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Ceaseless meetings, the era of a distributed workforce, and the task saturation of leaders have driven an overreliance on email as the first step in building relationships. While email is a good tool for broadcasting information and quick collaboration, it is not a relationship building tool. In this article, we’ll explore how stepping away from email and instead, implementing and sustaining recurring one-on-one meetings will create the clarity, alignment, and collaboration required to deliver meaningful outcomes.
Why not email?
By the late 1990s, email had become the standard communication tool for both businesses and individuals. It streamlined information sharing and enabled updates to be distributed quickly and at scale. Over time, however, the efficiency of email made it an easy stand-in for the effectiveness of the one-on-one conversations leaders need to have.
When used appropriately, the benefits of email are clear. It enables succinct dissemination of information, a written reference for assigned tasks, and provides access to broad strategic messaging across several echelons of a team.
The problem arises when email is habitually misused or worse permits a malaise of leadership to set in. Email can decrease effectiveness of both employees and leaders through information overload, task-switching, miscommunication, and by monopolizing attention. More significantly, leaders may find themselves sliding down the “slippery slope” of communication as compliance. In this case, leaders rely on email to replace the work of ensuring tasks are understood, the team is oriented in the same direction, and everyone is ready to work together. Frankly put, email isn’t always the right choice in situations where nuance, emotion, or complexity matter.
Additionally, overreliance on email puts the intangible benefits of non-verbal communication, interpersonal connectedness, and goal achievement at risk. Research from Michigan State University (Rosen et al., 2019) found that while employees spend more than 90 minutes per day recovering from email interruptions, managers struggle even more – with the addition of downstream effects impacted by email demands. Leaders not only suffer the same impacts of near-constant interruptions, but they also fail to meet their goals and, most significantly, discover that their subordinates report lacking the leadership behavior they need to thrive.
Knowing that email isn’t the best tool for relationship building, why do we keep turning to this digital default? Time! The finite amount of time in each day drives us to preserve time through broadcast communication, but that misses the mark on interaction and relationship development. As leaders, we need to remember that teamwork and sustained success is more than just the immediate task in front of us.
Why one-on-one meetings instead?
One-on-one meetings between leaders and their teammates are valuable opportunities to provide clarity and alignment, build trust, and foster collaborative growth. During one-on-one meetings leaders can confirm not just the receipt, but the understanding of tasks. Leaders can connect work to the overall purpose and take the time to show their teammates how their specific efforts align.
In some circumstances, one of the greatest challenges to one-on-ones is simply the opportunity to share physical space, but this must be a sought-after opportunity. The ability to read hesitation, confusion, or disengagement from your teammates and provide the space for nuance and ideas rarely appear in email, but it is an invaluable tool in heightening one’s emotional intelligence.
Finally, there is no greater way to build connectedness than through trust. When a leader makes the time for the one-on-one meeting - people feel seen, not processed - and are therefore willing to be vulnerable enough to drive the creativity and ingenuity required to compete and succeed. Dr. Steven Rogelberg reminds us that even if we spend 30 minutes each week with a teammate in a one-on-one, that is still only 25 hours over the course of a year which is “not too high a price to pay to bolster your team’s and your company’s performance; support retention… and help each of your team members grow and achieve” (2022).
One-on-one meetings aren’t a digital retreat and are not intended to replace the immense benefit of email. They are an invitation to push back against inbox-driven distractions and reclaim the human connection that makes teams thrive. By consistently making space for one-on-one conversations, leaders transform confusion into clarity, disorder into alignment, and compartmentalization into collaboration - creating the conditions for teams to thrive.
Authored By: Lisa O’Neil, Director
#VictoryStrategies #Communication #Culture #People #Email #One-on-Ones
Citations
Rosen, C. C., Simon, L. S., Gajendran, R. S., Johnson, R. E., Lee, H. W., & Lin, S.-H. (J.). (2019). Boxed in by your inbox: Implications of daily e-mail demands for managers’ leadership behaviors. Journal of Applied Psychology, 104(1), 19–33. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000343
Rogelberg, S. G. (2022). Make the most of your one-on-one meetings. Harvard Business Review, 100(11-12), 139-+.
