanted to share an outline for you to consider to make your one-on-one meetings more focused, powerful, and effective. It's important to have the employee submit responses to these topics the day before the meeting:
- First 5 minutes: Tell me how you think things are going and why (1-10; 1:bad / 5:average / 7:satisfied / 10:impressed).
- Next 5 minutes: Share something that you are proud of/happy about since the last time we met and any challenges you need my help with.
- Next 10 minutes: Let’s talk about whatever you want to discuss related to your overall improvement or advancing your career/department
- Final 10 minutes: Coaching from me about something that you brought up during the meeting, something we’ve been working on, or something new that I think we should work on
As you can see by the topics above, you can quickly get a pulse for how employees are feeling about their work and take the time to celebrate a success and acknowledge challenges you can help with. They get time to discuss improvements they want to make and you get time to coach them on important topics. Be sure to assign roles. One person should take care of notes and capturing action steps and deadlines; the other can be the timekeeper.
It’s easy, especially in a smaller remodeling company, to approach these key meetings in a haphazard way. Or (even worse) you think you don’t need to meet one-on-one because you’re in communication about things every day. Please consider the outline and advice above; it has been transformative for many of your remodeling colleagues (and their employees) who have taken it to heart and implemented it.
