How to Run a Peer to Peer One-on-one Meeting

One-on-one meetings are a great way to build rapport, improve communication, and get feedback from people you work with in other departments. Here's how to run a successful peer to peer one-on-one meeting.

Why run this meeting?

Peer to peer one-on-ones are valuable at work for cross-departmental feedback, collaboration, rapport, and work.

How long, how often, and who's invited?

This meeting should last 60 minutes and occur monthly. The meeting should include you and one other person from a different department.

What to ask in a Peer to Peer One-on-one?

Because this is a peer relationship, consider asking eachother the following questions.

1. What's one thing I can do to make your job easier?

This question is a great way to start the meeting off on a positive note. It shows that you care about making your coworker's job easier and that you're open to feedback. However ensure you're not over committing or promising to your peer. This could be counter productive

2. What's the biggest challenge you and your team are facing?

This question allows you to get an understanding of the challenges your coworker is facing and how you might be able to help. Examples of challenges worth mentioning:

• Slow downs in a process
• Major projects
• Hiring Plan

3. What's something me or my team can do to improve cross-departmental communication?

This question is important for improving communication between departments. By understanding the challenges your coworker is facing, you can work on finding solutions that will help everyone.

4. What's coming down the pipe in the next 3 months that I should know about?

This question allows you to stay up-to-date on what's happening in other departments. This is especially important if you work closely with other departments. Often we assume people know more than they do. You should attempt to over-share here just incase. Example things typically worth mentioning include:

• Big projects coming down the line
• Hitting a sales goal
• A new hire joining your team
• Change to processes

Example

Human Resources

1. What's one thing I can do to make your job easier?

   • I could use more help with training resources for new hires, especially with the number of people we've hired recently.

2. What's the biggest challenge you and your team are facing?

   • Our biggest challenge is talent acquisition. We have a hiring plan with 25 new engineers starting in the next 4 months and we're struggling to get all the roles filled.

3. What's something me or my team can do to improve cross-departmental communication?

   • It would be great if each department paired someone up with someone from HR to tackle open positions. Having someone that's plugged into the needs of the hiring team could help fill more open positions.

4. What's coming down the pipe in the next 3 months that I should know about?

   • We will be kicking off our first ever diversity and inclusion initiative in the first week of January. We hope to implement new policies to improve the workplace environment for members of our team.

Peer to peer one-on-ones are valuable for cross-departmental teams, feedback and collaboration.