Overview

Having regular 1:1s is an essential part of keeping your team aligned. Depending on the size of your team, schedule 1:1s every 1-2 weeks. These meetings are an ideal time to discuss status, goal progression, engagement and career development. Senior members of the team may require less contact, less experienced individuals will likely require more

Scheduling

• Try holding 1:1s face to face. If this isn’t possible. Skype can be a really helpful way of staying connected. For remote workers this is often the only "live" interaction of the week
• Consistency is important: if 1:1s are irregular or infrequent, reports may feel that they can't/shouldn't bring up the little things, and won't know how or when to bring up the big things (professional growth, etc.)
• Reserve sufficient time, particularly for remote reports -- 15 minutes to an hour is a good target depending on frequency
• Too compressed and there is a chance that reports may not bring up the potentially large and challenging issues
• Too long and it could feel like you have to account for every second

Responsibilities

Manager's responsibilities

• Prepare for the 1:1 -- go over any previous notes, have an idea of what you want to talk about, information you need, information to pass along, etc
• Generally, help your reports:
  • Recognize and leverage their key strengths
  • Give actionable feedback towards the professional development
  • Focus and execute on the right work at the right time
  • Develop and grow their roles within the organization
  • Understand how to succeed

Report's responsibilities

• Prepare a rough agenda for your 1:1.
  • Know your blockers and what you could use help with
  • Focus on what your currently working on, but think about what you need to do next
  • Track progress against goals
• Having the report do most (but not all) of the prep work for the meeting scales well - this way each person only has to prepare for one 1:1

Shared responsibilities

• Make sure the 1:1s happen
• Be engaged when they do happen - put the phones and computers away
• Try to make sure the meetings are a net positive, not negative
• Keep the meetings effective and personal

Discussion Topics

Cover the following regularly, but don't worry about getting to each in every meeting!

Day-to-day

• Project status
• Blockers
• Administrative issues: expense reimbursements, etc

Goals and focus

• Current focus: are you working on the most important thing?
• Quarterly goals: track progress against set goals
• Planning: rough planning for the next week, or the next phase of a project

Engagement and concerns/issues

• Report's concerns/issues: frustrations, problems, etc
• Engagement: whether generally happy, motivated, enjoying the work, looking for challenges, burnt out

Professional growth and development

• Professional growth: go over long-term goals and objectives.
  • What are you doing to grow professionally?
  • What could you be doing?
  • Work on putting together a roadmap towards leveling/progression

Innovation and expansion

• New ideas: Sounding board for new ideas and directions

Outcomes

Every meeting

• Any blockers have been brought up and discussed/resolved
• Both manager and report understand the current focus and its importance
• Both are aligned on goals, expectations, upcoming work
• Document and share feedback, outcomes, and decisions

Long term

• Coaching/teaching: each should be learning from and helping the other.
• Progress and development: report understands his/her place in the organization and understands how to advance and progress.
• Socialization, relationship building: don't underestimate the importance and value of random chit-chat!
• Everyone leaves the meeting with more energy than they came in with.