Working Session
Level 3. Scores 51 to 75. Things get decided. Nobody hears where they stand.
Your one on ones do work. Your reports set most of the agenda, things get decided, and what gets agreed mostly gets done. You should know that before you read the rest, because the rest is about the last quarter of the distance.
What separates a Working Session from a Calibration is not effort. It is whether the meeting tells your report, plainly and regularly, where they stand. Working Session leaders are good at solving the problem in front of them. They are less consistent at stepping back from the problem to say "here is how I see your year" or "this is the thing that will decide whether you get the next role". That conversation happens once a year, in a review, when it is too late to be useful.
Check your lowest dimension. If it is Depth, the calibration piece is the gap: your reports know what you think about their work and not what you think about them. If it is Cadence, you are running a strong meeting that gets bumped too often, and the quality of the meeting is hiding the cost of the missed ones. If it is Follow-through, the actions exist but nobody checks them, and a good meeting is quietly turning into a good conversation.
My rule is simple. Every report should hear where they stand at least once a month. In the one on one, not once a year in a review. When something changes my view, they hear it within a day. After two days it is too late to be useful.
The words I use to open it are plain: I want to step back from the work for a few minutes and talk about you. Then I say what I saw, what it did, and what I need from here. Leave out the last part and it is not calibration. It is venting.
What to do this week: pick the one report you find easiest to talk to and give them the calibration line in the next meeting. "On the whole, here is where I think you are and here is what would change my view." Easy person first, because you will get the wording wrong once and it should not cost you anything.
The template below marks every block that applies to your scores; if none applies, keep only the one that matches your lowest dimension. You do not need a longer agenda. You need one more sentence.
Next step: if you run more than five one on ones a week and they are all at this level, your problem is load, not quality. Check it with the span of control calculator.
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.
- CalibrationThe one on one most leaders describe and few run.
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.