the highest impact way to use the last 90 seconds of your 1:1

I've been talking recently with a bunch of leaders who are valued by their employees for their internal knowledge base and expertise in their company's domain. Their one-on-one meetings typically look like this: reports come in having a bunch of things they're blocked on, or having a bunch of ideas they feel certain they've gone the distance on and they now want the boss's take on how to level it up.

And so I watch the boss expound and profess, and be genius-y and brilliant. It's meaningful. It's a good use of one-on-one time. Their employee is freed up by it, inspired by it, and walks away.

Then they both repeat the whole process again a week later.

Here's the advice I want these bosses to take: What if you took 90 seconds at the end of this 1:1 and said, "What did I offer that you didn't have already? If you subtract what you came in with from what I gave you, what is left? Can you name it? Can you meta-stamp it? And if I challenge you next time to come in with the answer to the question, 'What is my boss going to say when I present this thing?' already scripted, or already thought through. Could you do it?"

Asking that and getting the answer takes less than 90 seconds.

If leaders added that into their meetings, they get people within their current roles, with their current salaries, needing less of the leader’s time and feeling proud of themselves for growing. Often working for you is one of the major reasons they want to be there, and that's because of your brilliance. Now they're gaining some of that brilliance to wield on their own.

That regular, small conversation is its own cultural ecosystem - a feedback loop that conveys “what we value and how you get ahead around here”. Just making that 90-second move.

I hypothesize that the reason why most people might not do this — even if they'll do it while I'm observing and I force their hand and they're glad of it — is that they worry about what happens when the brilliant analysis isn’t their solely owned IP or value-add anymore. I think deep down, they're protective of their expertise and worried they'll feel meaningless without their employees needing to ask for it.

Fortunately, there is an excellent use of the new bandwidth a leader gains when their reports are leveling up and acquiring what was previously leader-only expertise. Leaders now get to level up the organization as whole, spending time on the questions that only they can really take responsibility for.

-ben