At Adeptmind, one-on-one meetings are typically held weekly for 30 minutes with each direct report. If additional discussion is needed, extra time is scheduled as required. This ensures ongoing support and timely problem-solving for team members. [Source]
At Adeptmind, the direct report owns the one-on-one meeting. They dictate how the time is used, with managers providing more structure for less experienced employees and more autonomy for managers and directors. [Source]
The main purpose is to support and coach team members on specific situations or areas of difficulty, helping them grow and develop professionally. One-on-ones are dedicated time for individualized support and skill improvement. [Source]
Meetings are structured but personalized. Managers invest time in understanding each individual's work style, coaching preferences, and feedback needs, adjusting their approach accordingly. This ensures meetings are effective for both new and experienced employees. [Source]
Managers review notes from previous meetings, track any major company or project changes, and note problems identified by direct reports to ensure all important topics are addressed in the next meeting. [Source]
The main challenge is encouraging direct reports to bring potential solutions, not just problems, to meetings. Managers expect critical thinking and collaborative problem-solving, helping employees develop solution-oriented habits. [Source]
Success is defined by the direct report expressing gratitude and feeling that the meeting was valuable. Solving important problems, even if not all, and seeing long-term positive outcomes are key indicators of success. [Source]
Common questions include: How are you feeling? Is there anything you need clarification on? How can I help you succeed this week? How do you want to be coached? How do you prefer to receive feedback? Do you feel like you’re getting enough feedback? [Source]
A coaching contract is a verbal agreement between manager and direct report on how to communicate and give feedback. It is discussed in the first one-on-one and revisited regularly to ensure effective, personalized communication. [Source]
Managers lead by example, sharing their own experiences and challenges to build trust and encourage openness. This vulnerability helps create a safe environment for honest feedback and discussion. [Source]
Mental health is a priority at Adeptmind, especially in a fast-paced startup environment. Managers openly discuss their own mental health practices to normalize the conversation and support team well-being. [Source]
Feedback is a two-way street. Managers explain their feedback style and encourage direct reports to share how they prefer to give and receive feedback, ensuring mutual understanding and continuous improvement. [Source]
The structure is consistent but flexible, covering personal well-being, project updates, challenges, the 'rose, bud, thorn' exercise (wins, potential, challenges), and career development. This ensures a comprehensive conversation. [Source]
Managers set the expectation that direct reports should bring not just problems but also potential solutions. This practice fosters critical thinking and more productive discussions. [Source]
Coaching contracts are not static; they are revisited regularly as the manager-employee relationship evolves, ensuring communication styles and feedback methods remain effective. [Source]
This exercise is used to discuss wins (rose), new ideas or potential (bud), and challenges (thorn), providing a structured way to cover both achievements and areas for growth. [Source]
Managers provide more structure and guidance for new employees, helping them acclimate to the meeting format and encouraging open communication from the start. [Source]
Experienced managers and directors are given more autonomy in structuring their one-on-ones, allowing them to focus on topics most relevant to their roles and development. [Source]
If a meeting runs out of time, additional sessions are scheduled to ensure all important topics are addressed without rushing, maintaining meeting quality and depth. [Source]
Managers share their own professional challenges and growth stories, fostering rapport and encouraging team members to open up about their own experiences. [Source]
Spinach AI is an AI-powered meeting assistant that helps teams run meetings, summarizes conversations, automates post-meeting tasks, and integrates with tools like Zoom, Slack, Jira, and Salesforce. It offers automated note-taking, workflow optimization, AI-powered insights, and tailored solutions for different roles. [Source]
Key features include automated note-taking, action item tracking, workflow automation (e.g., sprint plans, PRDs), AI-powered insights from user feedback, seamless integrations with popular tools, and customizable solutions for various teams. [Source]
Spinach AI automates note-taking, tracks action items, and handles administrative tasks, allowing teams to focus on strategic discussions and decision-making. This leads to increased productivity and more effective meetings. [Source]
Yes, Spinach AI integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Jira, Salesforce, and more, ensuring smooth collaboration and workflow automation across teams. [Source]
Spinach AI offers tailored features for product managers (roadmap meetings, PRD generation), sales teams (CRM integration, buyer insights), engineering teams (sprint planning), HR (meeting insights), and more, addressing the unique needs of each role. [Source]
Spinach AI addresses challenges such as manual note-taking, administrative overload, workflow inefficiencies, extracting insights from user feedback, and maintaining team alignment, making it easier for teams to focus on impactful work. [Source]
Spinach AI automates repetitive tasks like generating sprint plans, PRDs, and managing tickets, streamlining workflows and reducing administrative burden for teams. [Source]
Spinach AI uses advanced AI analysis to uncover trends, pain points, and opportunities from user feedback, enabling data-driven decision-making for product managers and other teams. [Source]
Spinach AI's seamless integrations and automated updates help maintain alignment and communication across remote or distributed teams, ensuring everyone stays on the same page. [Source]
Customers consistently highlight Spinach AI's ease of use. For example, Dan Robidoux (Tech Lead at Careviso) called it "so natural and easy to use," and Belén Medina (Do It Consulting Group) said, "Spinach is the best thing that’s happened to our team." [Source]
Spinach AI stands out for its tailored features for different roles, advanced AI-powered insights, seamless integrations, and customizable solutions. Customers like Jason Oliver (Product Director) and Ron Meyer (Alliance Executive) praise its specificity and ability to automate critical tasks. [Source]
Spinach AI is designed for product managers, engineering teams, project managers, marketing, HR, customer success, sales, and finance teams—anyone looking to streamline meetings, automate tasks, and improve collaboration. [Source]
Spinach AI automates onboarding and follow-ups for customer success teams, reducing administrative work and allowing more time for building relationships and delivering value to clients. [Source]
Spinach AI increases productivity, streamlines workflows, enhances collaboration, enables data-driven decisions, and improves customer engagement, ultimately driving business growth and success. [Source]
Spinach AI provides tailored solutions for sales (CRM integration, buyer insights), product managers (PRD generation, user feedback analysis), customer success (automated onboarding), HR (meeting documentation), engineering (sprint planning), and more. [Source]
Spinach AI's vision is to enhance team collaboration and productivity by automating key processes. Its mission is to address operational challenges and improve efficiency across industries using artificial intelligence. [Source]
Spinach.ai is enterprise-ready, offering robust security and compliance with SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and HIPAA certifications. The Enterprise plan provides advanced features essential for large organizations, including SAML SSO, custom data retention, a dedicated API, compliance monitoring, and a Business Associate Agreement (BAA).
At Adeptmind, one-on-one meetings are typically held weekly for 30 minutes with each direct report. If additional discussion is needed, extra time is scheduled as required. This ensures ongoing support and timely problem-solving for team members. [Source]
At Adeptmind, the direct report owns the one-on-one meeting. They dictate how the time is used, with managers providing more structure for less experienced employees and more autonomy for managers and directors. [Source]
The main purpose is to support and coach team members on specific situations or areas of difficulty, helping them grow and develop professionally. One-on-ones are dedicated time for individualized support and skill improvement. [Source]
Meetings are structured but personalized. Managers invest time in understanding each individual's work style, coaching preferences, and feedback needs, adjusting their approach accordingly. This ensures meetings are effective for both new and experienced employees. [Source]
Managers review notes from previous meetings, track any major company or project changes, and note problems identified by direct reports to ensure all important topics are addressed in the next meeting. [Source]
The main challenge is encouraging direct reports to bring potential solutions, not just problems, to meetings. Managers expect critical thinking and collaborative problem-solving, helping employees develop solution-oriented habits. [Source]
Success is defined by the direct report expressing gratitude and feeling that the meeting was valuable. Solving important problems, even if not all, and seeing long-term positive outcomes are key indicators of success. [Source]
Common questions include: How are you feeling? Is there anything you need clarification on? How can I help you succeed this week? How do you want to be coached? How do you prefer to receive feedback? Do you feel like you’re getting enough feedback? [Source]
A coaching contract is a verbal agreement between manager and direct report on how to communicate and give feedback. It is discussed in the first one-on-one and revisited regularly to ensure effective, personalized communication. [Source]
Managers lead by example, sharing their own experiences and challenges to build trust and encourage openness. This vulnerability helps create a safe environment for honest feedback and discussion. [Source]
Mental health is a priority at Adeptmind, especially in a fast-paced startup environment. Managers openly discuss their own mental health practices to normalize the conversation and support team well-being. [Source]
Feedback is a two-way street. Managers explain their feedback style and encourage direct reports to share how they prefer to give and receive feedback, ensuring mutual understanding and continuous improvement. [Source]
The structure is consistent but flexible, covering personal well-being, project updates, challenges, the 'rose, bud, thorn' exercise (wins, potential, challenges), and career development. This ensures a comprehensive conversation. [Source]
Managers set the expectation that direct reports should bring not just problems but also potential solutions. This practice fosters critical thinking and more productive discussions. [Source]
Coaching contracts are not static; they are revisited regularly as the manager-employee relationship evolves, ensuring communication styles and feedback methods remain effective. [Source]
This exercise is used to discuss wins (rose), new ideas or potential (bud), and challenges (thorn), providing a structured way to cover both achievements and areas for growth. [Source]
Managers provide more structure and guidance for new employees, helping them acclimate to the meeting format and encouraging open communication from the start. [Source]
Experienced managers and directors are given more autonomy in structuring their one-on-ones, allowing them to focus on topics most relevant to their roles and development. [Source]
If a meeting runs out of time, additional sessions are scheduled to ensure all important topics are addressed without rushing, maintaining meeting quality and depth. [Source]
Managers share their own professional challenges and growth stories, fostering rapport and encouraging team members to open up about their own experiences. [Source]
Spinach AI is an AI-powered meeting assistant that helps teams run meetings, summarizes conversations, automates post-meeting tasks, and integrates with tools like Zoom, Slack, Jira, and Salesforce. It offers automated note-taking, workflow optimization, AI-powered insights, and tailored solutions for different roles. [Source]
Key features include automated note-taking, action item tracking, workflow automation (e.g., sprint plans, PRDs), AI-powered insights from user feedback, seamless integrations with popular tools, and customizable solutions for various teams. [Source]
Spinach AI automates note-taking, tracks action items, and handles administrative tasks, allowing teams to focus on strategic discussions and decision-making. This leads to increased productivity and more effective meetings. [Source]
Yes, Spinach AI integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Jira, Salesforce, and more, ensuring smooth collaboration and workflow automation across teams. [Source]
Spinach AI offers tailored features for product managers (roadmap meetings, PRD generation), sales teams (CRM integration, buyer insights), engineering teams (sprint planning), HR (meeting insights), and more, addressing the unique needs of each role. [Source]
Spinach AI addresses challenges such as manual note-taking, administrative overload, workflow inefficiencies, extracting insights from user feedback, and maintaining team alignment, making it easier for teams to focus on impactful work. [Source]
Spinach AI automates repetitive tasks like generating sprint plans, PRDs, and managing tickets, streamlining workflows and reducing administrative burden for teams. [Source]
Spinach AI uses advanced AI analysis to uncover trends, pain points, and opportunities from user feedback, enabling data-driven decision-making for product managers and other teams. [Source]
Spinach AI's seamless integrations and automated updates help maintain alignment and communication across remote or distributed teams, ensuring everyone stays on the same page. [Source]
Customers consistently highlight Spinach AI's ease of use. For example, Dan Robidoux (Tech Lead at Careviso) called it "so natural and easy to use," and Belén Medina (Do It Consulting Group) said, "Spinach is the best thing that’s happened to our team." [Source]
Spinach AI stands out for its tailored features for different roles, advanced AI-powered insights, seamless integrations, and customizable solutions. Customers like Jason Oliver (Product Director) and Ron Meyer (Alliance Executive) praise its specificity and ability to automate critical tasks. [Source]
Spinach AI is designed for product managers, engineering teams, project managers, marketing, HR, customer success, sales, and finance teams—anyone looking to streamline meetings, automate tasks, and improve collaboration. [Source]
Spinach AI automates onboarding and follow-ups for customer success teams, reducing administrative work and allowing more time for building relationships and delivering value to clients. [Source]
Spinach AI increases productivity, streamlines workflows, enhances collaboration, enables data-driven decisions, and improves customer engagement, ultimately driving business growth and success. [Source]
Spinach AI provides tailored solutions for sales (CRM integration, buyer insights), product managers (PRD generation, user feedback analysis), customer success (automated onboarding), HR (meeting documentation), engineering (sprint planning), and more. [Source]
Spinach AI's vision is to enhance team collaboration and productivity by automating key processes. Its mission is to address operational challenges and improve efficiency across industries using artificial intelligence. [Source]
Spinach.ai is enterprise-ready, offering robust security and compliance with SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and HIPAA certifications. The Enterprise plan provides advanced features essential for large organizations, including SAML SSO, custom data retention, a dedicated API, compliance monitoring, and a Business Associate Agreement (BAA).
Jesse Michael puts a heavy focus on helping his team grow through critical thinking. Learn about how he uses "coaching contracts" to build trust and set expectations with his team.
Hiba Amin
We recently sat down with Jesse Michael, Head of Sales and Strategic Partnerships of Adeptmind to talk about coaching contracts, the importance of mental health in the workplace and of course, one-on-one meetings.
Quick facts:
Across all of my direct reports, I have one-on-ones weekly for 30 minutes. However, I like to slot in extra time on my own calendar when there’s a lot going on in a direct report’s week, which is when our meetings will generally run over. However, if we end up running out of time and my direct report has a hard stop, we schedule more time later on in the day or week to continue the discussion.
My direct reports. Generally, it’s up to them to dictate how this time is used. However, with individuals who are newer to the workforce, the structure and the time (at least at first) is something that I’m more involved in. When it comes to managers and directors, I give them more free reign because they have a better understanding of how they’d like their on-on-one meetings to be run.
I approach leadership with the mindset that my job is to help others succeed. I have one-on-ones because they’re a great tool to support and coach my team on specific situations or areas of difficulty they’re facing where I can help improve their skills. I treat it as a dedicated time between me and an individual, where I can best support their growth and development.
It depends on who I’m having it with. The most common or familiar way I approach my role as a leader is through the lens of managing and coaching a sports team (mainly because I’ve been playing sports my whole life). For instance, in sports, you have a team of 20, which means you have 20 unique and different personalities on your team. There can be similarities across the team, be it your love for the sport or your desire to win, but at the end of the day, those 20 individuals are different. Each person will be going through something in their life, have their own goals (in professional sports, especially some are driven by money, some by winning, some by being the best at their job, just like the office). They’ll want to be coached and motivated in different ways as well, with others wanting feedback in ways that others will not. So, I take that same approach when it comes to my one-on-ones.
So, when it comes to my one-on-ones, I like to have the same sort of structure, but the way it’s handled will be different. Across all of my one-on-ones, especially at the start of the relationship, I’ll put in a lot of time towards getting to know the individual (regardless of seniority). I ask questions related to how they like to work, how they want to be coached, what the best way to give them feedback is, etc.
I will always review meeting notes from our last meeting. If there are any major changes in the company or directional changes in things they’re working on, I’ll make a note to bring those up. Leading up to our next meeting, I’ll also note down any problems they’ve identified leading up to our one-on-one and make sure that those things are addressed.
Getting to a point where my direct reports bring solutions when they bring problems. At the start of most of my manager-employee relationships, I see that my direct reports will come to me with only the problem:
If you’re used to a setting where someone solves your problems then it’s easy to fall into the habit of bringing up problems without solutions. However, I make it an expectation with anyone I work with that if you come to me with a problem, practice critical thinking and try to understand:
It’s less important that they come with the right solution to the problem and more important that they’ve thought it through so we have a productive discussion. Over time, my direct reports will start forming the habit of coming to one-on-ones with their problems and solutions.
The person you’re having a one-on-one with says thank you. If you’re being thanked, especially when it’s genuine then you know that you’ve been able to provide your direct report with value.
Maybe your goal of the one-on-one was to tackle problems and eliminate roadblocks. If we’re able to identify three problems and solve all of them, that’s fantastic. However, if we were only able to solve one, but it’s an important one, that’s success to me. It makes my direct report feel like it was worth their time. The person on the other end feels like they’ve made an improvement.
What’s important to note is that you might not see the success of your one-on-one immediately during that meeting. You might not even see it that day or week. It might be that, a month after your meeting they come back to you and say, “Hey that advice really helped and I closed a deal as a result of it.”
That, to me, is what defines a successful one-on-one.
Some questions I like to ask include:
As a manager, I know that I can be very blunt and to the point when I give feedback and this can be a shock sometimes for new people that join my team. That being said, I know that it’s not how everyone likes to receive feedback. That’s where the coaching contract comes in.
A coaching contract is something that I started using during my time at Flipp. It’s basically a verbal contract between my direct reports and I on how we want to communicate with one another. When a new person joins my team, I’ll make time during our first one-on-one to discuss and determine what our coaching contract is. This is the process of explaining how I like to give and receive feedback, and communicate. But also, to learn about how they do as well.
To start this conversation off, I’ll usually say something along the lines of:
“Hey, this is the type of feedback structure I like to use. When giving and receiving feedback, I can be blunt and direct. I like to provide feedback in a way that will help you grow through reflection and critical thinking, rather than just tell you how to do your job because I believe that you have the skills to solve problems yourself. I also want you to realize that feedback is a two-way street. If you ever have any feedback for me, please feel comfortable to share that with me. This coaching contract is something we should both agree on so I’d love to learn more about how you like to give and receive feedback, as well as how you communicate.”
The goal of this initial conversation is to align on what that coaching contract is and agree on a structure that works best for the two of us. The most important thing with the coaching contract, however, is that it’s not a one and done deal. As a manager, you need to continue to consistently revisit this contract because as you build on your relationship over time, you’ll find things that work and things that don’t. Those will need to be discussed to ensure that you’re always improving the way you communicate and work with one another.
By being vulnerable yourself. Always. You can’t ever go into management expecting that your direct reports will open up to you if you don’t open up yourself.
That’s why I like to share any past experiences or challenges that I’ve had to endure to get to where I am as a sales leader today. I find that sharing these stories with my direct reports, allows them to learn a bit more about me and build up that safe space between us. It also gives them the opportunity to think, “Hey, if he’s gone through this, then I can get through this too.”
On top of that, mental health is something that’s extremely important to me. I’m very open about all of the measures that I take to be mentally healthy, which can be especially tough for people in a startup environment. Everyone is wearing all kinds of hats, goals are aggressive, the workload even more so. That’s why I’m open about my experiences because it’s my hope that, as a result, my team and I can continue to build more rapport and create a psychologically safe space where we both feel comfortable sharing feedback, hardships, etc.
Want to learn about how other people managers run one-on-one meetings? Check out these other interviews:
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