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Hello, I'm Elaine Kung. I’m excited to continue with SHINE Your Talk! Where we left off last time is when we receive criticism from our boss sometimes could be very harsh. And we were talking through the many different tools, techniques, and steps that we could take, how to respond to those criticism. And I suggest if we have good one-on-one meetings and relationship with our boss on a regular basis, then you can avoid a lot of these unnecessary, harsh criticism. And how do we do the effective one-on-one meetings? So these one-on-one meetings can help to address the 6P: People relationship, Project challenges, Profits, Problem solving, so-called Politics, and even Promotion. So your one-on-one on a regular basis can help you address the 6P which is very important in our career at work. The one-on-one meeting would include these 4C components. Number one, consider perhaps typical 30 minutes weekly or biweekly, based on how busy your bosses, how big is their team, how many people they need to do one-on-one?
And in general, I don't recommend it to be overly frequent or too infrequent. Typically, I would suggest around 30 minutes once a week or once every 2 weeks. So consider that first C. Second C is to share your complete milestones since your last one-on-one meeting, and we'll go in detail what that means. Third C is your current priority and time allocation. You can align with each other's expectation. And the final C is career development plan that you would discuss once or twice a year.
So let's go into detail what completed milestones since the last one-on-one meeting means. It means that, say, with the 30 minutes meeting, once every week or every 2 weeks, you would allocate about 10-15 minutes on this first agenda topic. What are the milestones that you have completed since your last one-on-one? And when you communicate that be sure. Don't go through a long laundry list of tasks that you finished. Your boss may not be as interested, and the time may not be enough for you to go through all the details. What is most valuable is to explain to your boss, what did you accomplish. And I have a tool to help us explain that story. And we'll go through that. The way to share that is a SOAR story. You would tell them the Situation on the project, the Obstacle that you run into, what Action you took, and then what Results did you get?
I'll give you an example on a SOAR story. You would say,“Boss, you asked me to use this tool to solve the project problem that we have. And it's a tool that we've never used. So I took the initiative to study online to learn this tool for 3 weeks and ask experts. Usually, this tool would take a 13-week course to learn. So after I learnt 3 weeks on my own and asked experts, I now use the tool to solve the project problem. As a result, we now have 50 % improvement in our production.” So that's how you tell your SOAR story. Most important is the numbers. Instead of 13 weeks, it's actually 3 weeks to learn the tool. And then the result is 50 % improvement. So you want to net out about 2 minutes story on what you did finish since your last one-on-one meeting in a very clear, concise, and a compelling manner.
And then if there's a call to action, in terms of what support you may need from your boss, then you would express that as well. So be very short and sweet, very clear, concise, compelling, and what action you need your boss to help with. Then second S is to show impact with numbers, not just about all the laundry list, detail task. So try to skip the detail. Now, except if your boss is very interested in detail, then you may explain more. You could offer high level SOAR story and ask for permission if your boss needs to know more detail. If not, you could just skip that. And the third S is to seek feedback and clarify what support you may need. What is the call to action for your boss to take? And when you see the feedback, this way, it's a more proactive, more positive setting then your boss wouldn't be harsh in your criticism.
The final S is solution leader, when you run into a problem, you want to be a solution leader. You do your homework, understand what the problem is. Do some problem discovery, do homework, asking other partners and coworkers, and then come up with a proposal how to solve the problem. That way, when you go and explain the problem, you’re already prepared and proactive. So you're not a problem leader and just throw the problem at your boss. I run you through this problem. What should I do? Then you are not corrected. You want to do all that homework and say, “Boss, I ran into this problem, and I did these homework and analysis and I think of this proposal and want to get your feedback. And this is the support I would need from you”. For example, they may need to give you some air cover and talk to some peer organization and their leader to provide you support.
So that is your first 10 or 15 minutes of your one-on-one to share the completed milestone in a very thorough and yet very clear, concise and compelling manner through these 4S. Then the second part of your agenda is to discuss your current priority and your time allocation. That could be another 10-15 minutes that you want to align on expectation based on the result that you discussed and how you have projects that are the top five priority and then you have three other additional work items that maybe lower priority.
So you want to make sure you align the expectation with your boss, clearly defining these are your top five priority. What’s above the line as must do and what's below the line. You want to be clear to explain and align with your boss so that we have the same expectation. So you can avoid surprises. Both the negative surprise, “oops, we forgot about this priority” and also even positive surprise or present surprise or good news. You want to be the first person to tell your boss. You don't want your boss to hear either bad news or good news from other people that you're responsible for. So these second agenda topic in your one-on-one would help to align and listen to each other, make sure you have good communication and understand what's important. And that we are on the same page. So that is the second part of your one-on-one meeting agenda. So that makes up about your 30 minutes and be open-minded to listen.
Now, the final C is the career development plan. You would not include career development in every one-on-one, that's not necessary. So your every one-on-one is to demonstrate your personal brand, your capability, your open-mindedness, your proactive solution leader. Those are all good things. And that would avoid a harsh criticism. And when you demonstrate such a good brand and a good track record, then once or twice a year, you would plan when you do the career development. And this may not be in the usual one-on-one, it could be a dedicated 1 hour, at the right time that you would confirm with your boss when to discuss the career development plan.
So in this agenda topic, we want to talk about the Ws for your career goals in 1 year, 3 years, or 5 years as an example. So you define the duration. What are the Ws? Who is involved? Of course, yourself. And then your boss and maybe future boss or organization who you may be looking at. What is it that you're interested in becoming and doing over time? Where would this be? And why are you interested in this? And when would this be? These are the five Ws that you’d want to discuss. And these you’d want to prepare in advance. Ultimately, who's responsible for your career planning is not your boss, it’s yourself.
Now your boss definitely plays an important role to give you suggestion, feedback and to be honest. Your boss’ performance review partly is rated based on how well they helped the team members to develop their career. How well do they help the team members to move from one job to another, to move from one career level to another? The more mobility, fruitful movement at the right time, the more promotion the boss is able to deliver from their team, the better is their performance review. So this is a win-win situation. You manage and own your own career plan and development, and then with your boss partnering together. So you need to do your homework. What is your work? And that would involve a few additional tools in our other career talks where we could help understand your purpose for your current job and the future job. What is your principle? How you make decisions? What value do you use? What is your passion that you're interested in doing? And then what people relationship would help you build this network to plan your next career move.
And finally, your performance. Because your current performance already exceeded your current level and you're performing at the next level. So that's the next point - what it takes to move from the current level to the next level in the next role, that you are already performing at that next role in the next level. That makes it very compelling and a convincing case for your boss and your senior leadership to support your career plan, because you're performing at that level, at that role.
And then you need to wait and be patient for the right time. In the meantime, prepare yourself through training, whether it's a hard skill, technology, business, knowledge, know-how and your soft skill, meaning your leadership, communication, relationship with people. Both of these are needed.
So when you have these proactive one-on-one meetings that really help you feel good, positive relationship with people, including your boss, projects, success, your delivering result that helped deliver with profits to your business and helping solving problems and have positive politics that can have positive influence, not just the negative politics or even negative. How do we handle this? And address those in effective one-on-one meetings? And then good career development plan and allow you to pave your way for promotion. This is the summary of the effective one-on-one meeting agenda that I have developed over my 33 years of career and truly helped me to build up the benefit for the 6P. This is a good time to do a screenshot for you to remember and practice.
And recently one of my students practiced this and she was so happy with the result with her boss. And she actually was in tears and really grateful. Although she wishe she learned this sooner. So in the same way, I encourage you to practice the 4H. Don't just learn about this in your head. You have your heart conviction and also put it into practice with your hand and then make it as a weekly, regular, healthy habit. And then get the same result like my student just told me. And then remember to jot down what you’re gonna start doing, add. Stop doing, minus. Do more, multiple and do less, division. I’ll see you next time!