This page provides a short guideline and ideas on how to do manager one to one meetings with direct reports. It can be useful to both inexperienced people managers, as well as for seasoned ones.
The purpose of 1-2-1 meetings is to make sure your direct reports are happy, motivated and doing their job to the best of their abilities. It is an essential tool to discover and remove issues and obstacles early on, align your goals, vision and strategy, and help your reports develop their skills and grow in your organization. The 1-2-1 meeting is the easiest way to notice the signs of discontent and prevent people churning. If a person has decided that it is time to leave the organization, it is already too late to prevent it. This is why it is essential to notice any demotivation in it's early stages and address the issue on time. This is the only way to keep good people on the team. Make sure your direct reports are comfortable discussing any topic with you. You need to create a safe environment where you can calmly discuss both happy and negative topics without fear of any repercussion. Make sure they are aware that they should raise anything bothering them, as this is the only way to remove the problem. Your direct reports need to know that you are open to discussing issues.
There isn't one best management style. Figure out how someone wants to be managed in your initial one on one:
- What did you like about your previous manager? What didn't you like?
- What do you like to see from a manager?
Every good meeting should have an outcome, that you try to achieve. The outcome of 1-2-1 meetings with your direct reports can be different, depending on the situation. Here are a few examples:
- build rapport
- discuss ongoing challenges and issues
- provide and receive feedback
- discuss goals and progress
- motivation
- share, discuss and align on company/team vision, plans, strategy
You don't have to cover each of these topics every time, but make sure you don't postpone any one for too long. For example, you might give and receive feedback every 3 months or so, but don't postpone it for more than an year.
Here is a good chart of what people value in their work - you can use it as an inspiration to define expected outcomes of your 1-2-1 meetings:
Do prepare your questions and topics in advance Do make notes during or after the meeting. Do make action plans for the next meeting. Check in on the plans from the previous time. Do make sure people feel comfortable to share their opinion freely and ask any question. Do leave the other person to talk more than you. Do share on your own - you can't expect only the other person to share.
Don't skip the meeting without a good reason. Don't use the 1-2-1 meeting as a status report - you should utilize the time for more personal discusssions, and less about progress on current tasks. Don't steal the conversation - you should be predominently listening and asking questions. Don't make people wait for your 1-2-1 meeting if they have something they would like to discuss right now. Postponing the conversation can hide a potential problem.
This can depend on the person and the situation. Some people are looking forward to frequent check-ins, while others can be annoyed by too frequent meetings. Working in the same office space or fully remotely can also have an affect on how frequently you will need to meet 1-2-1 with your reports. In general, start with a touch base on a weekly basis. If you feel, this is too often, extend the time to bi-weekly or even more. But don't go for more than 1 month without a 1-2-1 meeting. Monthly check-in is also a good idea for skip level 1-2-1s, if you have other managers reporting to you.
Try to prepare for each 1-2-1 meeting, by picking a couple of the topics / questions below. Try to use open ended questions, that stimulate people to open up. Example - two ways of asking the same question - open and close ended:
- (close eneded) Do you like working at the company?
- (open ended) What do you like about working at the company?
On the former question, a shy person could just answer "Yes" or "No". On the later question, they are inclined to think of something and elaborate. Open ended questions usually start with the 5 Ws ("What", "When", "Where", "Who", "Why") or "How".
Some example questions:
- Interests and hobbies outside of work.
- Family and private life - vacation plans, pets, children, etc. Be careful - not everyone is ok to share details of their private life. Don't be pushy if the person is uncomfortable with such a discussion. Try to predispose them by sharing details of your own personal life.
- Tell me about an interesting thing that happened to you in the past (week/month/weekend).
- What do you thing of the last / next team event?
- Who do you feel most connected to at work?
- Who do you feel the least connected to?
- What challenges do you currently have in your work?
- What can I help you with this week?
- What can I do to make your work easier?
- How do you get along with the other members in the team?
- What is the top thing you believe we should change?
- What tools and resources would help you do better?
- How is your workload?
- What do you need help with most often?
- If money was no object, what are the 3 things you would get, in order to improve productivity?
This is usually discussed in more detail on a performance review meeting, but you should not ignore or postpone any recent feedback you have, especially, if it can be used to correct a behaviour in a timely manner.
- Discuss recent success and highlight good behavior.
- What's one thing we could do to improve the way of collaborating in our team?
- Who do you think is the most essential person in your team?
- What is the most important thing you haven't told me by now?
- What feedback do you have for me?
- What do you feel I should change in my work/communication/etc?
- How do you feel about the amount of feedback you are getting?
- What do you like about your job? What is most fun?
- What do you not like about it?
- What would you like to do more often?
- What is the biggest time waster?
- How clear do you feel about what's expected of you?
- What will success look like?
- One year from now, if you look back - what would you like to have achieved?
- What skills do you want to improve?
- What career path are you looking for?
- Who in the company would you be excited to learn more from / work more with?
- What parts of the business would you like to be more involved in?
- How are you progressing on your goals? What is hindering your performance?
- What would you like to do differently?
- Tell me about the last interesting thing you learned?
- What do you help others with most often?
This can be tricky, as different people are motivated by different things in different moments of their life. As people change, so do their priorities and motivation. This is why it is crucial to keep track and adjust. Finding out what motivates and what demotivates the different people in your team will make you a great leader.
- Aim to clarify the big picture value and make sure the person understands the importance of their own tasks.
- Share good news, achievements and milestones.
- Talk about team culture - ask how they feel, what they like and don't like about the current team working culture.
- What is the one thing about our working culture that you would like to change?
- How much your work makes a difference for the team?
- What is challenging you at the moment?
- How motivated do you feel?
- How good do you think you communicate / work with your colleagues?
- What do you feel proud about doing in the past (week/month/sprint)? What are you not proud of?
- How productive do you feel? How can this be improved?
- What part of your work do you feel is most undervalued?
- Which part of our future plans is most excitng to you?
The 1-2-1 meetings are a good time to discuss and align on company vision and plans. You can use the time to make sure your direct reports are clear on the direction the company is moving and your whole team is in agreement that this is the right way forward.
- How clear do you feel about the company vision and plans? What is most confusing to you?
- How happy do you feel with the direction the company is moving to?
- What don't you like about the product we are developing?
- What's the biggest opportunity that we're missing out on?
- If you were me / VP / CEO, what are 1 to 3 things you would change?
- How did you get where you are today?
- Why did you leave your last 2 jobs?
- What are the 3 most important things for you in a company?
- How would you describe the ideal workplace / working culture?
- What should I know about you?
- What would you like to know about me?
- What motivates you in your work?
- Tell me about an achievement you are proud of.
- Tell me about a situation you are not proud of. How would you react in the same situation now?
- Hobbies & interests
- What did you do on the weekend?
- What did you do on your last holiday?
- What was the most fun activity you did in the recent years?
- If you weren't in software development, what would you be doing?
- Tell me about your previous manager. What did you like and didn't like about working with him/her?
- What are the 2-3 things you can't stand?
- Tell me about the colleagues in your previous team, that you got along the most with?
(Bonus)
One on ones where the report is also a manager are typically more "business" and the focus is on strategy, team health and project alignment. Make sure to talk both about themselves and about their team. Some example questions about how they are managing their own team:
- Who is the most important person on your team? Why?
- Who is the most motivated? Who is the least motivated?
- What motivates your team?
- How would you rate the team motivation and happiness right now? What can be done to improve it?
- How would you describe the working culture in your team?
- Tell me about the last time your team did a fun activity together outside of work?
- What could we do to improve the productivity of the team? What is the biggest obstacle?
- What is the last milestone / achievement your team did? How did you recognize / celebrate it?
- What is the workload on your team?
- Is there somebody who is not pulling their own weight at the moment? What are you doing to improve the situation?
- What are you doing to develop and grow the people on your team?
- How are your 1-2-1s going with each member on your team?
- Who on your team is the most helpful to others? Who needs the most help?
- What are your team members' career development aspirations?
(Bonus)
Skip-level meetings are done when you have another people manager reporting into you, and you meet with his direct reports - effectively skipping one level down. They can be useful to provide contact with a high-level management to a broader part of the organization. They can also make people feel appreciated and valued. Another useful case for skip-level meetings is when you have a new manager reporting into you, and you need to make sure he is doing a good job as a manager. Skip-level meetings are in general less frequent than meetings with direct reports.
https://github.com/LappleApple/awesome-leading-and-managing/blob/master/One-on-Ones.md