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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Manager Tools. This is Sarah and I'm Mark. Today's podcast One on Ones. How Much Personal Part one of one.
- [00:12]
B
This cast answers these questions. How much personal stuff should I expect from my directs in one on Ones? What are the data about personal topics in one on Ones? And do I need to share personal topics myself in my one on Ones?
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A
If you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening. Do you want to make next year your most productive yet? Well, we can help. Manage youe tools 2026 training calendar is open and is offering sessions designed to help you develop your leadership, management, hiring, communication and many other skills. Plan ahead and invest in yourself. Now check out the full training schedule and consider visiting us either in person or virtually by checking it out@manager-tools.com training. We hope to see you next year. Today we're talking about topically the concern that some managers have, in our experience.
- [01:16]
B
Many managers, many, many managers.
- [01:18]
A
Exactly. That their directs are going to just talk the entire time about personal things. Managers worry about it. They have really no reason to worry about it. Which is what we're going to talk about today.
- [01:28]
B
Exactly. Well, they have reason in their mind. And because it's. It's a different meeting. Every other meeting is built around work and we say all the time, this one is built about professional, around professional relationships. And half the world, the D's and C's are allergic to relationships. So they immediately say, well, therefore the worst case is I'm going to have to listen to all kinds of personal stuff.
- [01:51]
A
Exactly. Embroiled in this personal conversation. So again, managers are worried. They shouldn't be. They have no reason to be. Which again is what we're going to talk about today. It really doesn't happen that often and frankly, if personal things do come up, it is a sign of trust.
- [02:06]
B
Yeah. And frankly it's a good thing. It won't happen very often, but you'll get used to it.
- [02:12]
A
Exactly.
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B
So our outline is really simple. We want to share with you the data we gained over 20 plus years of watching videotapes of managers and directs doing one on ones. And they all signed disclosure agreements and we won't mention their names. Some of the people I think in our community are actually in the data. So we'll talk about the data in detail. We have a surprise in there. And then we'll also remind you folks, you don't have to share your personal life if it's awkward or uncomfortable for you.
- [02:49]
A
Yeah. So let's start with the data, which is what a lot of the audience members of Manager Tools really, really want. So folks, we have reviewed over 10,000 hours of one on one videos over the course of the last 20 years and we assure you it's a lot of hours of video. But we've watched them all and have gathered data from interviews of managers and their direct afterward about the topics that were discussed, the analytical data from the videos and the information gleaned from the interviews that support the view that personal matters simply don't come up that often, especially in the beginning of one on ones.
- [03:33]
B
Yeah, I like to remind people 10,000 hours seems like a lot and of course it's been made popular in the last 20 years by this idea that if you really want to master something, you have to spend 10,000 hours doing it. I don't recommend you ever try to master 10,000 hours of watching one on one video.
- [03:48]
A
No, it doesn't sound that that great.
- [03:50]
B
And to tell you the truth, we were so focused. I mean I did it along with some of my staff at Horseman & Company. It's really hard to learn anything. Although you do see some people who are quite good naturally interacting, some people who build trust really fast, some people less so. But we didn't have our learning hats on. We weren't trying to learn what worked and what didn't work in terms of tricks and so on. There are a couple of things that we'll share in future podcasts, but basically we were looking to see what were people talking about, how did people respond and so on. And what I like to tell people is when you hear 10,000 hours, remember that's roughly 20,001 on.
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A
Ones. That's a lot of one on.
- [04:33]
B
Ones. It's a lot. And you get, you start watching them and usually we had two people capturing data on what each topic was and how long they spent on it and so on. With little time hacks, we would push a button and so on some very simple software and you would forget that you had gone from one video to another because they were all queued up in this system that a friend of mine put together for me. And it gets long and honestly uninteresting in some ways because you're not, you're not connected to the manager or the direct, which is actually good for data gathering, but it's terrible for your peace of mind and so on. Now look, we've shared before that the overwhelming amount of time managers and direct spend In Manager Tools oh3s MT03s is on work discussions. Now, full disclosure folks, when we say MTO3s we mean people that we trained on how to do one on ones using our guidance of the five non negotiables. And it's got to be scheduled. Right. And you do it weekly and the direct has to go first and what.
- [05:45]
A
Else? At least 30.
- [05:46]
B
Minutes. At least 30 minutes. And then also manager takes notes. You take notes. Yeah. So there are other one on ones going on and they may not follow this. In fact, I would be willing to bet a lot of our managers in our community hear other things about one on ones from other people and they immediately conflate that what we recommend in terms of one on ones coming completely out of the data because we would never have gotten there on our own without the data is somehow akin to what other people.
- [06:12]
A
Do. Yeah, whatever they are doing. We all have our own personal experience with a thing we call one on one. But yeah, it's conflated for them it means the same.
- [06:20]
B
Thing. And I would say the preponderance, I can't say for sure. The majority, certainly the plurality, I'm not going to say the vast majority but. But certainly the plurality of one on ones that I hear that are not taught by us. Those managers are trying to make it personal. And then you hear from somebody in our community, oh, they're just way too personal for me. You know, they're asking about their kids and where are they and do they need help and you know, and this kind of stuff. And, and I, therefore I, the manager has to share personal stuff and it's just doesn't, it doesn't translate. This is why we tell people all the time somebody else is doing one on ones. They've never been given any guidance. They didn't brief their people before they did it. They just started sitting down with them. They do it with some and not with others which creates a disparity among their team that destroys trust. Sometimes they're an hour, sometimes they skip them for a month. And I'm like how would you gather data about that? And of course the answer is you don't gather data. What you get is a lot of anecdotes that are essentially like little barbs against our data. But a manager tools one on one is so different that we have our own data. So as I said, we've shared that the overmount overwhelming amount of time spending one on ones is on work directs on average spend 79% of their time in their manager tools. Oh threes with their bosses talking about work. Now think about that from a data perspective folks. It took us A while to realize that somebody actually drew a graph for us. If the average is over 75%, that is talked about and work, so it's over, it's 79 versus 75. That means that roughly half of those directs that we gleaned from watching those videos, as much fun as it was, if the average is over 75%, that means that roughly half of those directs spend virtually all of their time talking about nothing but work. Over half. Okay. And it also means that the other half, that brings the number down to 79%, spend more than 50% of their time talking about work. So the problem is not personal stuff, as you'll come to.
- [08:32]
A
See. Yeah, exactly. Folks, when we talked to managers and Direct about their. Their experience with MT03s, the same thing was born out as well. Essentially, while the video data is always going to be more accurate, I mean, it's. It's objective reality. It's something that you cannot.
- [08:52]
B
Change. Just count the time. If they're talking about project x for three minutes, that's 10% of the one on one right there. And actually, I'll go a little further. If they're one on one with 36 minutes, we then had to adjust. Luckily, we figured out how to figure out what the total time was before we started counting so that we would know roughly what the percentage was. In fact, the people that were doing it said, can we stop? Because all this is about is work. Like, no, people keep complaining, it's too personal. So I want some data to go back to them. So. Sorry, sorry.
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A
Interrupted. Absolutely. And folks, the data obviously is more accurate and it matters, but the perceptions of those people's conversations also.
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B
Matter.
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A
Yeah. Even if we shared that the videos showed directs talking about work roughly 80% of the time, the commentary from managers was that they had feared manager tools O3s as potentially too much personal stuff. But they agreed, or they admitted, I suppose, that the fear had not been borne out and they regretted their hesitation. That was based solely on.
- [10:02]
B
Fear. Yeah. So the perception matters in the sense of starting people on it. And if you're a director or senior director or a vp, and mind you, if you are, you can insist and then measure and then reward people if you believe importantly enough in it. And certainly in our community, there are tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, probably millions now that do, you can insist on it. And if they had that fear, they were holding back, you should tell them that's not what happens. Not only is my experience anecdotally that that's not what Happens. And I've actually had. But also the data I've actually had directors come to me and say, all my managers saying, it's going to be too personal, I don't want to do it. And not one of those directors that I recall. Maybe there were a couple, but let's say 500 directors have talked to me about this over the course of the last 35 years. I can't remember them, but I'm sure there were one or two that went back to their directs and say, you've been in one on ones with me for six months, nine months, a year. How much do we talk about personal stuff that you might be uncomfortable with now? Nobody did that. Now I know what would probably happen. Somebody would say, well, but that's between you and me, because I'm, I, I think about work. I'm a manager. I think about work all the time. You're my boss. You think about work all the time. You think about it on nights and weekends. We when you sit on your couch watching movies with your kids and your spouse, you're on your laptop doing mail, which is stupid and wrong and bad. But that's a separate problem for another day. And then they say, but my directs are different. And the implication is my directs are mature, professionally mature. They might do this. They don't know any better. I can't believe what they don't know. School didn't teach them what I taught, what I got taught, which of course all is wrong and stupid and bad. But. But whatever. It's a perception and it keeps people from doing one on ones. Okay? And the fear was that if directs talked too much, and for some managers, that's two seconds. If they talk too much about personal topics. Again, however each manager defined that, then managers might have to respond in kind. And if the manager is spending 86% of her time talking about work, she doesn't want to think that, oh, I got to spend 10% or whatever on personal stuff. Because that might take away from the questions I have about work. I've told this story before. I've never had a one on one from a boss. It frankly frustrates me because I would have liked to have experienced one as a director. I've talked about it a lot. I've seen enough videos so I know what happens to directs and how they behave in one on ones. But I always wanted that. And I've also told them that if I work for you, thousands, tens of thousands of people by now over the last 20 years have heard me at effective Manager conferences and probably now at effective senior manager conferences too. And I would bet at the effective executive conference too, they have heard me say, look, if I get to go first, if I was a direct, this is what my one on one would sound like to you. I did this. I did this, I did this. I finished that. I need your help on this. What about this? I need some budget here. I, I need you to reach out to this guy over here about this thing. I did this. I did this. I did this. I didn't do this. I'm sorry. I'll get it to you tomorrow. I've got a problem with one of my directs. Would appreciate your guidance. I did this. I did this, I did this. And people would say to me, that sounds like all you think about is work. And I'm like, yeah, that's what I spend 99% of my time thinking about, is work. And obviously, if something's going on in my personal life, I might mention it. Although a lot of that is covered in chit chat, as we'll learn in a minute. And by the way, and then I flip it around, I said, when I'm a manager, and I've been a manager for a long, long time now, when I did one on ones, my directs might come in and chitchat a little while and then mention some work stuff, maybe mention some personal stuff. And then when I got to my portion of the one on one, I said, where are you on this? What about this? Why haven't you done this? What's your status on this? Let's look at spreadsheet. What about this? What about this? What about this? What about this? I didn't feel any need for reciprocity. And people say that seems wrong. I said, not according to the data, not according to the video. It's not that way. People talk about work the vast majority of the time. But of course, as I said, managers were fearful that, oh my gosh, it might be personal. They didn't want to do that. But because the vast majority of time was spent talking about work, these managers lost their fear of sharing personal matters that had previously made them uncomfortable and kind of, kind of hesitant, like, can I do that? They admitted to being less guarded. Three, six, nine months into the process of rolling out one on ones. And we believe, though be careful, that word believe means we're outside of the data now, folks. It's hard to measure this directly, that that reduction in fear helped build trust. Now we have data that says trust improved, but now we're intuiting from the data. What actually drove that? And you can't do that. That's not what data is for. I mean, there were a lot of times, believe me folks, there are a lot of times I wanted to make an immediate jump from the data. Like I know why they're doing that. The data doesn't say why. But there was so much data that supported everything else. I didn't have to. The data are so overwhelming about one on ones. And building trust is important because trust is the most highly correlated metric to results and retention improvement, which is how managers are.
- [15:26]
A
Measured. Yes, exactly. So direct Talked about work 79% of the time during their time of the manager tools, one on one. So that's, that's direct side. What about managers? Well, managers talked about 86%, talked about work. Sorry, sorry. Talked about work about 86% of their time. More than direct and statistically significant in terms in the difference, the.
- [15:58]
B
Increase. It was 79 and 80, a difference of 1%. And we had 10,000 hours. It probably would have, I don't remember the math. It probably would have been statistically significant. But 79 and 86% is a difference of 7%, which is 15% roughly of 100. So it's more than statistically significant. It's meaningful.
- [16:19]
A
Right? Absolutely. And folks, that number continued to hold pretty steady even after they'd been doing manager tools one on ones for six months or longer. That that trend continues throughout the duration of one on one completion. It doesn't change. Managers don't start suddenly talking more about personal stuff than they used to. It kind of holds true. And it makes sense, right? When you begin a conversation with another person, you're direct. In this case, it's pretty normal, pretty natural that we kind of get the personal stuff out of the way at the beginning. We both kind of share simultaneously, if you will. And then the meeting itself is progressively more, if you will, work focused. I mean, it generally makes sense in human.
- [17:04]
B
Conversation. Yeah, exactly. Now we're going to reveal something we have never revealed before. It's not as if we reveal things here. We're just trying to help you be better managers. But I was asked three or four questions recently at an effective manager conference that I was presenting. Maybe it was when you were in D.C. sarah, and I was with you. You did the EMC. I did the effective senior manager training last week. Of course we were in, I was in Silicon Valley. You were at Gallo out in Modesto. But I did emc, Effective manager ecc, effective communicator. And then I Did effective senior manager and one guy, his name is Chad. Great guy, Chad, if you're listening. Hi. He spent all three days in a row with me. So I just, I tip my hat to you, Chad. Okay, so there is one piece of data we haven't revealed up until now and basically we regret that because look, longtime listeners know we have lots of topics to cover. There's easily a thousand more podcasts after 20 years of over. Actually over a thousand in those last 20 years and we haven't shared it. And so we've learned that the assumption has always been because we've shared the 79 and 86% number every time we talk about right EMC we talk, hey guys, if you're worried, don't worry, okay? The assumption has always been that if roughly 80% of MT03 topics are work related, then by definition roughly 20% would be personal topics. And I think there are a lot of. There is a statistically significant portion. Not a trivial amount, not a negligible amount, but a notable, I might say 20%. Still a lot, guys. 20% still a lot. I'm not sure I want to talk about that. So I was getting these questions about personal topics and I realized we had never shared what the other data was of the categories of topics. And so I'm going to let you reveal.
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A
It. Well, folks, when it comes to the data itself, for both the manager's time as well as the direct's time, only 1% of the overall time was spent on personal topics. The rest of the time was spent in normal conversational chit chat. Just the beginning of a conversation. Hey, how are you? Which how was your.
- [19:32]
B
Weekend? People were so afraid of the personal that they immediately made oh, 79, 86, roughly 80. So 20, 20 for personal. I'm like, wait a minute, dude, have you ever had a conversation with somebody? Don't. Doesn't virtually every conversation start with hey, how you doing? Pretty good. Had a good bake ride today or whatever and I shot, I shot a good score in golf or I was terrible on the golf course. I started pickleball. Just minor stuff. Just, just chit chat. Almost effluvium that doesn't really matter in the big scheme of things, but are actually important parts of professional and all human human conversation.
- [20:10]
A
Communication. Absolutely, absolutely. And not that we need to instruct you all on what chit chat sounds like because we know we don't. We did remember, watch video of this. So we did note the topics that were repeated in this, what we think of as chitchat.
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B
Portion. Right. And you could argue about these topics, these, these things that we put in.
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A
Chitchat. Is that really chit chat or is that personal? You could categorize them however you'd like, but here they are. They are the weather, weekend plans or reviews, sports news, the economy, their company's industry, governmental politics, overwhelmingly not.
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B
Adversarial. They didn't argue with their boss about in the U.S. democrat or Republican, liberal, conservative. They just talked about what was.
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A
In the news, what's happening. Yeah, exactly. Non work events of interest, social media, family and.
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B
Hobbies. And I can tell you a little interesting thing about social media. We only got into the social media age toward the end of the time that we were analyzing some of this data. This is early, you know, 2003, 2004, something like this. And I remember one of my people, I want to say it was a lady named Tina who lived in West Virginia. And Tina said, I'm getting these people talking about what would today be Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, stuff like that. How do we categorize that? And some wag on the team, it wasn't me, said, I don't know what social media is, I've never heard of it. I can't imagine that the things you're talking about are personal. And so I think that should go and chitchat. And we asked around, everybody's like, yep, definitely. Now look, for the record, guys, we chose not to categorize any of these topics as personal because again, these are normal conversation and did not require the manager to give guidance or support to the direct. The way managers fears are built on, oh, I'm going to have to be reciprocal or I'm going to have to be a marital counselor. Good lord, don't try that. You're not John Gottman, for instance, mentioning to your boss about a weekend trip to see your parents was regarded as chit chat. When we interviewed managers and directs later, remember, we categorize them and then we actually interviewed these managers and they said, no, that's not personal. It's just chit chat. It's what humans do. It wasn't controversial, it wasn't personal to the point of being private. In fact, in hindsight, Sarah, I think we should have changed the, the narrative here and said, what about.
- [22:45]
A
Private? Private, sure. Instead of.
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B
Personal. Right. But people want to drive a truck through that personal loophole and say it's 20%. I can't do it. I'm uncomfortable. I'm on the spectrum. I'm a high C, I can't do that. Right. These were topics that both managers and direct saw as conversational chit chat as opposed to personal or private issues that might be awkward or outside of most normal professional.
- [23:12]
A
Relationships. So folks, this is what the data said. Direct spent 79% of their time talking about work, 20% of their time in chit chat, and only 1% of their time was spent on topics that managers and directs generally agreed were personal topics. Managers spent 86% of their time on work matters, 13% on chitchat, and again 1% on personal topics. So managers fears that personal topics could be awkward or too personal were simply not borne out in the data or in not just the data itself, the video data. Their recollections of their conversations proved that they were not spending an excessive amount of time. 20% of the time talking about private.
- [24:15]
B
Matters. Personal.
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A
Matters.
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B
Personal. Yeah, but it gets even better than that. This is my favorite part of this guidance, folks. Think about that. Roughly 1% personal. Okay, in a year of MTO3s manager tools, one on ones, other people are doing different one on ones. God bless them. Great, they're doing it. They don't know what they're doing. They wonder why they work. They cancel a lot. Their directs don't love them, whatever. Let's assume there are 48 weeks of 30 minute long manager tools. One on ones. We give the manager two weeks of vacation. We give the directs two weeks of vacation. 52 minus 4 is 4830 minute long one on ones roughly give or take 24 hours for each of your directions of manager tools. One on ones in a year. When you think about it, guys, it's really not that much. It's only three. If you assume eight hour workday, it's only three work days in which you're going to develop. Do your best to build a trusting relationship with your direct. And in my opinion, not doing that versus doing that is the difference between having credibility when you give them their performance.
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A
Review. Yeah.
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B
Right. Okay, now here's what that 1% boils down to. Less than 15 minutes a year of personal topics. On average, less than 50 minutes a year on personal topics. Okay. Over 1000 minutes. It's actually over 1100. I think if you do the math in your head on work and roughly 250 minutes on chitchat. I mean to use that, to use the personal stuff as basically, in my mind this is dispositive. It disposes of the idea that managers fears of too much personal stuff is warranted. It's simply.
- [26:09]
A
Not. Yeah, it's just simply.
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B
Not. We understand that you have a fear. That's.
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A
Okay.
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B
Yeah. And it's not worth having that fear. The fear is far outweighed by the.
- [26:21]
A
Benefits. I mean, and I would go a step further and say something to the effect of and your fear oughtn't stop you doing something that there is plenty of data to suggest is effective. One can't simply say, I'm afraid of this thing. I'm not going to do it. Even though I might get exceptionally good results, I'm just going to not do it and not get great results because I don't want.
- [26:44]
B
To.
- [26:45]
A
Yeah. We're here in our roles as managers to be effective, whether or not we're comfortable doing the activities that require us to do so. Are you struggling to get your team aligned and effective? Do you need to improve performance in the upcoming year? Well, bring manager tools training to your organization and equip your team with the skills needed to run one on ones, deliver feedback, and just lead more effectively right where they are. Contact us by emailing Maggie at customerserviceanager-tools.com and we'll talk about how we can help you and your team succeed in 2026. Okay, so that was the data section of today's cast. Now let's talk about the fact that you do not have to share your personal life if the data that we've just gone over does not convince you. Remember this, even if your direct does share 15, even 30 minutes, let's say a year, which is two minutes a month, you do not have to do so. Reciprocally, if you don't share personal topics because of your demeanor or behavioral preferences, you don't have to. Our data do not show any sense of expected reciprocity from directs when they share personal.
- [28:10]
B
Topics. Yeah, it's really simple. Now do keep in mind that your directs that when your directs do occasionally share personal topics or issues or even for that matter, not issues, but.
- [28:23]
A
Successes.
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B
Yeah. It's a sign you are building trust with them. You may be the first manager in their career that they would share those kinds of personal things with. And the only way I can legitimately, I mean, maybe some scientists would say actually there's 13 different pathways to do that. But I think all those pathways boil down to trust because sharing personal stuff is potentially the idea that it's personal essentially carries with it some modicum of risk. Like I don't want to share too much. So if someone's willing to talk about a risky topic as opposed to somebody who's not that person is indicating they're in a higher trust relationship than the person who's not willing to share. You may rethink your fear when you realize your MT03s, your manager tools one on ones are doing what you want them to do, even if at times you feel a little awkward. And as Sarah just said, you don't get paid to be comfortable folks. I say this all the time. You get paid to be effective. People tell me what they don't like. I'm sorry, there's all kinds of stuff I don't like. I mean, if my company is doing a layoff and I have to decide who in my 600 person organization is being laid off, I can't say I'm not doing it because I'm uncomfortable. I have to do my duty. You get paid to be effective. And if the price of that is 15 minutes a year of your direct sharing personal stuff, in my opinion, in our opinion, in manager's opinion, it's worth.
- [29:49]
A
It. Absolutely. All right, so folks, to wrap up today's topic, you don't have to worry about about too much personal stuff being shared in your one on one if that's what you're fearing. We respect it as we did early on. But the data don't support your fears. Directs and managers alike understand the content of a manager tools. One on one is work related. On average, some more, some less will spend no more than 15 minutes a year sharing personal topics. It's virtually a rounding error and certainly massively, massively outweighed by work topics 80 times and chit chat 20.
- [30:39]
B
Times. Yeah, and if it's 15 minutes a year, actually I think it's slightly less than that. But it's, you know, we're talking about averages here and it could be a little bit more, a little bit less. If it's 15 minutes a year, folks, that's basically. Let's give me a little leeway here and say that's one minute a month. That's 15 seconds every one on one. Seriously dudes, you know there is no monster under your bed. Even though Monsters Inc. Is a great movie and a franchise at that, but yeah, no it's not. If you haven't started empty one on ones for fears of too much personal stuff that you may not know how to handle the data don't support your fear. Start now and reap the benefit of trust and then results and.
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A
Retention. You bet. Thank you.
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B
Mark. Thank you Sarah. That was fun. And folks, I'm sorry I mind the data every once in a while. Should have done it years ago. Glad to do it.
- [31:38]
A
Now. Love it. All right, well, thank you folks for joining us. We, we hope that this one helped you. Now help us help others and tell your friends. And of course, follow rate and review our podcast. And remember, five stars only.