Steven Rogelberg: The art and science of one-on-one meetings

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You're with Brian Kilmeade. His campaign created a little jingle, reminding everyone that they liked Ike. Since then, likability has been sort of omnipresent and also elusive.

All candidates apparently need to have it, but some of them apparently don't. Barack Obama was considered likable in 2008, which led to this. He's very likable.

I agree with that. I don't think I'm that bad. You're likable enough, Hillary. And today there is one person in particular whose ability to be likable enough is really sort of in question. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. According to The New York Times, DeSantis and his team had internal conversations acknowledging the need for him to engage in the basics of political courtship, small talk, handshaking, eye contact.

There you go. That is some of the nuances that might make or break a candidacy and also in your life, right? One-on-one meetings, how do you make the most of it? When you're conducting meetings, how do you get the most of your staff or how do you produce most for the person you work for? Steven Rogelberg is a Ph.D. and Chancellor's Professor at UNC Charlotte, author of the new book, Glad We Met, The Art and Science of One-on-One Meetings. Stephen, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. It's really great to be here. So, Stephen, let's start from the political end. You heard for the longest time about Governor DeSantis. Man, he's a man of action. He gets things done. Two substantial election wins.

One came out of nowhere to win the first time and then he wins overwhelmingly the second time. When he starts running for president, people say he's having trouble connecting. When someone says that, what do you think of right away? Yeah, the lack of connection just refers to this idea of whether you're truly, when you're meeting someone for the first time, do they seem to actually be interested in you? Are they trying to understand who you are and your needs and then trying to use that information as momentum for them to talk about some of the things that might be interesting and important to you. But ultimately, it's about connection. It's about this belief that this person is truly listening and truly interested.

And what is your advice, first off? Bill Clinton was a master at it. Barack Obama was strong at it. They say George W. Bush was great at it.

Al Gore, not much of a connector. So what do you need to do to connect to someone? Look in their eyes and be genuine? Yeah, you know, first of all, I think it starts by trying to remember people's names. We're often really bad at that. You know, when we meet someone for the first time and we hear their name, we typically forget it. And we forget it because we're thinking about what we're going to say next.

We forget it because we don't truly care. So when we meet people, we want to take extra effort to remember their names. We then want to connect by asking questions, right, trying to understand who this person is, find common interests, but also look for dissimilar interests and explore it and learn about it.

So those are kind of the foundations. And then just being pleasant, nice, eye contact, smiling, bring the person in, help the person feel safe. Right now, some of the stuff was innate in all of us. You learn from your parents, you go to meet people, you have to go to meet adults when you're a little kid, how you have to look them in the eye and have a firm handshake.

But now in the advent of the phones, you got to go back to the basics in many cases. Good interpersonal skills are not a given. I mean, people need to get some feedback. They need to take an interest in leveling up their skills. I mean, that's actually one of the things that I think is intriguing about this new book is, you know, it's taking a common activity that people think they're really good at, but they're not, and trying to cast, put a mirror in front of their face so they can see what's going on and teach them some new techniques. Yeah, I mean, the numbers are pretty staggering that you outline in your book how many people will have a one on one meetings on a regular basis. And it's about time that you learn to master them. So besides caring and listening, you're talking about you're estimated that 200 to 500 million one on one meetings are held each day around the world.

Some are transformative and some can destroy you because people have a negative impression of you. So what's the things you want people to take away from now? Let's back up and think about what is a good one on one meeting. So when I talk about a one on one, I'm really getting into this connection between the manager and their team member.

Right? This is a meeting that's facilitated and orchestrated by a manager, but it's not for the it's for the direct report. It's for the direct report to be able to share what's on their mind, their concerns, their needs, and for the manager to listen and respond to to ask good questions. So it's a really special activity that can occur at work that allows people to feel seen. And that's what we all want, right? When you think about the various contexts that we operate in work, home, or whatever we want to be seen. So an excellent one on one is about truly seeing your direct report.

And by doing so, you're able to offer the support needed, the guidance needed, the counsel needed to help this person truly thrive. So give the gift of ultimate comfort with Cozy Earth's lounge wear or the gift of relaxation and pampering with premium bath products and you can sleep with confidence thanks to Cozy Earth's remarkable 10 year warranty promising decades of restful sleep. Cozy Earth's provided an exclusive offer for my listeners today. So listen up up to 35% off site wide. When you use promo code Brian, that's B-R-I-A-N. Go to CozyEarth.com and use the code Brian for 35% off.

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That's ShipStation.com with the code Spotify. What about from the leadership level when you have to conduct a meeting that's not one on one where you'll have one on one eventually with these people, but you've got to get their attention in a group setting? So in general, just how do you run excellent meetings?

Yep. Wow, that's a fabulous and huge question. I have another book I wrote about that topic, by the way, called The Surprising Science of Meetings. You know, basically, you know, creating a great meeting starts with having a compelling purpose to meet.

So often we just meet out of habit and that's not why we should meet. You know, having a good meeting means that we invited the right people, that we're actively facilitating conversation. As a leader, if we're doing the vast majority of the talking, we're failing. Also, having a good meeting starts with an agenda, but we need to start thinking about agendas differently. Instead of just framing your agenda as a set of topics to be discussed, I want to challenge leaders to start framing their agenda as a set of questions to be answered. And by framing your agenda as a set of questions to be answered, now you have to truly think about the meeting and what you're trying to achieve, right? By framing your agenda items as questions, now you have a better sense of who really has to be there. They're relevant to the questions. By framing your agenda items as questions, you know it's a meeting that's been successful because the questions have been answered. And if you just can't think of any questions, it likely means you don't need a meeting. So who's an example that you hold up as somebody who gets it?

How to meet someone one-on-one and impress them? That is the sad thing. There isn't a good example. This is a horrible blind spot. In our research, we generally find that if you survey people coming out of a one-on-one meeting, the person that thinks it went really well is the person who the meeting was not for.

The manager thinks it went much better than the direct. And clearly, that's a problem. It just appears that there's this blind spot. And while I can certainly find individuals who execute better in terms of high-profile CEOs, I have not found a good example.

So interesting. In terms of a politician, do you think Bill Clinton was probably the best of modern-day politicians? You know, it's hard for me to answer because I'm only observing from afar.

I didn't have that personal conversation. Certainly, from what I've heard, so many politicians are really good at this. They wouldn't have elevated to the states that they're at. I don't think DeSantis is bad at it. It's been supercharged. Everything's on steroids. I think to reach this level of political success, all these folks have good abilities. It's just being under the microscope all the time and having every single interaction analyzed and everything is fully available online.

The narrative is hard to maintain. What do you try to do? So right now, if you walked in and you have to do an interview on a podcast, you want to connect with that host as you do your book tour. And by the way, we're talking to Steven Roggeberg. He's a Ph.D. He's a professor at UNC and author of the new book, Glad We Met, The Art and Science of One-on-One Meetings. What do you try to do?

What works for Steven? What works for me is first, caring. You know, genuinely caring. We have so many interactions with people where we don't really care, right?

We just see them as tools to help us get our work done. And one-on-one meetings, you have to have a different perspective. You really have to believe that by having this one-on-one with your directs that you're doing something good, that you're helping this person thrive.

And by doing so, you're going to thrive as well. So the first thing I try to do is have the right mindset, right? There's so many times we have so many things on our plate that we just don't focus when we're meeting with someone, be it someone who works for us or someone that's our child.

Right. So that focus is important, then, you know, that using your non-verbals to communicate interests. It might be the case that I need to be appropriately vulnerable, which then allows the conversation to be more real and vulnerable. I want to be polite and kind. I want to demonstrate empathy. I want that person to know that I'm listening. You know, I want to be dialed in and truly hearing the questions as opposed to just replacing it with what I want to talk about. So it's just about presence, about mindset.

It's about the basics of just good human interaction and trying to connect with another person. What was it like pursuing your Ph.D. in this? What did you even use for resources? So my Ph.D. is in organizational psychology, and so I'm drawn to study vexing problems at work and try to bring science to bear to make it better. And, you know, when we conduct research, you know, we use many different methodologies. We can conduct experiments where people are exposed to certain types of conditions. We can have people keep a diary, and every time they have a meeting, they provide more input and they do this over a long period of time. We can survey people both at the beginning of their days and after their days to try to understand what's driving their experiences. We can actually video one-on-ones and meetings and code the types of behaviors that we see to see if we can glean insights. So there's a whole host of tools that can be applied to understand these fascinating and complex human behaviors at work. All right. So if you want to change your interaction and put your own career on jet fuel, pick up Steven Rogelberg's new book.

It is called Glad We Met, the Art and Science of One-on-One Meetings. Thanks, Steven. Oh, you're welcome.

And Brian, an added bonus. I'm so passionate about trying to get this material out that I'm donating all my proceeds to the American Cancer Society to support my fabulous sister-in-law Kathy Lupensky and her battle against cancer. Nice. Awesome. Steve, thanks so much. Best of luck. Appreciate it.