So how do you master the art of the one-on-one management conversation? You have to be patient. As long as you conduct them on a regular basis, there is no reason to let management conversations become long and convoluted.

The goal is to make these one-on-one meetings routine, brief, straight and simple. Once you've gotten into a routine with each person, ten or fifteen minutes should be all you need.

You have to gauge how much time to spend in one-on-one conversations with each employee at any given time depending on how things are going.

What if things are not going well with a particular employee? Well then you should consider meeting with this person every day for a while. Don't make the mistake of spending hours on tearful inquisitions, indictments, or confessions. Keep these meetings short and consistent. You have to be patient. There's a chance that things are not working out with this employee because he is not getting enough guidance, direction, and support. Once you spend more time with this person, you are likely to see 99 percent of performance problems disappear as if they were never there in the first place. You just have to be patient.

What about high performers? I mean if somebody is a high performer do you really need to spend fifteen minutes every day or even every week with that person? Maybe you need to meet with that person only every other week. But see if you don't spend at least that much time with an employee, even someone you are sure is a high performer then you don't actually know whether things are going well with that person. All you really know is that no problems have come up on your radar screen. So when you think things are going well with an employee, spend those fifteen minutes verifying that things are indeed going as well as you think they are. If in fact they are, well then you still need to work with that employee to help make things go even better, to offer positive feedback, to provide the development to ensure that this person is so happy that she doesn't ever think about leaving. High performers need to be motivated and rewarded. High performers need to be managed, too!

You take any employee you've not spoken with in detail for a while. Spend fifteen minutes with that person asking some probing questions about his or her work and you will find some surprises.

Check in regularly to ensure that there are no obstacles in the employee's way that will prevent her from getting lots of work done very well, very fast, all day long. You should ask yourself: Are there problems that haven't been spotted yet? Problems that need to be solved? Resources that need to be obtained? Are there any instructions or goals that are not clear? Has anything happened since we last talked that I should know about? You should ask yourself those questions and then you should ask this employee these questions every step of the way. You need to get input from your employees throughout these conversations. Learn from what your employees are learning on the front line. Strategize together. Provide advice, support, motivation, and, yes, maybe even inspiration once in a while.

BONUS MANAGEMENT BEST PRACTICE
This week, try keeping track of how much time you actually spend dealing with each of these 5 items:
1) Fires get started that never had to get started.
2) Resources get squandered.
3) People do their tasks and responsibilities the wrong way for days, weeks or months before anybody realizes it.
4) You do tasks and responsibilities that would have been better delegated to someone else, if they could have been delegated effectively.
5) Having regular one-on-one conversations with direct-reports where you talk through the details of their day-to-day tasks and responsibilities.

And over the next few weeks, see if you can increase the amount of time you spend on #5, and keep track of how much less time you start spending on unnecessary problems (like 1 through 4).