The 4 questions you should stop asking during your one-on-one meetings

<p>Looking at the clock. Staring into the distance. Short, nondescript answers.</p> <p>A CEO recently told me how he&rsquo;d frequently see this body language from an employee during their&nbsp;<a href="https://knowyourteam.com/m/features/one_on_ones/?utm_source=medium&amp;utm_medium=cta" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">one-on-one meetings</a>. Flat. Disinterested. Preoccupied. It felt lousy to witness, but it&rsquo;d always been this way. He&rsquo;d silently concluded that he was wasting both of their time.</p> <p>&ldquo;I want to know what&rsquo;s on his mind and how I can help, but these one-on-one meetings just aren&rsquo;t working,&rdquo; this CEO admitted to me. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not really sure what to do except to stop having them.&rdquo;</p> <p>To see if I could help, I asked him what questions he was asking. He shared them with me&hellip; and then it clicked.</p> <p>The once hazy picture zoomed into focus: This CEO was asking the wrong questions. All of his questions were&nbsp;<em>common</em>&nbsp;questions, no doubt. But therein lay the problem. Stock questions might be effective once or twice. But ask them during every one-on-one, every week, and over time, and the effectiveness of the question erodes. The person grows sick of answering the question. Or she doesn&rsquo;t think you really care to know the answer anymore. Before too long, she starts looking at the clock, staring into the distance, and giving you those short, nondescript answers.</p> <p><a href="https://medium.com/signal-v-noise/the-4-questions-you-should-stop-asking-during-your-one-on-one-meetings-ed7431da11aa"><strong>Learn More</strong></a></p>