How to Make One-on-One Meeting Successful in Trello?

by Peter Kanai · June 5, 2020

One-on-one meetings are a critical business practice of any successful organization. If done right, they can enhance collaboration, energize team members, get everyone aligned with the company vision, lead to the hatching of new ideas, improve productivity, and help spur growth. However, without adequate preparation, a one-on-one meeting can throw the entire team into confusion. Questions like what will be the agenda and what was discussed in the last meeting will always come up if you aren’t well prepared for the 1-on-1.

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Fortunately, Trello, a project management application, can help you conduct effective one-on-one meetings. Trello allows users to organize their projects into boards. At a glance, a user can visualize what’s being worked on, who’s working on what, and what’s already done. Although Trello is user friendly and simple, it offers powerful capabilities. A user can add attachments, invite people, communicate, search and sort cards, and add labels to cards. Trello can also be integrated with other tools to expand its functionalities. If you are looking for a tool that can improve Trello’s reporting and exporting capabilities, consider Bridge24 for Trello.

Trello is not only good at organizing work but also managing one-on-one meetings. Whether you want to talk about the status of a project, address concerns or bottlenecks, or discuss the current and future growth of your company, Trello can help you hold structured, efficient, and enjoyable meetings each time. The guide below will help you have successful 1-on-1 meetings.

The Trello Board for One-on-One Meetings

For one-on-one victories, the team leader and the members should share a Trello board. This ensures they are on the same page. Note that before the meeting, all parties should think of topics ahead of time, and prepare themselves adequately. You should also spare time to agree on the topics that will be discussed in advance. Many teams use Trello boards to hold productive meetings, and they are happy with it. On your new Trello board for 1-on-1 meetings, create five lists titled as follows – To Discuss, Ongoing, Growth, Discussed and Done.

To Discuss

This is where the points you will cover are placed. They are added as they are thought of. This list is helpful for a few reasons.

It provides an agenda for your meeting. This list holds the points to discuss.
It’s a place to quickly add topics. When the manager or team member discovers an idea that should be discussed or recalls something that should be followed up, they can add it as a card on this list.
It informs users of what will be talked about. This helps everyone to know what is on the agenda, allowing them to prepare in advance. Team members can research the points, prepare to ask questions, and even respond to updates before the meeting.

To get email alerts when a card is added to the list or an update on the board is made, press the button More on the right side of the board, then click the Watch option.

Ongoing

This list is for placing topics that were discussed and needed some level of follow up. It helps remind team members to revisit these points in the next meeting. It can also be used to house topics that need frequent follow up such as an ongoing project. To make sure it doesn’t slip under the radar, add a due date to it, and you will get a reminder.

Growth

This list is a place where each team member can place 3 to 4 growth goals. Listing these items allows the individual to focus on these areas for a given period, and reminds them what they need to do. It also helps the team leader to track the progress being made by each member.

Discussed

This list documents all the items that have been discussed in a meeting. It’s essential, especially when the team needs to refer to what was covered in a previous meeting or assess their accomplishments. It’s also used to store notes of discussions, actions, and resolutions that were made in a 1-on-1 meeting.

Done

Quite obviously, the Done column holds all the agendas that were accomplished and closed.

Tips for Better 1-on-1 Meetings

To make the most out of your time together, consider these quick tips;

Share the agenda beforehand and prioritize the important topics.
Don’t use 1-on-1 meetings for status updates as it may divert the purpose of the meeting.
Give every team member a platform to air their views.
Make sure everyone takes notes, but at the end of the meeting during the recap session.
Set targets at the end of the meeting. These goals should be achievable by the next meeting.

Wrapping Up

Unstructured meetings can distract teams from getting work done. Trello is a simple, yet versatile and powerful tool that you can deploy to improve your team’s productivity, rapport, and efficiency during one-on-one meetings. With the Trello workflow above, your team will always look forward to participating in meetings.

Reporting is a crucial part of any meeting, and tools like Bridge24 for Trello make it easy for users to export and share more detailed reports about projects and tasks in meetings. Try these amazing advanced reporting & exporting features.