A leader who creates and maintains an environment that emphasizes trust, personal development and transparency while protecting the team from influences that would disrupt the Sprint -- including himself.Starting with this post, I'll share some tools that I use achieve that goal.
Today, we'll look at the One-On-One or O3.
The One-On-One is a technique taught to me by one of my former managers who, in turn, learned it from the Manager Tools guys over at http://www.manager-tools.com/. They have a number of podcasts on this topic, the first of which can be found here.
The One-On-One is an opportunity to invest in your employees as individuals. It requires time and preparation to be done right, but it is the single most powerful tool I know of for getting the most and best out of your direct reports.
Again, Manager Tools is the canonical reference on the topic, so I'll just outline the process here.
The One-On-One is a somewhat informal half-hour meeting with each of your direct reports, scheduled at a regular interval and time, preferably weekly. The meeting is divided into three ten-minute sections.
During the first section, the employee can talk about anything that is on his or her mind. It doesn't have to be work related, though in the earlier sessions it typically will be.
During the second section, the Manager shares observations, instruction, corrective actions, etc. Most of the items that a Manager discusses are items that were collected over the week that didn't require immediate action. Collecting those items together allows them to be discussed in a comfortable setting and without interrupting normal work flow or causing Context-Shifting for the employee. As anyone working with Software Engineers should know, Context-Shifting is a major productivity blocker. Of course, there are often things that need to be discussed now, but most can wait for up to a week.
The last ten-minute section is devoted to the future: your employee's self-development, promotion plan and the achievement of established objectives. This section serves as a constant reminder to the employee (and the Manager) that growth should be on-going and it keeps the employee's objectives in front of them.
Many Managers, after hearing about this, will immediately argue "I don't have time to spend five hours a week talking with my direct reports!" The truth is that you don't have the time not to! What you learn from your employees during an O3 will help you better understand how your teams work and what problems need to be solved. Things come out in an O3 that, for some odd reason, never make it into the Daily Stand-Up. And the O3 is the primary tool for building trust with your direct reports -- assuming you aren't otherwise doing things that would undermine that trust.
Initially, it's an awkward meeting. The best thing you can do is expect it to be awkward, tell your employees that it could be awkward and then do it anyway. After a few sessions, the walls will drop and the awkwardness will go away.
My current Scrum Team not only expects their weekly One-On-Ones to happen -- they look forward to them! As an example, a couple of weeks ago, one of my Software Engineers, who was having a difficult week, told me "I can't wait for our One-on-One -- I've been saving up for it." He then waved a sheet of paper with a list of items on it.
If you aren't doing One-On-Ones, I strongly advise that you listen to the Manager Tools podcasts on the subject. They've seen dramatic changes using this single tool -- and so have I.
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