Calibration
Level 4. Scores 76 to 100. The one on one most leaders describe and few run.
Your one on ones are the meeting most leaders describe and few run. Fixed slot, their agenda, real pushback, an action on both sides, and a running sense of where each person stands. Whatever you did to get here, do not let a new role or a bigger team quietly take it away.
That is the risk at this level. Calibration one on ones are expensive. They take preparation, a note you actually open, and thirty minutes you do not move. When you go from five reports to nine, or when the quarter turns bad, the first thing to go is the preparation, then the slot, then the pushback. The meeting still happens. It just becomes a Working Session that used to be better, and nobody tells you because the drop is slow.
So the work now is not to improve the meeting. It is to protect it and to hand it on. Two questions to ask yourself. First, can your reports run this kind of one on one with their own people? If you have managers of managers below you, the quality of their one on ones is now the number that matters, and you can only see it by asking. Second, does anyone in your team give you this meeting? Leaders at this level are often the only person in the building who gets no calibration themselves.
Nobody below you will give you this meeting, and nobody should expect them to. You have to go and get it. That is not a luxury at this level. It is maintenance. I do it two ways myself. I have a coach of my own, and I sit in a peer group of owners, because you cannot always be the teacher. If you are always the teacher, you are not growing.
The two do different jobs. A coach gives you the private calibration, on you. A peer group gives you people who have carried the same weight and will say what your team will not. Choose the group with care. Look for owners who have built more than one company, not hired CEOs. And if nobody in that room has ever made you uncomfortable, it is not doing its job.
What to do this week: send this page to one of your direct reports who manages people and ask them to take the score. Compare. Then put one thing in your own calendar that gives you what you give them.
You do not need the template below. You may want the one on one meeting questions for the calibration conversation, which is the one most leaders at this level still find hardest to open.
Next step: if you are the most senior person in the room and nobody calibrates you, that is what the CEO mastermind is for.
Your 1:1 template
Every template starts with the same three blocks:
- Header block: name, cadence, slot, and the line that this is their meeting.
- The base agenda in the 40 / 40 / 20 split: their items, your items, the next step.
- The closing two lines: one action each, date of the next meeting.
Then one block for each dimension that scored 50 or below. Open this page from the link the tool gave you and the blocks that apply to you are marked; without scores, treat every block as optional and keep the one that matches your lowest bar.
- Cadence
Cadence block: a protect the slot rule, a four week cadence table, and the rule for what happens when the leader must move it (the report picks the new time, within the same week). - Ownership
Ownership block: three opening prompts for the report (What is on your mind, What is in your way, What do you need from me), and a one line rule that the leader speaks second. - Depth
Depth block: the energy question, one pushback prompt (Tell me where I have this wrong), and a line on the three pushback patterns the leader may meet. - Follow-through
Follow-through block: an action log with owner and date, and a last time we said opener.
Next step
The other results
- Status UpdateStatus meetings with a nicer name.
- Check InWarm, well liked, and nothing changes between meetings.
- Working SessionThings get decided. Nobody hears where they stand.
About this result
This is one of 4 results from the 1:1 Meeting Builder and Score, a free tool that shows the score without an email. Aggregate figures are at the statistics page once 30 completions have been reached. More free tools are at the tools shelf.