John O’Reilly – The Art of the “One-on-One”

The one-on-one meeting is the quintessential tool of the organizer. The one-on-one meeting is used so frequently in organizing campaigns that it’s usually abbreviated by organizers tired of typing it out (such as myself) simply as the “1on1.” To understand what makes a good 1on1 happen, it’s worth delving into detail about some components which make up the 1on1 and how to understand them.

For the inexperienced organizer, the 1on1 often seems scary. Too scary, in many cases, for them to attempt it seriously. The inexperienced organizer then takes two possible approaches: in one, they under-emphasize 1on1 conversations and rely instead on informal meetings and hang-outs to take their place. In the other, they attempt half-hearted 1on1s that don’t really do the practice justice.

There’s plenty of wisdom about why organizers should avoid informal hang-outs as their primary organizing tool, so I won’t bother repeating that here. But the half-hearted 1on1 is far more pernicious because it’s harder to spot. By identifying the half-hearted 1on1, we can see clues that will push us to see what the good 1on1 looks like instead.

The half-hearted 1on1 looks on the surface like a good 1on1. It takes place in a location comfortable to the worker and the organizer. It has a clear starting time and perhaps a clear established topic: to talk about work. The organizer and the worker are both sober. The organizer has a list of topics that they suspect the worker has grievances around, but is planning on letting the worker lead the way. On its face, it seems like it’s going to go well.

Following the time-tested approach of AEIOU, the organizer leads off the conversation with Agitate, the first piece of the puzzle. They ask the worker about their grievances. They follow up with open-ended, clarifying questions about the grievances to better understand them. They get the worker talking quite openly about all their specific problems and the ways that they play out. The organizer, feeling like they have gotten the issues out in the open, moves to Educate the worker, asking questions about how things could be solved.

Something’s wrong. The worker acts confused by the leading questions the organizer introduces during Educate. “No, I don’t think we can really do anything about it.” “That would never work, here’s why…” “What can we do to change things? Nothing, really.”

What’s happening here? The organizer is losing the thread of the 1on1. The worker is completely negative towards the idea that conditions could improve. It seems like an impossibility to them. What had previously felt like a positive direction switches and starts to feel depressing. The worker walks away from the conversation even more dispirited than before and the organizer is left reeling.

Where did things go awry?

There wasn’t any heart. The 1on1 is not the tactical teasing out of issues and their possible solutions. It is an emotional interplay between two humans which moves them both to a higher level of understanding. It is not developing a laundry list of problems, or a brainstorm of action steps. The 1on1 is a scalpel which slices to the core of a worker’s issues and reveals their significance and intensity. It is the dangerous and vulnerable act of listening to someone’s heart.

A good 1on1 starts similarly to our example above, but it quickly steps into murkier waters. It’s never enough to know what someone’s issue is; what matters is why that issue is important to someone. If the problem is healthcare, why does that matter to the worker? Because they’re afraid for their spouse, who has a pre-existing condition? Because they want to have children but are worried about the costs of raising them with the current plan? Because they recently watched a family member or friend spend their life savings on a futile attempt to keep their loved one alive?

Organizing well will lead you into some uncomfortable territory. It’s easier to cosplay with red and black flags and exchange nuggets of trivia with your friends about the heroes of the Left canon than it is to actually sit with the horrors of capitalism in human terms. 1on1s can go very dark, very quickly. Perhaps it won’t be your first one, or your second, but if you want to have real conversations about what motivates people to want a better life and why, you need to expect to see and hear some things you didn’t want to.

That’s why it’s important for organizers to prepare themselves for the long haul. Being honest and caring for the workers that we talk with is important, and so is staying healthy. In order to genuinely care for our coworkrs, we need to care for ourselves. People who work as nurses and social workers frequently struggle with their own mental and emotional health because of the things that they encounter as a part of their jobs. Being an organizer is very similar. Talking about capitalism and work in honest terms requires serious self-care. A good organizer knows the phone numbers for free or low-cost mental health providers, both for their coworkers and for themselves. That’s because asking the questions that bring up real, concrete issues means encountering those real problems.

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