Most sales leaders have regular one-on-ones with their sales reps. These meetings allow them to check in with their direct reports and see how they can help them. If you’re new to your role or you have a new employee on your team, it’s important to get the first one-on-one meeting right. In many cases, these one-on-one meetings shape the employee’s perception of you.

Claire Lew, CEO of Know Your Team, says you can make your first one-on-one with an employee productive by following a few simple guidelines. Keep reading this issue of Promotional Consultant Today, where we share Lew’s advice for a successful one-on-one meeting.

Tell your new hire why you’d like to start holding one-on-one meetings. One-on-one meetings are not for status updates or brainstorming, says Lew. These meetings allow you to uncover potential issues and share feedback with one another. According to Lew, making this purpose clear is paramount because your employee may have never had one-on-one meetings at their previous job(s) where this was true. Orienting them to this particular purpose of the one-on-one meeting is therefore essential.

Ask your new hire what frequency and duration of one-on-one meetings they prefer. For these first one-on-one meetings, for how long and how often should you hold them? If the new hire directly reports to you, Lew recommends weekly meetings for one hour for the first 90 days or so. If the new hire doesn’t directly report to you, either a biweekly or monthly meeting for one hour is likely enough. Regardless, she says the most important part here is to get input from them on the frequency and duration in the first place.

Prepare an agenda with input from your employee. You’ll want to spend at least 15 minutes brainstorming thoughtful, specific questions you might want to ask, says Lew. Recall that the purpose of your one-on-one meeting is to uncover potential issues and concerns, so your questions should be targeted around this. For your first meeting with an employee, this often means asking questions that reveal what the other person’s work preference and expectations are, so you can account for them as a leader.

Don’t cancel the meeting. Only reschedule it if you must. Consistency with one-on-one meetings matter, notes Lew. You speak volumes about how you prioritize the other person’s time with how well you prepare and how consistently you show up for your meetings with them. Move or cancel your first meeting with an employee, and it sends the message loud and clear: “Listening to you doesn’t matter that much to me.”

Share takeaways, reflect and follow up. You lose the value of one-on-one meetings if you don’t follow up, according to Lew. It’s important to reflect on how the meeting went and if the questions you asked seemed helpful. When you consider how the meeting went, you can calibrate and improve for next time.

It’s easy to skip or postpone an employee’s first one-on-one meeting. However, your to-do list can wait. It’s much more important to make sure that first meeting is well-run and effective. The first one sets the tone for the rest.

Compiled by Audrey Sellers

Source: Claire Lew is CEO of Know Your Team. She writes on leadership at the Know Your Team blog and has been published in Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, CNBC, Inc., Fortune and others. Lew speaks internationally on how to create more open, honest work environments.