I just read a post on LinkedIn about the Top 10 Questions Managers Are Asking During One-on-One Meetings. The information comes from a company called Soapbox, and their website says, “SoapBox makes software solutions that help leaders, managers and employees have conversations about the things that matter most to motivation and performance. “
They say that managers rate these 10 questions as the best ones to ask in on-on-one conversations with their employees:
- What are the biggest time wasters for you each week?
- Is there anything we should START doing as a team?
- Would you like more or less direction from me on your work?
- Do you feel you are getting enough feedback on your work? If not, where would you like more feedback?
- What could I do as a manager to make your work easier?
- Is there an aspect of your job you would like more help or coaching?
- Do you feel you are getting enough feedback?
- How could we improve the ways our team works together?
- On a scale of 1 – 10 , how happy are you at work?
- What are you least clear about – in terms of strategy and goals?
Our whole-person assessments can predict many of these answers before a person is ever hired.
What I find interesting about this list is how many of them I could answer for them without ever meeting the manager or the employee, IF I only had both of their assessment results from our whole-person assessments. And if these questions really do have a lot to do with how they perform on the job, shouldn’t you want to know it BEFORE you hire them?
Seriously, I could accurately predict the answers to at least five of these 10 from information we can collect before a person is ever hired, so that managers don’t have to find it out after the hire, oftentimes after it has become a big problem. What if you knew the answers to half of these questions the first day the employee shows up? How much easier would it be to help them get off to a fast start?
If you are curious how we could know half of this stuff before they ever start, give me call. If your company qualifies, we may be able to prove it to you on our nickel.