#4 Where should you have your 1:1 Meeting?

I got some statements from managers and HR on how they proceed with their office colleagues. 

“ I tend to find that mixing up where you have one-on-one is pretty helpful. SO I’ll have them sometimes in a one-on-one room, other times in the cafeteria.”

“ I’ll often walk around the office, get outside, I think with a couple on my team, they and we probably think better while we’re walking. So it’s as much as possible, like let’s get out of the office and we take a walk, get out of the building.”

“Getting out of the building is little more casual conversation. So I don’t think the agenda have some heavy stuff in it, then I like to actually go outside, maybe get coffee or walk around the neighborhood and have the conversation.”

“you tend to get very different kind of layer of conversation depending on the format. So often, if you want to have a hard personal conversation, doing that in the form of a walking meeting allows things to be a little freer and less constrained by kind of being in the office directly.”

One of the things I found most helpful in having beneficial conversations during a one on one is getting out of the office, when you are sitting in the conference room where you meet for work-related tasks every day, it’s really easy to fall into the habbit of just talking about projects or depending on the set up your office environment, the concern of giving friendly space could keep your employees from really opening up.

At least once every month or two, get out of the office, go to a coffee shop, go out for lunch, have a walking meeting around a nearby park, or break up your routine to really give your team members a personal development space to talk.

Make this a time where you break out of the routine where you can 

Connect

Brainstorm

Get creative

Some people have their best ideas while moving and it can help bring a new perspective on a situation that seems to have hit a dead end.

As a manager, you should create a comfortable environment for your employees… And sometimes, that might mean thinking outside the box or the office building, for that matter.