I want you to think back to your last one-on-one. Think back to your last one-on-one, whether that was with a report or with your manager. And I want you to remember, try to recall a single message that you tried to convey to the person you were having a one-on-one with. This might have been feedback. It might have been an idea. It might have just been a story. Ideally, focus on a message where you had some intent. There was some reason, some emotional reason, perhaps, or logical reason that you were sharing that message rather than just making conversation. Most messages, even the ones that were... just making conversation with, will fall into this category. But it helps to pick one where you had some kind of intent in sharing that message. And here's what I want you to try to figure out. Did it work? Did the way that you shared that message have the intended effect that you had hoped for? In theory, our one-on-ones with our manager or with our manager, we're not going to be able to do that. Our reports are the biggest opportunity for this kind of influence, either down or up the organizational ladder. And so these conversations are very important, these one-on-one type conversations. So the message that you're sharing, and this is true in almost all kind of message sharing situations, but the one-on-one provides a clearer kind of direct message situation. Did the message have its... its intended effect? Now, the interesting thing is, very often, we're not entirely sure what the intended effect was. Sometimes, we feel like we need to, for example, share all of our feelings about a particular topic. We feel like providing an overabundance of information about a topic is going to convince the listener more. That we're kind of... overloading them with proof, so to speak. And while this may seem on its face like it's logical, like it's somewhat rational to expect someone to appreciate more information, this may have the opposite effect from what we're intending. Interestingly, we also have a discounting behavior about this information sharing, about how it changes us. We imagine that when we're walking into a one-on-one situation, that our sharing of information is intended to shape the world around us. This kind of conceptual model of us being the potter and all of the material and other people and situations in the world being some kind of moldable clay. Some parts are harder to mold than others. But in fact, our messages change us. If you are a verbal processor, if you know that you're a verbal processor, you know that you're talking out loud to another person has an effect on you, not just the other person. Even if this isn't the intended effect, very often and perhaps always, our communications change us. We process through some kind of concept, some thought, some feeling, and we respond to that in our own formulation of thought. Sometimes more notably than others. Sometimes we opt into this on purpose. We attend therapy sessions, for example, cognitive behavioral therapy, etc. In order to find some kind of adjustment that we can make to ourselves. But this is not necessarily just contained in the four walls of a therapy session. So if you were thinking about this, you might be thinking, well, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. message that you chose, your one-on-one message, it's very likely that you were trying to change another person, but you don't necessarily have yourself on that list. And so often, we are much more effective at changing ourselves than we are at changing others, or affecting some kind of change in thought in ourselves than change in thought in another person. In other words, the way that we tune our messages is usually based on intuition about what makes sense to us, rather than the person that we're talking to. So I'll suggest a simple idea for you in preparation for your next one-on-one, especially if your goal is to produce some kind of persuasive argument to your manager, to a direct report, to a peer. Take some time, to have a discussion with yourself. Maybe on your next drive, have a discussion with yourself that you might have intuitively had with the person that you're going to have this meeting with. And then take some notes. Specifically, instead of walking into the one-on-one with a general kind of vague idea of what you're hoping to accomplish, very specifically and explicitly state what you're going to do. And then take some notes. And then take some notes. And then take some notes. And then take some notes. And then take some notes. And then take some notes. And then take then sketch out how you expect to hit those particular points in discussion. Perhaps the unspoken advice here is don't try to make every point that's on your mind. Be selective. It's very likely that the person that you're talking to only has so much capacity for whatever feedback you are bringing to the table. And this doesn't mean that you aren't honest, but rather that you focus whatever you are saying in that meeting to what will accomplish what you're actually trying to accomplish. I say all this at the risk of providing you an exercise that makes you feel a little bit restricted or restrained. But let's change the script a little bit. Let's imagine that this is a teacher talking to a student. A teacher who's trying to teach a student a complex topic that they've never encountered before is not going to deluge them with all of the details of that topic. Instead, they're going to provide them those pieces of information in a way that they can actually comprehend. They're going to give them one piece at a time so that it's digestible. You don't sit through class for eight hours at a time. Instead, you have a limited amount of time per subject. These are things that we know about learning theory, and most of our one-on-one conversations with teachers are about learning theory. They really could be treated as learning conversations. Perhaps the most useful thing you can do in your preparation is instead of trying to focus on what you think the most important points are, try to imagine the responses of the person that you're having the meeting with. What will they say about topic X, Y, or Z? Which of these topics do they care the most about? Or if they don't care about any of them, do any of them lead to something that they might actually care about? This may feel like you're over-preparing or that you're somehow faking the conversation. But you'd be surprised if you were to even share directly that you've prepared for the discussion. The person that you're talking to will almost certainly appreciate it. This is because instead of just spouting off what's top of mind for you, you've actually taken the time to show that you care for their time. There's a reason why we call this doing. Doing our homework. If you were to show up having not done your homework, then you may not really be prepared for the conversation you're getting ready to have anyway. So prepare for the conversation by first doing all of those kind of intuitive discussion points on your own. And this might look different for each person. Maybe you need to write this out. That might be the most useful kind of medium for you. If you're like me and you like to talk about your ideas, which I'm sure you're all used to, which is one of the reasons why I host a podcast like this, then talking these things out to yourself, literally in the car is when I do it or in the shower sometimes. My wife will catch me talking to myself and then she's gotten used to it at this point. This is a medium that works well for me to kind of talk my ideas out solo to myself. Another option is to choose a trusted confidant, maybe a partner that you have, your personal partner. Maybe another. You know, if you're doing it one-on-one with a report, maybe another manager that you trust, a peer manager, someone who can kind of play the role of listener and reflector in your discussion, that would be a, you know, one other way that you can kind of simulate this. And this will really kind of get this portion of the discussion out so that you feel that you've done the kind of self-regulation about whatever the topic is. And then you can focus on the change that you're trying to make. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. Hopefully this is a useful discussion for you in making your one-on-one meetings more effective, more useful to you. If you enjoyed this episode of Developer Tea, please consider leaving us a review in iTunes. This is one of the best ways you can help out, help the show out and help other engineers like you find Developer Tea. Another great way to help is to actually share this directly with somebody that you think is going to be a great help. Someone who you think would benefit from this specific conversation. Someone who you think is thoughtful about their one-on-ones. Maybe they would be interested in trying this out, trying out this practice and improving their one-on-ones through it. I would love to hear those stories. You can always share those in our Developer Tea Discord community. Head over to developertea.com slash discord to get started today. That's totally free and always will be. That's developertea.com slash discord. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea. See you soon.