Guide: why and how to do 1 to 1’s

An example of 1 to 1 log with one of my reports

1 to 1 is a periodic meeting with another person. I use the term “meeting” because it’s one of the few forms of communication that I recommend to keep synchronous. Don’t hesitate to suggest a 1–1 meeting to your manager if you don’t have one yet. Arrange these meetings with your reports. If you mentor someone, have meetings with them too. If you’re a manager yourself, also have this kind of meeting with managers of the same level in neighboring teams.

Here and below I’ll use 1–1 as a more habitual spelling. I will share my experience with these meetings both as an employee and as a manager:

• What are the benefits.
• How to maximize the usefulness.
• How to conduct a typical meeting.
• How to effectively communicate during the meeting.
• How to apply this approach beyond work.

The main ideas are:

• Arrange these meetings if you haven’t yet.
• Improve them whenever possible. There’s no need to try to implement everything at once— progress gradually.

Apologies for the low amount of images in that article, heh.

What are the benefits

For both participants, 1–1 meetings are a useful tool to:

• Exchange feedback. Share with the person what you appreciate about their actions and what causes discomfort. Answer the question “why” for both categories. Request your peer’s opinion about in the same format. Try to understand where you and the other person meet each other’s expectations and where you don’t, as well as why these expectations exist. This information can be used to make changes either to expectations or behaviors. As a manager, review the successes or failures in your report’s performance. Additionally, 1–1 meetings provide an opportunity to vent about a colleague they had a conflict with or raise concerns about an ongoing project — don’t limit yourself to the feedback about each other only.
• Plan the future. Share plans with each other and synch them. For example, discuss who should cover certain tasks during someone’s vacation or who to approach with specific questions. As a manager, set the most important individual tasks and goals that should be discussed in addition to documentation or descriptions in a task tracker.
• Update personal agreements. These are things that cannot be tracked in a task tracker, repository, or documentation. Keep track of promises made to each other, identify which promises were fulfilled and which met some issues. Evaluate whether your report is following the development plan. Check if there remained any unresolved topics from previous 1–1's.
• Discuss issues. Address concerns, negative emotions, or anything important that you want to communicate to the other person. Listen to your peer’s issues. 1–1 provide great formal opportunity, eliminating the need to make an effort to meet for it. It keeps little time between the occurance of a problem and the discussion. When you identify problems, explain why you consider them as such and why they are important to you to be solved. Try to come up with possible solutions. If you can’t find an immediate solution, it’s not a big deal. You will still make progress in resolving them.
• Get to know the other person better. I’ve noticed that colleagues, especially those with whom I have limited interaction, slowly become dehumanized. Friends have complained about a similar effect after transitioning to remote work: other people become just pics and nicknames in messengers. However, when you get to know each other better, you begin to appreciate the other person more and interact with them more effectively. It may seem obvious, but people appreciate being treated as individuals rather than impersonal “resources,” which is quite common in corporations and even is settled in a title of an HR role itself. Knowing someone’s context and background will help you better understand their opinions and actions. Finally, I advocate for building friendship with colleagues, if both parties are interested in it. Getting to know each other better will help you become mates and move beyond.
• Build a trusting relationship. It is valuable for your colleagues to feel comfortable approaching you with problems, and to listen to your opinions and ideas. If you are a manager, having a good relationship with you is a vital factor contributing to happiness of your reports at their work.
• Batch communications. It’ll take up to 5 communications of 10–15 minutes every week to discuss ad hoc all the same questions you can discuss in 1–1. Each communication requires both parties to invest time and concentration to switch contexts, schedule a call, or spend even more time and concentration chatting. With 1–1 meetings, you can group all the questions that have accumulated over a week or two into a single communication, avoiding distractions during the rest of the time.

As an employee, use these meetings to discuss the most pressing or topics or the things you are most interested in. For example:

• Your achievements and completed work — to gain visibility.
• Your intention to take a new category of tasks.
• Request for an external education.
• Perspectives on salary review.
• The need for workload relief.
• Hiring a junior specialist to assist you.
• Company or unit strategy and your role in it.
• Some assistance in unblocking the completion of the X-task.

As a manager, take advantage of this additional opportunity to:

• Influence employees. Provide advice, share opinion, mentor, coach. Guide reports towards more desirable behavior. Teach new skills to delegate some of your own work. Motivate employees by development opportunities. Create and update development plans. In the long run, this will help set employees and their projects on the right track.
• Resolve conflicts. Private conversations tend to be more open and straightforward. Listen to the other person, show empathy, remind them that conflicts are normal and can be beneficial, and try to make conversation constructive again. Use the discussion to better understand each party’s positions and set the base for negotiations.
• Check the mood. Ask the overall feelings about work, workload, whether things are improving or not, and whether there is a desire for a vacation. It is not always easy to track such changes in a timely manner for themselves. If approach really pragmatically, report in a good state of mind are likely to perform better. It makes sense to be interested in their wellness.

How to maximise the usefulness

1–1 meetings improve relationships, help solve problems, plan development, and build trust. All of this contributes to job satisfaction, increased efficiency, and personal growth. For managers, it’s a fantastic multi-tool. So, how to conduct them effectively?

Here are some recommendations that have helped me improve my 1–1's:

• Discuss the format. Your companion may not have ever had such an experience or it was completely different. During the first 1–1, discuss why you’re having these meetings and what’s their purpose. Make clear if there’s any skepticism and understand the reasons so you can work with them. Determine which issues your peer should solve ad hoc and which ones to gather for that type of meeting. Decide on the duration and frequency of the meetings. Share your expectations, and ask about their expectations as well.
• Establish the frequency. When your report is onboarding, have daily 1–1's. Step by step reduce the frequency to once a week or every two weeks. If you have enough to discuss for an hour every week, that’s great. If there’s still not enough time, try to find most important or biggest topic and schedule a separate meeting to solve it. Avoid 1–1’s more frequent than once a week — that tempo will force both of you to discuss the most significant things. If you finish in less than 20 minutes every week several times in a row, switch to biweekly meetings. If you feel you need more meetings, you can always return to weekly ones. I had three weekly meetings and seven biweekly meetings with my direct reports. The key is to have regular meetings and at the same time. It’s okay to reschedule on occasion, but sticking to the schedule adds predictability for the participants and demonstrates your commitment.
• Don’t cancel any 1–1's. Even if it seems like there’s not much to discuss this time. It’s better to meet for a short 10-minute catch-up. Either you’ll find a trigger that to dive deeper into conversation, or you’ll enjoy the interaction with a good person and return to other tasks earlier. If you’re going on vacation, adjust the 1–1 schedule accordingly. If a specific 1–1 conflicts with another event that’s difficult to reschedule, move that 1–1 to the nearest available time. If this becomes a recurring issue, reschedule the entire series.
• Allocate time. It’s best to reserve 45–60 minutes for weekly meetings and 60 minutes for biweekly ones. 15 minutes of them are a buffer in case the meeting goes over time. Prolonged 1–1's are usually the most important ones. It’s also helpful to leave some breathing room before the meeting to prepare and set the right mindset.
• Create a safe space. Perfectly, if your companion feels as comfortable speaking with you as they would with a friend. It’s hard to tell exactly what helped me achieve this. I tried to be open to any topics, speak directly, honestly, and sincerely show my interest in the other person. I tried to empathize, support or high five my peers when needed. It’s also crucial to set up an environment where any topic can be freely discussed. If you’re in an office, book a meeting room. If you’re in a café or bar, choose a table where you won’t easily be overheard. If you’re having a remote conversation or going for a walk, ensure there are no distractions around.
• Devirtualize when possible. If you live in the same city or nearby, arrange to meet in the company office, a café, or a bar. If you live in different cities or countries, try to plan a business trip or combine it with a personal trip if the opportunity arises. Even a one-time face-to-face meeting has a strong impact on building trust, especially in a distributed environment.
• Break the ice. To do this, dedicate a few meetings to ice-breaking questions. You can easily google them yourselves. Choose from the list questions you feel less cringe while reading them.
• Admit your weaknesses or mistakes. It’s Okay, when you’ve identified a problem, to honestly admit that you don’t know how to handle it yet. Or to agree that you forgot something of did it poorly. No one expects you to be perfect in everything (and if they do, it’s a good topic to discuss in a 1–1 with that person). Opening up in this way greatly helps to build trust.
• Prepare the agenda. For each person you have a 1–1 with, create a document and writhe down topics as they come up. If you feel that it would be helpful for the other person to prepare for a specific topic, let them know in advance so you can discuss it during the next meeting, not in one. Avoid situations where you say, “Oh, I wanted to ask you something, let me think… Ugh, I believe it was on… Sorry, few more seconds to remember…”. It raises questions about your interest or ability to share the workload. It’s normal to make miss preparations sometimes, but you have to honestly tell that at the beginning.
• Take the notes. The most important thing is to record agreements: who promised to do what by when. The effort required to do this at the end of the meeting is much less than the effort required to remember what you agreed upon a week later. Note-taking demonstrates your interest and professionalism. Even if the other person is taking their own notes, don’t hesitate to share yours. As a next step, try to mark all the topics discussed during the meeting and any key points of discussion if they differ from the final agreements. This type of summary helps avoid an awkward situation where the other person opens up about a topic again, and you don’t remember anything.
• Synch your documents. Create a shared document with each companion and write the agenda and meeting notes there. This allows to see expectations form each other and reduces the chance of misunderstanding. I mostly maintained these notes rather than my peers, and they made some additions or fixes. Some individuals continued to keep their own private notes. But it’s up to you to decide what works best and to negotiate that. Having the agenda for future meetings in the same document makes the process more async and provides an opportunity to prepare.
• Start with “How’s your week going?”. But that’s the time you do care, that’s not just polite gesture. Prepare to listen actively and take note of anything important. You can also start with the status of most important projects or tasks, but it’s better to rapidly move on to the other changes occurred during the week. The time frame here allows you to shape the scope better and stand out of a regular polite question. If you meet every two weeks or in a different cadence, you can ask “What’s new since our last meeting?”.
• Listen more and ask questions. This allows you to better understand the other person’s problems or perspectives and helps create that safe space. Don’t underestimate the amount of energy and concentration required for active listening. Especially if you’re the manager, because this meeting is mostly about your reports. It’s one of the opportunities to organize bottom up the flow of ideas, concerns, and information.
• Discourage the delay of crucial problems. Although 1–1 meetings are a great opportunity to discuss problems, some of them should be highlighted immediately rather than postponed. Encourage to address them in task comments, merge requests, daily stand-ups, chat messages, or ad hoc conversations. Find the right balance so that blocking or critical issues don’t get delayed until the 1–1.
• Adapt the format. Approach these meetings as a dynamic system, not static one. The points above are interconnected. For example, the format influences the frequency and agenda. Circumstances, contexts, recent events, relationships, and other things change — adapt your 1–1's accordingly.

How to conduct the meeting

I prefer that particular order, although it can vary depending on your common sense and your feeling of the agenda. It is suitable for any 1–1, except the very fist one, where it’s always worth it to start with discussing the 1–1 itself.

1. If it’s the first meeting, promise confidentiality and discuss the format.
2. How’s your week going?
3. Companion’s questions and issues. I prefer to give it away. If there’s something critical for you to discuss, notice aloud that you’ll expect to take some time at the end.
4. Previous agreements.
5. Your questions and issues.
6. Is there anything that still requires a decision?
7. Are there any more unresolved blockers?
8. Feedback.
9. Information sharing. I try to communicate news or other information in async way in common chats or similarly. So, here I mean something private or confidential. I’m against using 1–1’s to exchange general info — that’s really inefficient.
10. Discuss the outcomes to ensure there are no disagreements. Don’t forget to verify that the outcomes are reasonable and align with each person’s workload. It’s normal to spread agreements over several weeks or even months in advance. As a result, note down:

• What you agreed upon.
• Who will do what and by when.
• When is the next meeting.

How to communicate effectively

Giving and receiving feedback, actively listening to the speaker, and expressing your thoughts are extensive topics. However I’ll try to provide you with the essential minimum:

• Use I-statements. Give feedback like this: fact → feeling → reasoning. For example: “Yesterday I noticed that you pushed your request to the main branch without a code review. It saddened me because it was a significant request, and we agreed not to do it that way. Otherwise, we risk to make our code less maintainable. Can you please tell me what happened?”. This way, there’s less chance of forcing other person to raise shields and go defense. It also may provide more context about the situation. In some cases when you can’t construct a statement this way, focus on facts, actions, and events — never on the qualities of another person.
• Ask open-ended questions. These are questions that start with question words and cannot be answered with a simple yes, no, or by choosing one of the suggested alternatives. This way, you’ll gather maximum information from the speaker and minimize your assumptions. Try to prepare some essential questions in advance. Don’t hesitate to follow-up answers with more questions like “What else is important?” or “Is there anything else you would like to add?”.
• Listen actively. Wait for the speaker to finish, and take a short pause — they might continue their thought. Focus on what the speaker is saying: try to set up your environment in advance so that nothing distracts you. A quiet place, headphones, turned off notifications, and avoiding potential interruptions like deliveries can help. Besides the words, try to note the emotions with which the speaker delivers them. Pay particular attention to sudden changes in emotion — there’s likely something interesting there.

I’ve compiled several structures for typical situations that I’ve used myself. Initially, they may sound somewhat mechanical, but it’s okay. However, it’s better to adapt them to your own style. Of course, it’s best to communicate naturally, but I believe these templates will help someone overcome initial difficulties in formulating thoughts and desires:

• Seems like I’ve understood what happened. I think you should {take some action, for example, change your behavior}. I’m concerned about it because {reasons discussed earlier in the conversation}. This will allow {benefits that you, the interlocutor, the team, or the organization as a whole will gain}. If you agree, let’s discuss how to achieve this. If not, please tell me what’s wrong?
• I’ve {gathered the information}. Now, I’ll be able to {do something} by {specific time}. What do you think?
• I {briefly recap what was discussed}. Do you have any questions about it?
• I’ve heard you that {something is important to you}. What can we do to improve the situation?
• I think it would be beneficial for you to {learn something}. This will allow {benefits that you, the interlocutor, the team, or the organization as a whole will gain}. Let’s plan how and when we can make it happen.
• I want to discuss {observable behavior}. I’ve noticed it because {my concerns}. It was {evaluation}, and I would like you to {continue, stop, or something else}.

Remember, these are templates that can be adapted and modified to suit your own communication style and the specific situation. The essence lies in expressing your thoughts and desires clearly and effectively.

Bonus: another way to apply 1–1’s approach

My list of contacts with friends. Each profile has a link to a log with 1–1 meeting notes

Recently, I started to keep a list of meetings with friends. I borrowed some elements from the 1–1 format, such as logging the meetings and agreements, as well as batching. It helps me to:

• Pay attention to those I haven’t communicated with for a while but should catch up with.
• Avoid forgetting whom I promised something, when, and at what moment.
• Remember the topics and discussions we had, so I can refer back to them or ask follow-up questions, such as inquiring about progress with a move or congratulating someone on their wedding.
• Accumulate topics and discuss them all at once when we meet.

Instead of a conclusion

Remember that the key to quality 1–1 meetings is open communication, active listening, and genuine interest in the other person’s well-being and growth. Adapt recommendations above to your specific context and build upon them to create your own successful 1–1 meeting framework.

Please share how your 1–1’s are going. What else helped you to make them useful? What other templates can be reused? What was the most challenging while implementing or conducting 1–1's?

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If you want to talk on managing engineering teams or departments, designing systems, or improving your technical product, email me at laidrivm@gmail.com or message me on https://t.me/laidrivm.

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Peace!