If you were to ask me what advice I would give to someone starting out, to my younger self — or even to someone in the middle of their career – I would suggest the following:

1. Have a regular 1-to-1 Meeting with your boss, once a week.

2. Send an ‘Achievement Email’ to your boss, every month.

Done well, they will have an 80 /20 effect on your career – deliver outsize returns.

—–

1. A regular 1-to-1 Meeting with your boss, every week

If it is already happening, well and good.

If not, you can approach your boss with –

“Sir / Madam, the regular team meeting that you have with all of us, does not give me enough time to discuss my issues in confidence. Will it be possible for us to have a 1-to-1 meeting once a week, for 15–30 minutes, at your convenience?”

I doubt any boss will refuse.

But even after agreeing, you will have to be after them so that it happens regularly.

What should you discuss in this meeting?

I would suggest to use the SWOT format (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats).

• Strengths – what you achieved, or enjoy doing
• Weaknesses – what you find difficult, or need help on,
• Opportunities – what you want to do or learn next, and
• Threats – what skill gaps the boss thinks you should address or work on.

I have made a simple 1-to-1 form you can use to do this meeting in a structured manner.  Download it here.

The 2 biggest benefits of a regular 1-to-1 Meeting are:

1. Faster growth through reflection

It will force you to slow down and reflect on the overall picture — where you are good, and where you are struggling. The preparation you do will stretch you.

Add to this, the perspective that you will get from discussing them with your boss, will speed up your growth.

2. Higher engagement at work

In the busyness of work, what we crave is an acknowledgment that our work matters.

A 1-to-1 meeting with your boss provides this.

As per a Gallup survey, employees who have regular 1:1 meetings with their managers are 3 times more likely to be engaged.

Your engagement decides the level of motivation you bring to the job, and how fulfilled you feel at work.

So, it is in your interest to ensure the meetings happen regularly.

—–

2. Send an ‘Achievement Email’ to your boss, every month

Most jobs — other than Sales — like, Ops, Services, IT, Audit, HR, Admin, etc., have subjectivity to them.

It is difficult to quantify what exactly you have achieved during the month.

You see your glass half-full; your boss sees it half-empty.

Sending an Achievement Email every month will thus help in 2 ways:

1. It forces clarity

It will force you to note and quantify what you have achieved during the month.

(Do you recall what you achieved at work a couple of months ago – say, in Jan or Feb?)

2. It creates execution urgency

It will create an urgency in you to close out items so that they can be shown as achievements for the month.

Earlier, there was no urgency — you could always say, “The counterpart is not responding”, “We have given the details and are awaiting a revert”, “We await a system patch for the issue”, etc.

Not now. Now, you would want to close the items so as to show them as an achievement for the month.

It will give your work an ‘execution’ focus.

(I share in detail – the Dos and Don’ts of such an Achievement Email, as also a sample Achievement email – in another insight in the Workplace Insights series.)

—–

Don’t chase new ideas — stick to the few that work.