One-on-one meetings are your most valuable tool as a manager. They allow you dedicated time to build relationships with your engineers and earn their trust. They are your best opportunity to catch early warning signals if an employee is unhappy for any reason. Let’s talk through some ‘Do’ and ‘Do Not’ items for getting the most out of these meetings.
Do:
Focus on your goals.
Why are you having this meeting? Hopefully not just because someone told you to hold 1:1s. You should focus on relationship building, personal growth, and professional development.
Relationship Building
Start each meeting with a casual discussion. Ask about family, the weekend, or hobbies. Listen - I mean, really listen. Ask questions and remember the discussion so you can follow up on relevant personal events at your next meeting. “How was the wedding you attended last weekend?”
Personal Growth and Professional Development
These two go hand in hand. Personal growth means you pick up more skills or become stronger in certain skills. Professional development means you gain greater title, influence, or compensation in your career. As a manager, you will juggle the engineer’s goals and the needs of your team. In an ideal scenario, you can align both of them.
For example, an engineer wants to be promoted to Senior Engineer. It’s your job to understand the difference between the engineer’s current level and desired level and create a plan to reach the goal. If Senior Engineer at your organization requires leading a large project with significant business visibility, you’ll want to look for that opportunity during your planning sessions. When it arrives, you may need to invest more time mentoring that engineer to increase the odds of success.
In reality, finding the best career development path for someone is frequently not that straightforward. It may require creativity and guidance from the manager. For example, I’ve mentored a Product Owner into a career change to be an Engineering Manager. Another challenge is helping senior engineers decide whether they want to stay on the individual contributor (IC) track and potentially progress to Principal or Staff Engineer, or if they want to pursue the management track.
Consistency
Ideally, you keep a running bi-weekly schedule (i.e. every other Thursday at 3 pm.) The cadence is up to you; on a smaller team, it may be weekly. I wouldn’t recommend an interval longer than two weeks though; that may let minor issues grow into significant problems.
Talk to your counterpart and ensure the date and time works for them and will not interfere with their focus time. If they do their best engineering between 9 AM and 2 PM, schedule your sync for the late afternoon.
Avoid skipping or rescheduling these meetings; doing so often may make the other person feel disrespected or unimportant. Those feelings don’t lead to motivated devs, they lead to job-searching devs.
Provide Constructive Feedback
This is a trouble spot for some managers. One of the fastest ways for an engineer to grow is to receive feedback that is:
Constructive - The aim is the point out areas where the engineer can and should improve. Frame it as an opportunity, but do not minimize its importance. Example - “In the past sprint, we re-opened to of your completed tasks because of quality issues. Let’s break down what happened so that we can ensure you don’t have to revisit work and you can instead pick up new challenges.” Discuss ideas for improvement, and mention that you’ll follow up on this area in your next standup.
Timely - Offer specific, recent examples of the employee’s performance or behavior, and how they might have handled the situation differently to achieve better results. Avoid generalizations without examples, such as “Your updates during standups are sometimes confusing and lack detail.” If it’s difficult to remember specific examples (maybe you manage a large team), try to keep notes throughout the week so that you can reference them.
Actionable - Ensure the feedback applies directly to the work your engineer is doing or to situations they frequently deal with. You want to get the most value from your mentoring efforts.
Keep an Agenda
This one is optional, but I've found that creating a Google Doc shared only between the meeting participants can lead to more productive 1:1s. In the doc, list the date of the next meeting, any agenda items you want to discuss. Ask the engineer to list anything they want to discuss. Now both parties can prepare for the upcoming conversation topics, and during the meeting, you can note actions for both parties. This adds accountability for promises made during the meeting.
Do Not:
Ask for status updates.
Use standups or JIRA or your project management tool of choice for that. Don’t waste these valuable minutes on minutia.
Do all the talking
Try to let the engineer drive the conversation. If they are introverted or uncomfortable leading the conversation, try to ask questions to get things rolling. “What do you like about the tasks you've been working on? What are you interested in learning more about? How do you feel about the team’s performance lately?”
Over-share information.
Sometimes it's tempting to share organizational news or rumors in this setting. You can discuss news that applies to your team. But you must also act as a filter; don't discuss rumors or changes that will not affect your team. Even if those items are stressing you out, don't extend that stress to your team until it's necessary.
Success Metrics
Maintaining a healthy relationship with your direct reports should lead to better retention rates. But most of the data you gather to determine if you’re running good 1:1s is qualitative. When engineers feel comfortable enough with you to share personal events, feelings of frustration, or personal goals, those are all positive signs. You should also see continuous growth from your team members that you can highlight during their performance reviews.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on running great 1:1s. Please leave me a comment if you have some ideas to share.