There are several topics to cover in one-on-ones. The very first one, for me, typically has more pomp and circumstance—you can read more about it in another blog post dedicated to holding your first one-on-one. After that, keeping the momentum and continuing to build rapport and trust are key to making one-on-ones valuable.
One-on-one best practices
- Set expectations on the structure: The key is to have enough expectations on what each party will prepare and share in a one-on-one. However, structure doesn’t mean you need to be dogmatic about the exact format or agenda.
- Prepare in advance: It’s important that the meeting is co-owned by both you and your direct report. While it’s helpful to declare that one-on-one time is “for the direct report,” you also need to do your job and lead.
- Share and collaborate: Make the meeting notes a living document. Sharing and collaborating on the same document naturally builds accountability because you can both refer to the same record of past discussions and hold each other accountable on action items to follow up on.
- Ask open-ended questions: Closed-ended questions lead to answers lacking in substance and nuance. “Was that feedback helpful?” yields either a yes or a no, but neither response provides useful information. By asking open-ended questions, you can explore, discover, and learn together.
- Ask neutral questions: Non-neutral questions carry assumptions and implications. In certain contexts, they can even be accusatory. “What have you done to improve your lack of assertiveness?” comes from the questioner’s own assumption that you lack assertiveness. It puts the responder on the defensive. By asking neutral questions, you can encourage more candid responses.
One-on-one topics
One-on-ones look different from one week to another. Despite this, there are some constants. Although the content of these permanent fixtures may vary from time to time, their essence remains the same. For me, they are water cooler chats, follow-throughs, and assignments.
I love occasional water cooler chats. With more organizations going hybrid or fully remote, though, water cooler chats risk disrupting someone’s flow (anyone else irritated by a Slack message that only says “hello”?). That’s why one-on-ones make a great place for water cooler chats. It’s already penciled in. This allows for time to decompress, builds trust, and brings people out of their shells.
With follow-throughs and assignments, the intention is to keep both parties accountable. One-on-ones will yield action items that you or your direct report will need to fulfill. Clarifying the division of labor and following up on work you are each responsible for will promote greater collaboration and strengthen the relationship.
Beyond the constants there are the variables. By and large, they fall under three categories: check-ins, feedback, and discussions. I’ve broken down the three categories further into types noted below.
| Categories | Types |
|---|---|
| Check-in | Work progress |
| Check-in | Employee engagement |
| Check-in | Mental and physical well-being |
| Feedback | Continued growth and development |
| Feedback | Performance goals |
| Feedback | Upward to manager |
| Feedback | Upward to organization |
| Discussions | Company and team goals |
| Discussions | Relationship management |
Check-ins include overseeing the contributions an employee makes and how they feel about those contributions along the way. Most managers excel at accomplishing the former, but neglect the latter. Making sure the team member feels heard and supported is a crucial component of employee satisfaction and retention. Check-ins on tactical and the emotional lead to achieving a great, long-lasting, committed work relationship.
“You cannot win without tactical things but the emotion makes the difference.” - Jurgen Klopp
One clarification: “keeping the employee engaged and motivated” does not mean getting my team members to love their jobs. Love and passion for the job is not a prerequisite for engagement and motivation. I prefer commitment over passion for continued engagement and motivation. Love is not what keeps you going at work when your project goes awry for a year. Love is not what makes you give more than four weeks’ notice when you only need to give two. Love is not what makes you embrace a coworker’s mistake and assume good intentions. That’s commitment. It’s you committing to your colleagues and to yourself on the work you must achieve together. So I focus on keeping people engaged, motivated, and committed to their work through attentive listening, constant support, and active follow-throughs.
Feedback can often permeate other parts of a one-on-one. Having a constant feedback loop (of giving feedback and improving based on the feedback) that ebbs and flows is the best way to promote continued growth. I had a colleague who had a spreadsheet of opportunity areas and examples for his direct reports. But he was saving them all for their annual performance reviews. He was so close to being the paragon of guiding leadership. I did, however, steal his spreadsheet idea to create a “coaching repository” for all my direct reports.
Having feedback conversations “as-needed” is great in theory, but the nature of this talk is ripe for procrastination and evasion. Critiques are uncomfortable. But you can’t be a good manager by only celebrating the wins together. You have to study the mistakes, defeats, and failures together. So intentionally set aside time during your one-on-ones to give feedback to your direct report. Brainstorm opportunities to expand their experiences. This way, you are reserving time to discuss their goals, motivations, and progress deliberately without being swept up in the everyday frenzy of work.
Discussions is a broad category. There are more types of discussions than what’s noted here. I chose to call out two types in particular: company and team goals and relationship management.
Understanding company and team goals allow for greater commitment and motivation. I see this as a critical discussion that pairs with employee engagement check-ins. Early in my career, I found myself interviewing at a place that resembled a scene from Office Space. I was waiting outside a conference room before my interview when I noticed one of the software developers looking over his shoulder. I started talking to him and asked what kind of project he’s working on. He explained the technical details of the implementation. “How’s it going to help the business?” I asked. “Make more money, I guess?” Then he asked me if I knew what a code monkey was. He was probably having a bad Monday. Also, thanks to him, I ended up not taking that job.
With respect to relationship management, remember that no man is an island. No matter what role you’re in, you and your direct reports will need the support of others (and vice versa) to achieve a goal: relationship management (sometimes, it can feel like ego management) is pivotal for success. We so often dismiss what we can do to improve our relationship management skill as a “soft skill” in favor of cultivating “hard skills” that can easily translate onto our resume. But the nastiest clashes I’ve seen at work weren’t related to lack of “hard skills,” but rather arose from a lack or misuse of so-called “soft skills.” Discussing and showing how to manage different personalities can greatly improve employee engagement and satisfaction by giving employees the skills they need to navigate their work relationships.
How are one-on-ones structured?
Having a structure is helpful to setting expectations. Expectations allow more space for reflective thinking and prioritizing the agenda. My only gripe is that structure sounds rigid and dogmatic; I’ll instead suggest you “timebox” the agenda. Timeboxing is a time management technique where you set a fixed amount of time to a planned task. For a one-on-one, timeboxing means allocating a fixed amount of time for someone to have the floor. If there are more to discuss, then the topic can carry over to the next one-on-one.
For example, with 30-minute one-on-ones, you can timebox the meeting as follows:
- 5 minutes for water cooler chats, review follow-ups from last time (at the beginning), and solidify action items for next time (at the end);
- 15 minutes for the employee to cover their agenda; then
- 10 minutes for you to cover your agenda.
This order accomplishes a couple of things. First, it clarifies to your team member that they’ll have co-ownership of and a stake in making the one-on-one useful. After all, your team’s agenda is prioritized first over your agenda and the most time is allocated to your team’s agenda. Second, many of the greener employees skew their agenda items towards task-oriented conversations. By timeboxing the employee’s agenda to 15 minutes, it allows for conversations to go beyond a checklist of work tasks and progress. As your team members become more seasoned, they’ll expand beyond their task-oriented agenda. Until then, you’ll have to “lead climb” and cover non-task-oriented topics during your time.
Another popular way to timebox one-on-ones is called 10/10/10 structure: 10 minutes for employees, 10 minutes for managers, and 10 minutes to align on forward-looking plans. I’m not a big fan of allocating a third of my time towards task planning and assignments. That said, this is an effective structure when someone is starting out their career or starting a new job. The key takeaway is that one isn’t better than the other, and teams will discover what suits them best as they start developing their one-on-ones.
For me and my direct reports, we prefer 60-minute one-on-ones so there’s ample amount of time and flexibility to cover breadth and some depth. It typically looks like the following:
- 10 minutes for water cooler chats, follow-ups, and action item assignment;
- 30 minutes for my direct report; then
- 20 minutes for me.
Examples
Below are two examples of how to start a one-on-one doc. First, I create a document for each direct report. This is then shared between just us two. For quick and easy implementation, I prefer creating a Google doc. The running agenda includes my direct report’s agenda item above mine. For the data nerd in me, I’ve also opted to use Google sheets in the past.