Leadership Playbook: One-to-Ones
The importance of the weekly One-to-One
Great leadership will always be supported by a robust foundation of systems and processes that operate behind the scenes. These essential tools and strategies enable leaders to perform and carry out their responsibilities effectively and consistently. Here, I aim to document the fundamental systems, processes, tools and strategies that I have acquired and refined over the years. These elements, which I collectively call my "Leadership Playbook," have become indispensable to me in my role as a school leader.
Weekly One-to-Ones (121s)
For me, one of the best practices I have long incorporated into my leadership is having a 30-minute one-to-one (121) meeting each week with every member of my team. I first learnt about doing one-on-ones like this from the Manager Tools podcast, from their Trinity series. Incidentally, they call them One-on-Ones or OOOs, but 121 felt more appropriate in our context. Whilst their podcasts are geared for an American business audience, which sometimes necessitates adaptation for my ‘Britishness’, I still find their ideas highly beneficial. Early in my career, I eagerly incorporated many of their concepts with great success.
The weekly 121s are a way to have a two-way drip-feeding of information, I see it as irrigation rather than a flash-flood, that enables you to keep your finger on the pulse and prioritise relationships with team members. I always lock them in at the start of the year in Google Calendar and maintain them every week, never missing them. I hold firm to this rule and if something does come up (teaching is horrendous for smashing your calendar) then we rearrange it but will never skip it.
Agenda
My 121s have the same agenda every week. 10 minutes for them, then 10 minutes for me, and then the remaining 10 minutes for professional learning. I have to admit to rarely getting to professional learning until we get close to the mid or end-of-year reviews, and then the CPD can take the full session, although for the mid and end of year reviews, we will always book in an additional hour. I make it clear that their 10 minutes can be about anything they want to discuss, be it professional or personal. Over the years, a number of meetings have been be mostly personal with some team members, whereas others have kept things fully focused on school. Teachers have shared about their personal life, issues at home or will talk about things bothering them inside or outside of school. I feel that these types of convos are instrumental in building the solid relationships we develop. If their mind is not in the right place, discussing a Year 13 economics assessment won’t happen with full engagement. This is also why I want their agenda to always be discussed first.
As the Manager Tools podcast says, the 121s are for the team member you lead, not for you, their leader. More often than not, things I may wish to discuss are added by them anyway, especially as we run a pretty tight calendar so you can see what is coming up and I do tend to bring a small number of standing items to discuss each week. These tend to be reviewing actions from previous meetings, student matters (successes, CP or behavioural concerns, etc.), upcoming events (meetings they are leading, assemblies, etc.), and their team members (concerns, PD needs, etc.). After they share, I will bring my items up in order of importance, conscious of time so we hit the most important things first.
Frequency & record keeping
The frequency of the meetings helps to build independence and capacity within the team. Rather than having people you lead coming to you often with relatively trivial matters across the week, you ask them to add them to your one-to-one agenda. I share a Google Doc that forms our agenda and record of notes from each meeting, copying and pasting the template at the top ready for each new 121. They know they can add items whenever they want to in their agenda section, this offers me a heads up and allows me time to prepare or bring along any data they might need etc. Sometimes, I see things added and then later removed. When asked, they will say they found a solution… they sorted it themselves, the problem went away or maybe they found someone else to support them. I like it when that happens! It is worth noting, I do not add my agenda items to the doc. I explain to them that if I did, I would essentially be hijacking their meeting. I however I frame it, if I listed what I wanted to discuss on that doc, my agenda will become ‘the’ agenda and I always want them to feel that the 121 is their meeting.
I always take notes on what we discuss on the doc for transparency; I make notes so they are free to think and speak. I will also record any actions, who owns them and for when at the bottom, then quickly review them at the end. Some team members make their own notes as well but most now just review the doc after and add any actions to their own to do lists or calendars.
Feedback
I have not always ran 121s this way. When I first began, our school had a culture of having longer meetings every two weeks. Many leaders still continue to do this, but I am told shorter meeting feel more focused, productive and personal and provide those I lead with a weekly forum to be heard. There are weeks when what we cover is done and dusted within 15 to 20 minutes, freeing us both up to get on with other things.
This style of 121 lets you cover a lot of ground and always results in a set clear action items that provide a clear direction moving forward. I feel I am more effective because of doing 121s in this way. With longer meetings every two weeks, I found that a large chunk of time was spent ‘catching up’ on what had happened since we last met. I know a few more leaders are opting to do the 30-minute weekly 121s now, preferring the irrigation approach to a flash flood!