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One-on-one (1:1) meetings are an opportunity to discuss real-time performance, career development opportunities, and to receive feedback and coaching as a manager. It’s also a way for you and your report to build or strengthen your professional relationship.
Your one on one is one of the few moments where your direct report is the main subject of the meeting. You should share responsibility with your report to bring relevant issues to the table and to make the meeting an effective use of time for both of you. If either of you remain passive and allow the other person to drive the agenda, it’s unlikely all your needs will be met.
“So, what do you want to talk about?” is the last question you ever want to ask during a one on one meeting. It's a red flag if you’re not invested in your report's performance and career growth. If there was ever a time to be overly prepared, it’s for your 1:1s…
Own the Agenda
To hammer this home: Effective 1:1s happen when you and your report determine what you want to discuss. Own the agenda! Throughout your week and between meetings, write down topics for discussion as they come to you. Potential topics include:
- Career development
- Personal growth and self improvement
- Suggestions for team improvement
- Communicating contributions
- Aligning priorities
- Personal issues that could impact work performance
- Interpersonal issues with coworkers (the good and bad)
By the time your next 1:1 rolls around you should have a formidable list of topics to choose from. From there you should prioritize your list, create an agenda, and share it at least a couple days before meeting; giving you both an opportunity to prepare and add more topics.
Strety Users: Our meeting agendas are collaborative. Leverage the agenda as an active list of topic ideas. This gives you an opportunity to offer guidance and advance the conversation within the comment thread, leading to more dialed-in discussion during the actual meeting.
12 Questions to Ask Your Manager
So now you have a rough outline of what to do - what about actionables? I don’t want to provide you a list of uninspired suggestions or contextless questions to discuss; you can find those anywhere. I’d like to share with you a list of malleable starting points, with context, that you can bank-up and pull-out whenever you need more from your 1:1s…
Team & Organizational Alignment
1. What’s holding our team back from accomplishing [x] ?
Identify the main problem or bottleneck in your team’s performance and get a better sense as to what will help overcome it. Gaining insight to how you and your report approach performance issues is valuable knowledge for both of you.
2. What is one thing [report] can do to help improve our team’s performance?
Talk about your report's commitment to the team or organizational effort; this can segue into a discussion about their skill set and how they can develop it.
3. What’s one thing you think we should stop doing?
Talking about which processes or projects that are failing to produce is valuable intel. You can re-prioritize workloads and/or see it as an opportunity to help improve inefficiencies.
4. What factors led to us deciding [x]?
You may not feel comfortable or be in a position to dig too deep as to why certain decisions are made, but if you want to make sure you both better understand why your team went a certain direction, it’s important to address. Conversely, maybe you simply want to share insights to what goes into a decision making process within positions your report aspires to be in one day. Both are perfectly valid and insightful reasons for more discussion.
Professional Growth
5. Do you have any requests for how I can help you improve [x] ?
This question is about your report and their specific skill development. Managers have experience and connections and this is your opportunity to share those resources. Share recommendations for educational courses, training programs, reading material, or to make introductions to people in your network that can offer additional insights.
6. What do you see as gaps in your skill set?
Learning where your report have holes - or perceived holes - is critical knowledge for them to possess. They can either acquire the skill or, if it’s only a perceived gap, begin to more visibly show it off. Don’t run from this question. Talk about it. Learn from it. Help them grow because of it!
7. How do you see your role evolving over the next 12 months?
Your report has their own ideas for what they want to accomplish - which may be a different place than where you see them going. Are your visions for your report in alignment with their expectations? If not, you have a lot to talk about in your next 1:1…
8. What can you be doing now to put yourself in a position to be [x] in [y] time?
Talk to your report about where they want to go professionally. This does not have to be specific to the opportunities available within your current organization. In fact, you may want to talk to them about outside jobs to get a true sense of what they want. These are their long-term professional goals. Help them lay out the steps, short and long term, to achieve their goals. DO NOT let your annual review be the only time you talk about career aspirations. This is key for employee engagement.
Strety Users: Make this a recurring meeting agenda item so that this remains at the forefront of your 1:1 Meetings. Use action items to hold you and your report accountable for any to-dos (make a professional introduction, sign up for a training course, etc) that come from your discussion.
Building Professional Rapport
9. What do you want to share about your work?
It’s difficult for managers, especially first-time managers and managers of larger teams, to track the daily activity of each of their direct reports. In asking this question, you’re being proactive in helping fill-in blind spots while giving you the opportunity to expound on work - progress & successes - that could be going unnoticed. Managers will appreciate this.
10. How would you like to receive information/deliverables from me?
Every organization has a process and structure for how information is disseminated, but each report likely has their own personal preference for how they receive info, feedback, updates, or questions. Learn their style. Adapting your communication to fit their personal preferences will make their job a little easier and is a simple yet effective way to build rapport.
11. What wins can are you prepared to help me with?
1:1s are a two-way street. Don’t shy away about sharing with your report about your job. Your focus affects them directly or indirectly. Sharing what a manager’s priorities are is another valuable insight for your reports. It can also help you frame your work - and theirs - around larger team or organizational objectives.
12. If you need something, what’s the best way to communicate my input?
All managers manage and provide feedback differently. Learning how and where your report feel most comfortable receiving support - over email, in person, screen share - will increase the likelihood they get the help you need.
We're Here to Help
Whether you can use these questions verbatim or if they need some refinement to fit your situation, I hope you leave this post seeing your one-on-one meeting as a huge opportunity...not just another meeting.
Remember: You’re in control of this one!. Be mindful and take your preparation seriously and you’ll leave each meeting better than when you entered it… if only we could say that about all our meetings :)
If you want your next 1:1 to be extra-awesome, take advantage of Strety's 30-day free trial and hold your next one there. For more guidance, book a meeting with an expert on the Strety team to learn how your 1:1s can become absolutely incredible in Strety!
