Dear Reader,

Welcome to my 6 email series sharing my very top tips on developing your communication skills and career, focusing on the topics clients ask me about all the time.

This is the 2nd email in that series. This one's about me sharing how having regular 1-1s have supported me in my career, and how they can help you, too.

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"But how do you know this, Mica?” my colleagues would ask me.

“Because I have 1-1s with our manager.”

I used to work at a place where having 1-1s with your boss wasn’t the done thing. People were busy, there was lots to be done and that kind of meeting just wasn’t the norm.

But I’ve never been backwards at coming forwards and so I asked my boss if we could meet once every 2 weeks. They agreed.

And it really helped for the following reasons:

1. Two days before the meeting, I’d send a short proposed agenda of things I wanted to discuss and invited them to add topics. They never did. But doing this meant it made me focus on what I needed to get from the meeting and what I needed to share.

2. It raised my visibility and value of the work I was doing, how I was working with certain stakeholders and the impact I was having.

3. My boss and I got to know each other better and developed trust between us.

4. It provided me with a grapevine of information so I learned about things happening in other parts of the organisation.

5. My boss could see I was taking my role seriously and that I wanted to develop.

Be careful when you put a date in the diary

I also learned something else. Choose the time of this meeting carefully.

My boss was at their best first thing in the morning and they were friendly and focused then. In the afternoon they could be a grumpy pants. Not always but when it happened, it wasn’t such a nice meeting.

So figuring out an optimal time is important to get your boss in a good frame of mind.

If you have 1-1s, how do these help you? And what about if you're the boss and you're giving them - how do you feel about them?

And if you don’t, is it something you could see yourself doing?

See you next time,

Mica

P.S. Next week I'm sharing two powerful exercises to get you from being stuck to making progress in two big areas: being creative and being confident.

Copyright @ Mica Allan Consulting, 2025

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