5 components of an effective 1–1 meeting

Conducting regular 1:1 meetings with your team members is becoming a common practice across companies in various industries. They help to establish and maintain long-term relationships with the employees, keep a finger on the pulse of any challenges that arise, and more. While approaches may vary from one company to another, in many cases, this type of meeting is positioned as an “employee’s meeting”. This means that all the items that the team member wants to discuss are prioritized, regardless of whether they’re work-related or personal. Kim Scott in her famous book “Radical Candor” also highlights that 1:1s should be natural bottlenecks that determine how many direct reports a manager can have. Today, we’re going to discuss the five traits of an effective 1:1 meeting and what managers need to pay attention to in order to get the best results.

1. Both the team member and the manager are aligned on the expectations from 1:1’s

The last thing you would want your 1:1s to become is yet another meeting no one is looking forward to. In order to avoid this, both the manager and the employee need to have a clear understanding of the ‘why’ behind the meeting and what to expect from it. Here’s a sample list of topics to discuss that could potentially be important for both parties:

• Getting to know your team member on a personal level

An important part of 1:1s is to discuss not only the work-related items but also to learn more about your colleague. What is it that they’re passionate about? How do they spend their free time? Any interesting books they finished lately? All those details — both minor and major — serve as building blocks of the relationship that is being built between the manager and the team member

• Sharing feedback

The manager should share what aspects of work the team member is already amazing at, and where there’s room for improvement. They should provide guidance and share best practices. The team member, in due turn, should communicate how the manager can help them to do the work better, what resources are required, whether the working environment is comfortable in general, and more.

• Motivation

Finding the right incentives for the team member that motivates them, and leveraging them in a way that makes the team member excited about things to come is something managers need to pay attention to in 1:1 meetings. Since this is not a group discussion and the managers don’t need to be too general, they can focus specifically on the items that motivate this particular employee.

• Career growth

Team members need to have a clear understanding of what it takes to move to the next stage of their career path, whether they’re talking about vertical, horizontal, or cross-functional growth. It would be a good idea to set aside time during 1:1s to discuss this topic, since not only can the manager provide the information on the requirements for the next step, but also discuss with the team member how they’re progressing toward them.

• Identifying action items

This is relevant not only for 1:1s but also for regular team meetings. A meeting can be considered productive as long as there’s a clear list of actionable steps produced during it. So when, for example, a certain challenge is discussed, it’s important to reserve the time to develop an actionable solution(s).

• Getting status updates

While we at Wrike are generally standing against status update meetings, since status updates can be easily made online without the need for several people to get together, we understand that there are many cases when they’re inevitable. It would still be better, both for the employee and the manager, to get through all the items in one go versus distracting the team member many times during the week.

2. An atmosphere of trust is built

In order to get consistent results out of 1:1 meetings, managers need to make sure that an atmosphere of trust is built and maintained. Obviously, trust is not something that emerges overnight, so a series of actions need to be taken by the managers:

• All the private items that a team member shares during the meeting need to be kept strictly confidential. If a manager wants to share certain findings with the larger group (e.g. best practices of communicating with clients that the team member came up with), they should ask the team member for permission.
• Sneaky tactics should be avoided. If a team member is asking about something that the manager is not allowed to share (e.g. some sensitive questions regarding a promotion), in many cases, it would be a much better idea to reply directly that you’re not able to answer that question because the information is confidential at this point versus providing some vague answer that would leave the team member confused and/or frustrated.
• Both parties should deliver on what has been promised or agreed on, but managers have an even higher level of responsibility since they need to lead by example. When a team member raises a certain question or request that cannot be addressed immediately, the necessary notes need to be made on that request and, between this and the next 1:1, the manager needs to take action to get the request resolved. At the next meeting, either the results should be presented (regardless of whether they’re positive or negative), or the information on the progress needs to be communicated if additional time is required to handle the request. Such behavior demonstrated regularly by the manager sends a clear signal that the manager cares about the team member’s requests and can be counted on.

3. Both parties arrive prepared

Preparing for a meeting is always a good thing. When participants arrive with clear lists of bullet points to discuss, meetings become more structured, and there’s a higher probability that all important items are going to be addressed. Be realistic about the number of topics you’re going to discuss — if you add too many, there’s a risk that you would rush things up and certain aspects would not be addressed with the necessary level of detail. Encourage the team member to send you the list prior to the meeting. This may be handy, as it gives you time to get information ahead of the meeting, so you can answer any questions the team member has without delay. Finally, it’s important to remember that a 1:1 is an employee’s meeting. Their questions need to be prioritized, even if that means that some of your questions would need to be discussed later.

4. The necessary cadence is established

One of the key decisions about 1:1 meetings you as a manager needs to make is how often they should happen with each team member reporting to you — both directly and indirectly. There’s no single correct approach here — it depends on multiple factors, such as how involved the manager is in the work of each team member, whether general guidance or a hand-holding approach would be best to address the problem, whether the team or the whole company is facing a crisis at the moment, or all seems to be OK, and many more. However, here are some questions to consider when planning the cadence of 1:1s with your team members:

• Does it often happen that a large percentage of questions are not addressed during the meeting because you’re running out of time?
• Do the meetings finish early often?
• Does the total amount of time you spend on 1:1s with your team members exceed 30%-40% or your workweek?
• How often do you have to reschedule 1:1s because other items need to be prioritized?

Based on the answers to these questions, you may consider increasing or decreasing the frequency of 1:1 meetings.

5. Continuity in conversation is maintained

This may seem obvious but with so many topics touched upon during 1:1s, it’s easy to forget about certain items every now and then. In order to avoid such situations, I recommend running a log that would contain, at a minimum, four critical elements:

• Date of 1:1
• What has been discussed
• What hasn’t been discussed (due to lack of time or other factors)
• What actionable steps you have agreed on

I personally manage the log of 1:1 meetings in Wrike, having a separate folder that serves as a single source of truth for meetings and a task being created for each of them. However, it can be as simple as a Google doc which would allow access to the meeting notes from any location at any time — as long as you’re connected to the internet.

Investing the time in managing 1:1 meetings properly pays off since they help to both have productive and structured conversations and build good relationships with your team members. I will finish with another tip from “Radical Candor” by Kim Scott — if your employees are canceling 1:1s too often, it is an indicator that they’re not getting value from them. An important thing to keep in mind, right?