Tushar Dadlani’s Blog

“Its (one-on-one) main purpose is mutual teaching and exchange of information.”   - Andy Grove [1]

I first ran into one-on-one meetings in the famed High Output Management by Andy Grove. It’s a meeting in which a manager meets with their direct report. If you are a knowledge worker, you have these meetings either as the direct report or as the manager. Running a good one-on-one meeting is the tangible thing you can do to grow as a leader in your organization.

 “In striving to help others grow, we grow too.”   - Daisaku Ikeda [2].

In my first job, I would always be waiting for my manager to reach out to me and ask me questions. It took me a few years to realize how limited in scope my one-on-one meetings were. I would talk about compensation and vacation, but I rarely spoke about my career and never about how I felt about the different situations.  My first management role was at my own company, Explorer.ai. There I started doing one-on-ones with an intent to understand what my team wants. We discussed their job, their career, their immigration challenges and many more topics. My role was to guide them on their journey. Helping my team and myself through one-on-ones was two birds with one stone.

“Someone can be extremely smart, knowledgeable, and a joy to be around, but if they don't deliver on time or to the standard expected, they'll lose trust quickly.” - Anne Raimondi [3].

To help your direct report the first step is to cultivate trust. To build trust one needs to work on credibility, reliability, authenticity and self-interest. The fastest way to build credibility is to ask questions in your one-on-one meetings. Simple things like being on time, not canceling meetings without reason and following up on promises help build reliability. Sharing relevant context and being direct with unpleasant information reflects authenticity. Self-interest shows up when you misrepresent your direct report. It happens outside your one-on-one and people are good at catching it. Start building trust in your next one-on-one.

When you go into your next one-on-one meeting, think about how you can grow trust.  It’s the bedrock of a healthy professional relationship. If something is uncomfortable for you, learn how to deal with it to benefit your direct report or team. One of my direct reports shared with me, “I was a little apprehensive about the regular one on ones. Now, I find them very insightful, to understand the direction and how our team fits into the bigger picture.” One-on-ones get easier the more you practice.  Building strong working relationships takes time. Enjoy the messy process of your team and your growth.

[1] Andy Grove, High Output Management

[2]  Daisaku Ikeda, New Human Revolution Vol. 8

[3] Anne Raimondi, Use This Equation to Determine, Diagnose, and Repair Trust

The past one year has been a time for deep introspection about why I am doing what I do. How can I continue doing what I want to do and what my moral compass is? Three encounters evolved me over the past one year - Buddhism, Amit Varma and my curiosity.

One non-negotiable idea as a Buddhist is that each person is capable and enlightened. “A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, can even enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.”  - Daisaku Ikeda, The New Human Revolution. I’ve chanted Nam Myoho Renge Kyo over a large part of my life.  It's been a great way for self-introspection and challenging my fears. 

My writer friend Manu Pillai introduced me to the podcast,  The Seen and the Unseen . The title of the show itself was interesting enough to give it a shot. The conversations provided practical examples of cause-effect relationships. The podcast gave examples applying economic reasoning and probabilistic thinking. It helped that the guests and the host cared enough about each other and the subject they were discussing. It also helped that these people had lived experiences about the subject at hand.

My trust in Amit Varma based on his podcast made the course, The Art of Clear Writing a must sign-up course. I started logging in at 5:30 AM PT every Saturday of August 2020. All good instructors make you uncomfortable in a good way, Amit was no exception. He forced us to build a writing habit. He once shared the following, “I liked the way it began, with quick action and a sense of this lively girl in a precarious world. But then the piece became overwrought. One sign of that happening is when you have sentences that don't add anything new to the story, which happened a bit in the second half. From painting a picture, as the first half did, the piece became a sentimental lament, and that didn't work for me.” 

Amit’s final class had a recommendation of writing 200 words every day. It took me a few weeks to get started but here I am finished with two notebooks with my daily journal entries.

Here are a few journal entries from there

I am a curious person who is trying to understand myself and the world around me. In modern society separating the two is close to impossible. We are more dependent on each other than we were at any other time in history. This curiosity combined with a process of writing and chanting daily has taken me to the next step.

We are all on a journey to gain clarity in our life. Board the train of curiosity and you will enjoy the boredom. With consistency, you also will gain some clarity. 

I wanted to thank my family, clear writing community, friends and peers who pushed me to get this off the ground. You know who you are.