How to Take Notes and Assign Actions
Throughout the one-to-one, it’s useful to jot down notes and assign actions in the shared document. Review the actions at the end of the meeting. Typically I write things directly in the shared document on my laptop. All of our meeting rooms have a TV that you can cast your screen to, so often I’ll put the notes up on there as we talk. The notes aren’t a secret, after all.
I use a bullet point format to arrange information, and actions are always in bold font. Some hypothetical one-to-one notes with a member of staff called Mary are shown in the following image:
As time passes, and if you make good notes, your one-to-one documents become excellent historical references. You can scan back over them to remind yourself of the topics you were talking about months—and even years—ago.
When you assign actions to yourself, make sure that you put them on your to-do list to action. There’s nothing better than having a manager who actually acts on the things that you bring up in your one-to-ones. You’ll be surprised how many people I talk to that feel that their manager doesn’t.
To help myself remember to do this, my recurring to-do list item for each member of staff’s one-to-one has two subtasks:
- Prepare notes ahead of meeting.
- Put actions in to-do list.
That way I don’t need to think about it. It works for me, so maybe it’ll work for you too.