Camille Fournier, author of “The Manager’s Path” emphasizes the importance of one-on-one meetings, also referred to as one-on-ones. These meetings help foster a strong working relationship with your direct manager. They provide ample opportunity to discuss goal setting, performance review, and career development. In a remote work environment, the value one-on-ones provide extends beyond your manager and to your immediate team members. Regular one-on-ones with your teammates:
- Humanize individuals on the other side of the screen
- Facilitate knowledge sharing, mentorship, and cross-training
- Enable collaborative problem solving and support
- Provide opportunity for feedback and the free exchange of ideas
- Build relationships with other remote members of your team
- Help identify systemic issues or concerns within a team or organization
- Provide a platform for addressing conflicts / disagreements that may arise
While peer one-on-ones can provide a lot of value, a big argument against them is that they require a lot of time and can cost a lot of money. In this post, we’ll take a deeper look into the time commitment and cost for peer one-on-ones.
Observations
Before diving into the time and cost of one-on-ones, let us first consider how many meetings happen given a team size. We do this by simply enumerating the meeting pairs that occur.