How One-On-One Meeting Enlighten My Way Of Working
My story of how I developed more meaningful communication in the workplace.
Failing to communicate at any kind of level can be catastrophic. For example, Nokia’s fell out was partially caused by ineffective communications.
“Habits of communication that favour unfocused discussions about strategy over clear plans to bring new phone models to market” (source: trainingjurnal)
To avoid the same mistake, most companies try to solve the problem before it really happened. Communication failure can be avoided by understanding each other, and One on one session is one of the simplest solutions.
One-on-one sessions are mandatory to process in my company during annual employee appraisal. In my occupation as a Lead, I am required to do four sessions with my superior and direct subordinates. However, I chose to do it with more than twenty people. Including my peers and my indirect subordinates (2 and 3 levels under me).
Doing one on one sessions with my superiors, peers, and subordinates can be very exhausting. Since we are working on a tight schedule, I need a lot of time and effort to arrange it.
Then, each one of them is unique. I cannot use the same approach for all. Approaching in the wrong way could lead to worse conditions. In this case, my skill in communication and leader is definitely required.
It is not only the external factors, my mind is also needed to be adjusted so that I am ready for any kind of comments. I need a lot of effort to learn wisdom, or at least I need to act like a wise man. In my opinion, showing a bad emotion during One on One session is also a bad thing for a leader.
In any kind of organization, especially professional organizations, the performance review is a mandatory phase. However, most people don’t really know why they received the results.
Receiving The Result
After receiving the appraisal, each one of them needs to reflect and evaluate our works. However, without additional explanation, it can be misleading. For example, my subordinate thought that doing day by day job is enough to be a good employee. The fact is, to look good, he or she needs to be more active, communicative, and doing any kind of improvements related to their job.
Either good or bad results, knowing the truth can be very advantageous. As a person or employee, by knowing my weakness and strength, I can optimize all of them. I know what kind of training that I would enroll, I know who is the people that I could ask for help, etc.
After doing One on One sessions with more than twenty people, I received a lot of “gifts”. Yeah, it is our culture to rephrase critics and suggestions as a gift.
My superior and peers want me to be more communicative. I am expected to share any problem that we faced, even though it is already solved.
On the other hand, my subordinates want me to give more attention to them. Any kind of comments, suggestions, and critics are expected to be given thoroughly. More than that, they also want me to give them more problems to be solved, not only giving them orders to do.
It has been weeks since I was enlightened, I change my way of working. Honestly, it is consuming more time for now, but I could expect better results in long term.
By sharing more information, I am sure that we could solve the problems faster in the future. After delegating more problems to my subordinates, they are feeling more enthusiastic in their job and feel engaged with the company.
More than that, I know deeper about my team. I learn more about them, and I hope to gain their trust more.
