Stop wasting your time on team meetings. Asynchronous communication is one of the core principles why remote work is effective. 

A growing number of remote companies last year proved dozens of reports about remote work. Employee productivity increases during work from home. For example, Stanford’s research and Cisco’s study told the same.

Why?

Asynchronous communication.

In this article, we will talk about the most important things that make teams’ communication productive:

• What is asynchronous and synchronous communications
• Benefits of asynchronous meetings
• Why you should focus on asynchronous meetings (and should you do it?)
• When you should use synchronous communication (and why you can’t eliminate it)
• 3 steps how to run effective meetings 
• Examples of meetings for asynchronous and synchronous communication
• How to balance both types of communication: status meeting example

Seems a lot? Yeah, true. However, it’s a short guide on how to build communication in your team to increase productivity.

Let’s start with the basics.

What’s asynchronous communication?

Asynchronous communication is a way of communication when you don’t expect to get an immediate answer to your message. For example, email is asynchronous communication.

As opposite, synchronous communication is communication when the recipient is waiting for an immediate answer. The real-time meeting is an example of pure synchronous communication.

However, digital forms of communication might be synchronous too. For example, real-time answering in a messenger becomes synchronous. 

If you want to learn more about both types of communication, you can read our article What is Asynchronous Communication?

Benefits of asynchronous communication?

Better control of the time. As the result, employees are more happier and productive. Employees have almost full control over how to plan their day and schedule. Some of them prefer to work at night, others like to work in the morning. Also, it helps to find a better work-life balance because employees might spend mornings with their children and do work later.

Better quality of communication. Asynchronous communication is slower. However, many companies admit that the quality of communication is higher. People learn to discuss the topic without empty conversations. They have time to think about a question and give a deep and thoughtful answer. 

Better planning = less stress. People learn how to plan like a pro because now they can’t do everything at the last minute. They can’t send ASAP messages to co-workers because response takes time. It leads us to more effective scheduling to complete everything according to the plans. It reduces pressure and the job is done in a better way.

Deep work by default. It’s not necessary to jump on Slack or another communication tool to check messages each hour. Co-workers can check messages 1-3 times per day and get more time for focused work which increases productivity.  

Why should you focus on asynchronous communication?

The benefits of asynchronous meetings speak for themselves. Add to it the cost of synchronous communication and you will get the combo.

According to an article on Inc.com, more than $37 billion is spent on unproductive meetings every year! 

The cost of update meeting

The monthly cost of a weekly status update meeting for a team of 8 people is near $1k.

Duration: 30 minutes
Team: 8 people
Salaries: from $50k to $120k (1 – $50k, 1 -$60k, 3 – $70k, 2 – $90k, 1 – $120k)
The total cost of weekly meeting: $217
Total monthly cost: $868

It means that the cost of weekly update meetings for a team of 8 people is $10k per year. But let’s be honest, this meeting can go more than 30 minutes. 

It’s the main reason why you should eliminate the amount of real-time communication. Peter Arvai, a CEO and Co-founder Prezi, also tells that the async meetings will be the future of work.

Downsides of asynchronous communication

However, asynchronous communication is not ideal, and here are several downsides:

• Wait to respond
• Misunderstanding
• Not so emotional as real-time communication

It shows that you can’t remove sync communication in your process. However, you can balance these two types of communication to be more effective and reduce the amount of stress. 

3 steps how to run meetings in a better way

Step 1: Identify when to start async first

The first step is an understanding type of meetings that really important to keep in real-time mode. And what’s better to use in an asynchronous way. Here are recommendations from GitLab, which we completely agree on. It’s best to avoid real-time meetings for the following items:

• Status updates
• FYIs and process documentation
• Meeting about a meeting

Step 2: Set the agenda and talking points

If you don’t have agenda – you spend the company’s resources to empty meetings. “Jump on a quick call” without agenda might sound good for the participant but it’s counterproductive. 

Always set agenda and talking points that every participant understands the reason for the meeting.

All meetings must have an agenda and a documentarian, enabling everyone to contribute asynchronous regardless of time zone or availability.

Darren Murph, Head of Remote in Gitlab

At Focus, we realized that it’s not necessary to do each morning video standup call. It’s more efficient to run daily check-ins in an asynchronous way. Here is how it looks.

It takes few minutes to answer the main questions. For daily check-ins, you can ask the next items:

• What did you do yesterday?
• What are you going to do today?
• Any blockers?

Step 3: To document takeaways 

If you run real-time meetings, don’t forget to document highlights after the meeting. If you do it in an asynchronous way, you have already documented it. Congrats!

The main point is to make takeaways after meeting to sync the team. It will help to be more accountable and productive in the next steps. Paul Axtell recommends doing these 2 things to recap meetings.

Examples of asynchronous and synchronous meetings.

Asynchronous meetings:

• Daily check-ins
• Weekly status updates
• Weekly announcements
• Monthly updates
• Quarterly team results recaps and celebrations
• Project sprints and milestones
• Backlog refinement
• New team member introduction
• Missed deliverable retrospective
• Alternate times for recurring scheduled meetings (for people who can’t attend synchronous meetings because of different timezones)

Synchronous meetings: 

• Sales calls
• Direct reports (1:1 meetings)
• Celebrations and retrospectives 
• First-time meetings with external parties
• First-time meetings with team members who have not previously worked together
• Difficult decisions for important topics (e.g. when stakes are high)

How to sync a team (daily check-ins case)

Let’s talk about specific use cases. 

How can the team use asynchronous daily standups to sync the team? There are 4 ways of running updates: 

Synchronous

1. Video calls. You can use Zoom, Google Meets, or another software. 

Pros:

• The main benefit of this way of updates is face-to-face communication. You get real-time statuses in the morning and then go back to work. 

Cons: 

• You don’t document your current statuses, which means that you don’t have a history of what you did last week. Don’t have history – you can’t analyze your productivity and find points for improvement. 
• You spend more time compare with async meetings. Everyone should wait until the end of the meeting. Compare it with async check-ins when everyone answers 3 questions (2-3 minutes) and reads the answers of coworkers. Usually, it takes few minutes because speed reading faster than speed talking.  
• Less quality of information compares with written updates.
• Not good for co-workers in different timezones

Asynchronous

2. Manually gather updates in Slack or any other messenger. 

Pros:

• Free
• You have written answers, which is much better than only conversations.
• High quality of answers

Cons:

• You should remind co-workers who haven’t sent an update
• Resources for managing it
• Don’t have analytics (only text answers)
• Still not good for different timezone because someone should manage this process

3. Special standup bot. It’s a bot that runs standups in Slack or MS Team.

Pros:

• Hight quality of answers 
• Written answers
• Integration with Slack and MS Teams
• Automate notification and reminders
• Have analytics
• Good for different timezones
• Reports

Cons:

• Using the whole tool only for this specific process

4. Team management pulse software Focus. 

Pros:

• Hight quality of answers 
• Written answers
• Integration with Slack
• Automate notification and reminders
• Have analytics
• Good for different timezones
• Connected with 1:1 meetings and goals
• Keep a history of goals’ progress and daily check-ins
• Connected with employee development plans
• Get feedback from employees
• Running all kind of async meetings
• Email reports

Cons:

• New tool (even if it’s simple)

Daily check-ins in Focus

How to balance both types of communication for daily check-ins?

Some teams don’t want to run async check-ins because they don’t want to lose personal communication. But status updates meeting is not designed for personal communication. 

How the hell should we run all meetings asynchronously now?

And you will be right – it’s not healthy to stop running synchronous meetings because of 3 main struggles of remote work: disconnecting, loneliness, and communication. You should keep using synchronous meetings but do it wisely.

Here is the better way of running asynchronous daily check-ins and team synchronous meetings:

1. You run daily check-ins asynchronously (choose one of three methods above you to prefer more)
2. And now you set group calls for solving key issues and questions if you want to keep the personal connection. Otherwise, you can use async communication even for solving problems. 

In this case, you don’t waste your valuable time gathering updates. You run asynchronous check-ins to gather this information. And now, you spend your time in synchronous meetings for making an important decision or solving problems. This is the most convenient and cost-effective way to run meetings in this case. 

Conclusion

Asynchronous communication still is not a common process for businesses. Many teams prefer to jump on a call to discuss their current statuses or sharing weekly announcements. It’s a legacy they have from the pre-COVID time when inefficiency was a frequent fact for many businesses.

I’m sure that more success will get companies that are ready to change and be more effective in processes. Teams that don’t require employees to be always in touch, allow asynchronous communication, increase the time of focused work. And create self-organized teams where employees are responsible for results. 

We are happy to invite you to this journey.

The post Asynchronous Communication: How To Run Meetings appeared first on Focus.

Is it tips for your one-on-one meeting you’re looking for? You’ve come to the right place. But before we jump in, let’s set the scene. The one-on-one meeting is possibly the most lightweight management tool you can use in your fledging company. We wrote at length here about what a one on one meeting is, why you should have it and some general one on one tips. In this post, we’ll go through best practices in more detail.

What is a one-on-one meeting?

Classically, the one-on-one meeting is a consistently recurring, timeboxed meeting between a manager and a direct report. However, since one-on-ones are so useful. I’ve seen companies as small as just two co-founders having them and there the relationship is more horizontal rather than vertical. So don’t get too hung up on the hierarchy of people in a one-on-one meeting. It doesn’t change their purpose and general structure.

One-on-one meetings help the flow of information from top to down and from down to up. As a manager you can share or explain the vision of the company or a shift in the market. You can talk about how the organization is growing and what challenges it faces. As an employee, you can share your aspirations and frustrations, motivations and barriers. One-onones are designed to be a space where candid conversations can happen about mostly work but also life and everything else in-between.

Therefore the one-on-one meeting provides a constant informal pulse of your organization, something that is invaluable as a manager. Imagine if you wouldn’t keep your finger on this pulse, you’d only get to know about problems when they are too late. You’d have to communicate changes in vision, strategy or the organization in a formal, top-down manner, something that has been proven to yield worse results. But you already know this and convinced you should start having one-on-ones. Or you are already doing them and just interested in some one-on-one tips. Whichever it might be, let’s get started.

One-on-one meeting tips

1. Set up a recurring meeting for the same time each week

When you become a manager of people, your day immediately gets busier. Even if it doesn’t it’ll sure look like it to anyone else. This means that people will have a hard time scheduling ad hoc meetings with you and might not even try. Set your one-on-one meetings up in advance for the same time each week. A good practice as a manger is to block off an entire day for one-on-ones. This will also help you avoid some of the other pitfalls we’ll discuss below.

2. Dedicate at least 30 minutes

As your company scales like crazy you might be tempted to think that you could optimize the time you spend on management by cutting down on people’s one-on-one time and get it over with with 10-15 minutes each. You’ve got 10 people working for you, that’s more than 2 hours potentially saved each week. No, they don’t work for you, as a manager, you’re working for them. Any meaningful conversation takes longer than 15 minutes.

A good rule of thumb is to dedicate at least 30 minutes to your one-on-one s and leave a 15 minute buffer after for any other meetings or tasks you might have coming up. If everything is smooth sailing you can use the extra 15 minutes to reflect on the one-on-one you just had or get some quick tasks off your plate or to grab a coffee and walk around a bit to relax.

3. Don’t cut the meeting short

This should go without saying since we talked about setting up a recurring meeting and dedicating a fixed time for it and the benefits of these approaches. However, I’ve seen this happen all too often so I think it’s important to mention. Do not cut a one-on-one meeting short because of something short of an outright emergency.

When you cut a one-on-one short it signals to the other person that whatever was the reason is more important to you than them. Even worse, it might signal that you’re incompetent at your job since you can’t even plan to set aside a set amount of time for something this personal and important. If all lights are green and there’s nothing to worry about, your team member might initiate to end the one-on-one early. This is fine and it’s okay to go along with it. But you shouldn’t be the one to propose this.

4. Never skip a one-on-one meeting

It seems easy to bail on a one-on-one in the face of other burning issues. After all, you talk every week, right? What can just one week delay cause? While one-on-one meetings might seem less directly mission critical when you’re in the tranches fighting fires, getting on calls with angry customers, talking to disinterested investors and trying to still make time for that one task you still need to do, don’t skip one on ones.

Just think about it, every time you skip a one-on-one meeting you send a clear message to your team member, “You don’t matter”. At least not as much as that quarterly investor update that you knew was coming up but you didn’t do it because you hate it. Every time you skip a one on one you become less in the eyes of your team. Don’t do it.

5. Start with “How are you?”

This is the perfect opener for any one-on-one. “How are you?” is a simple question where the answer is often very complicated. And that is where the one-on-one begins, with the answer. Depending on the tone and content of the answer you’ll decide where to go from there. Everything okay and you’re just checking in on each other? Is there a lingering issue that need to be solved so that value creation can continue unhindered? Is there a showstopper disaster that needs your undivided attention? It all starts with “How are you?”

This is also why you need at least 30 minutes for your discussion. Both of you needs to leave the daily grind of the business behind for a bit and reflect. A good way to start is by acknowledging how we’re feeling and then examine what are the likely causes of those feelings. If one has an idea on how to mitigate or reinforce the causes it’s great to bring it up. However, remember that you shouldn’t try to jump on everything and try to offer a seemingly quick solution. Just listen first, acknowledge how the other person is feeling and go from there. A lot of times, just sharing hardships can help or make the person realize the course of action they should take.

6. It’s not a status update

“How are you?” is also a great way to avoid another pitfall of one-on-one meetings, them turning into a status update. Because what a one-on-one is not is a way to keep on top of the to dos of the other person, to report on progress or to ask for the status of tasks. Pay attention to this as it is easy to fall back into this pattern if there is not much to talk about or if the team member doesn’t feel comfortable to talk about something. It is your job as a manager to make them feel comfortable to share. And while it might be easier for both of you to just talk about the status of ongoing things, don’t be tempted by it.

7. Don’t issue work tasks

Just like you shouldn’t turn a one-on-one meeting into a status update, you should also not use them to issue tasks related to daily operations. It is okay if based on your conversation your direct report comes up with stuff to do on their own, but you shouldn’t be the one instructing them in this meeting.

As far as one-on-one tips go, this one has an exception and it is when the task relates to an issue you’re discussing. Let’s say the person complains that the dev team is always frustrated that not all edge cases are covered on user stories and it brews resentment towards them, the PO and they are unsure how to deal with this. While you might know a great way to solve this, instead of outright instructing the person to use your method, you should gently guide them towards coming up with the solution themselves. This could mean that an action item for the next one on one meeting is to do some research on this problem and come up with a proposal. Note that this is not about what to do, but rather how things are done.

8. Follow up on your action items

As a manager it is your job to make sure your team can maximize their potential and deliver the most amount of value to users and to the business. In most of the cases you as the manager will end up with a lot of action items after a one-on-one meeting. One of the most important one-on-one tips is that you should make sure you either have completed or have something credible to show on the next one-on-one relating to your action items.

9. Keep things confidential

As far as one-on-one meeting tips go, this one is probably the most important. For successful one-on-one meetings, trust is very important. A lot of these one-on-one tips centered around building and keeping that trust. But a surefire way to damage it, maybe even permanently is to not keep something that was shared in private confidential.

So before you think about sharing some feedback with another team member for example, do ask for permission from the person who shared it. And when it comes to personal matters, it’s probably best not to even ask and just keep them between you two. Nobody wants to hear on an All Hands meeting that the company is giving everybody Headspace subscriptions because they had a panic attack at work.

Takeaways from these one-on-one meeting tips

I think you can spot a pattern here, people expect managers to be responsible, organized, accountable, trustworthy but relatable. It is not easy to pull all of this off and still keep the boundary between manager and team members. This is where I hope these 9 one-on-one tips help.

Do you have some one-on-one tips of your own? Do share them in the comments below.

Get focused

We here at Focus think that one-on-ones are an essential part of your management toolbox along with OKRs, check-ins and recognition. Check out how Focus can help you become a better manager and your team to maximize their potential.

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So you are curious about what a one on one meeting is? Before we jump in, let’s zoom out a bit. Business is very often just pure chaos. It is doubly so for organizations that are younger, smaller, more agile or just plain scrappy. It is also this environment where founder CEOs and other self made C-level people don’t have a tried and true toolset and decades of experience to fall back onto. While OKRs, daily check-ins and such are all great, they don’t address the fundamental management problem young organizations are facing. One on one meetings are the definitive solution. Let’s dive in.

What is a one on one meeting?

One on one meetings are the setting where two people, manager and employee can talk freely about themselves, their pains, successes, hurdles and aspirations, the company, the market and life in general. It is the focused space that transcends firefighting, snarky comments on Slack, gossip and watercooler chatter. While these are all part of a healthy business, they can drown out the somber voice and the genuine cries for help. As a manager, your main task is to enable your team to be able to do their jobs to the fullest extent they can today and to grow tomorrow.

How will you know if someone is facing personal challenges that affect their performance? If they don’t get along with someone else in the company? If they have a trivial problem like not being able to set up their VPN and get no help from anyone? Yes, the one on one meeting is the ideal setting for these.

If you are interested in reading a book about one on ones and just about how to manage people in the software industry, I highly recommend Managing Humans by Michael Lopp.

The dos and don’ts of the one on one meeting

Do

• Set up a weekly recurring cadence
• Have it at the same time and the same place every week
• Make it at least 30 minutes long
• Start with “How are you?”
• Follow up on your action items by the next one on one meeting

Don’t

• Do not cut the meeting short
• Don’t make it a status update
• By no means should you share details with others without consent
• Avoid giving tasks in the one on one meeting
• Don’t EVER miss a one on one meeting

Now that we looked at some general dos and don’ts of the one on one meeting, let’s look at the three broad types of them. What should you expect and prepare for when you’re going into your first on on one?

The 3 types of one on one meetings

The check-in

In a healthy organization, most one on one meeting will not be a heated conversation. Instead, it’ll be more like an update on what’s going on, how’s everybody feeling, minor pieces of improvement and feedback but nothing major. Why should you still do one on one meetings if some of them will be nothing more than confirmation that things are going smooth? Precisely for that reason.

Imagine this scenario: your team member has consistently missed the daily standups this week which is unusual for them. What is going on? Are they completely demotivated? Checked out? Looking for another job already? You might assume the worst and thus as any good manager, you’ll concentrate on trying to solve these perceived issues and prepare for the worst. This will distract you from items that might truly need your attention but without more information you can’t prioritize effectively. Sure, you could schedule an ad hoc meeting with your team member, or try to catch him while getting coffee but these can easily come across as too overbearing.

Lucky that your organization does one on one meetings so you can meet and discuss anything. You’ll ask: “How are you?” and he’ll reply that he’s fine, maybe a bit stressed. Why is he stressed? Turns out he is moving house and the movers keep rescheduling last minute day after day. Is this something you as his manager can solve? No. Is this information going to help you prioritize. Oh yes. Now you know that you’ll just need to be more patient with him and the situation will resolve itself with time. In the meantime, you can help him out by subtly managing the expectations from the rest of the team and downplaying the effect of him being late rather than leaning into it. Your team member will feel like they are heard and even cared for, all thanks to the little weekly 30 minute one on one meeting.

The rant

I wish I could say that the update is the most common one on one meeting archetype. But I won’t. Based on my experience, especially when it comes to earlier stage, smaller companies, things are rarely smooth sailing and it will show. If you don’t have one on ones, any frustration that builds in your direct reports will lead to loss of motivation, decrease in performance, toxic behavior and ultimately a burned out team member. As a manager it should be your only job to prevent this and actually reverse it. Support your team members to perform better, grow into a better version of themselves, keep motivated, curious and engaged and ultimately deliver the maximum value possible to your customers and the business in a sustainable way.

Let’s say you decided to introduce one on one meetings, now you have a valve on the pressure cooker that is your organization. The thing is, you’re in the way of the hot steam coming out and you’ll need to know how to deal with it. So when you ask “How are you?” and the reply is less than convincing or outright hostile, you know you’re dealing with a rant. It’s okay, this is useful and you can do this.

Hint 1 – Just listen

First of all, listen, don’t try to solve every problem right away. A lot of times people just want to be listened to, to share their frustration, to feel like they are not alone. By being a good listener you’re already scoring points with your direct report. These are the first steps for a trusting work relationship. Once you think they are over the initial burst, do ask follow up question if you need to. Try to understand what caused the frustration. Is it another team member? A process that doesn’t make sense? Misaligned expectations? The person’s own shortcoming? Something you might have done? Or some completely external factor you have no control over?

Once you identified the likely cause, you can start to guide your team member to come up with a solution on their own. Don’t underestimate the importance of this. If people come up with a solution themselves they are much more likely to follow through with it and after owning the process of resolving any conflict, they will also own the win. Remember, the measure of success for a manager is the success of those they manage.

Hint 2 – Action items

At the end of a rant, you should be able to either come to a resolution in the meeting itself, or come up with a list of action items either you or your direct report needs to complete. It is very important that neither of you lose track of these as it is expected that progress will be made by the next one on one unless explicitly stated. Write these down somewhere where you won’t forget about them. Or you could try using a dedicated software solution for one on ones, more on this at the end of the article.

The disaster

What is an ongoing rant that seemingly has no resolution? Yes, it is a disaster. Once a person reaches a point where they seemingly have given up, it’s hard to turn back. When someone answers the “How are you?” question with an empty stare, sharing that they are completely unmotivated or that they feel depressed you know you’ve got a disaster on your hand. Lots of times people in disaster mode won’t even wait for you to ask your standard question, they’ll blurt out what’s bugging them. It can be that they say they can’t take it anymore, it referring to something they ranted about in the past but is still a problem. It can be trying to resign or threatening to quit. Or it can be simply a cry for help, without specifics.

Look, it’s a problem that the disaster is here. There should have been plenty of rants that led up to this and you failed to help the person resolve their conflicts. So what can you do about it? First of all, you need to reassure the person that their concern is your top priority (if it wasn’t before) and that you’ll work with them to resolve it.

In some cases, especially when this is just the latest in a string of disaster type one on ones, you will have to think about how the person fits into your organization. Sometimes, the best course of action for both parties is to amicably part ways.

Software for running a one on one meeting?

While you can run an effective one on one with just a pen and a piece of paper or a notes app, we think we have a better way. Making the most of your one on one meetings requires both parties to be on top of the topics they want to discuss, any action items that need a resolution before the next meeting and to see these evolve over time. Check out Focus to see how you can supercharge your one on one meeting.

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