You’ve got your first one-on-one meeting with a new employee scheduled. Here are the 15 questions you should put on the one-on-one meeting agenda.
The other week, I held a one-on-one meeting with a new employee – the first I’ve conducted in a while. (We don’t hire that often at Canopy, so it felt a bit of a momentous occasion!) As a part of our employee onboarding process, I’d set up weekly one-on-one meetings with our new hire with the purpose of having dedicated time set aside to talk through any potential issues, uncover feedback, and discuss her overall career direction.
As I sat down to prepare for the meeting, here’s the exact one-on-one meeting agenda I wrote out and asked for her input on…
Personal connection
- How’s life?
- What are you excited about lately?
- Anything have you worried or down lately?
Issues
- When have you felt frustrated in your first 2 weeks here?
- What feels unclear? (E.g., Do you feel you have enough context about the company?)
- How clear is “success” for you for the next 3 months, next 6 months, and next year?
- Are there any decisions you’re hung up on?
- Observations about the team and/or company culture?
Feedback
- Would you like more or less feedback on your work?
- Would you like more or less direction from me?
- How is the workload?
- What aspect of your job you would like more help or coaching?
- What about my management style can I improve?
Career direction
- If you could be proud of one accomplishment between now and next year, what would it be?
- What’s one thing we could do today to help you with your long term goals?
At the end of the one-on-one meeting, I then set aside 5 or so minutes to review takeaways and discuss next steps.
How’d the first meeting end up going? Unbelievably well. I was blown away by what I learned. (For example, I had no idea there was a personal outside-of-work issue that had been affecting our new hire!) And, I walked away with clear to-dos for myself to make certain projects more defined and to provide more support in other areas.
I’m curious: What might these 15 one-on-one meeting questions uncover for you and your new employee?
👊 Want a consistent system for preparing for ALL your one-on-one meetings (and not just ones with new hires)? Then you’ll want to peek at Canopy. Our One-on-Ones module makes it dead simple to prepare for one-on-one meetings. We give you hundreds of suggested one-on-one questions and agenda templates to make sure you get the most from your one-on-one meetings. Additionally, we have our One-on-Ones tool in Canopy Perform.
Ready to try it out? Sign-up here.
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