How do you help an employee grow?

If you have employees, you should have regular 'one-on-one' meetings with them.

Most people agree meeting for 30 minutes each week is a good start.

However, only meeting each week for 30 minutes is insufficient.

If I have a 1:1 meeting every week, what could go wrong?

Unless you are careful, you will fail to discuss important topics that would otherwise help your employee advance their career.

It is easy to miss feedback from an employee that would help you do a better job.

Examples of things that could go wrong:

You may fail to provide critical feedback because you would rather avoid confrontation.
You may fail to set goals for an employee because it takes time and planning.
You could give the impression that you are not interested in doing a better job as a manager because you assume they would tell you if you could do something better.

Once per month, you should replace a "standard one-on-one" with a special 1:1 where you ask these six questions.

These six questions ensure that:

The employee practices self-promotion as well as thinking through continuous improvement.
Each of you (employee, manager) share an appreciation of something good that the other has done recently.
Each of you (employee, manager) put thought into something that the other can improve upon.

These six questions are the lightest weight mechanism I have come across that emphasizes continuous improvement for both manager and employee.

They are easily memorized.

They are easily understood and answered.

When you are ready to get going, read these implementation tips.