How does a manager <> employee 1:1 meeting work again?
Achani Samon and I spoke to dozens of African startup executives over the past few months, as we scouted for talent problems to help them solve. We decided to write about the themes we heard during these calls. We hope these articles would serve as refreshers or mini-guides that any manager or leader can share with a team member to help them get a high level understanding relatively quickly.
Only 10–20% of employees around the world are engaged. That means only a small fraction of employees are giving their best effort and actively contributing to the company’s success.
A one-on-one (or 1:1) meeting between an employee and their line manager is a type of meeting intended to provide an opportunity for open and meaningful conversations about the employee’s experience, well-being, performance and career-development, with the goal of having an engaged employee.
When organized and conducted well, 1:1s help with:
- Building trust between employees and their managers
- Removing blockers in the way of getting work done
- Keeping employees engaged and energized
- Improving performance, productivity and commitment
While not covered here, a 1:1 can also be a skip-level meeting between a manager and someone who’s several levels away on the org chart, a mentor and their mentee, a coach and their coachee, or two peers.
Designing an effective 1:1 meeting
Designing an effective meeting requires managers to
- Set the right cadence
- Schedule them on the calendar
- Set the agenda and conversation topics
- Run an effective meeting
Set the right cadence
The employee and manager should align on the frequency and timing for their 1:1s. In smaller teams at earlier stages in a company’s lifecycle, 1:1s can be scheduled weekly. As a manager’s direct report count grows to 5+ people, or the speed with which changes in the organization slows down, the frequency of 1:1s can be moved to every other week. For later stage companies where managers are responsible for large teams that are fairly independent, planned 1:1s can be moved to once a month.
Typically, 1:1s can be set for an hour. However, based on the nature of the business, 30 minute or 45 minute 1:1s are also common.
Regardless of the planned 1:1 cadence, there will likely be situations that require an impromptu 1:1, such as dealing with an unforeseen employee situation, an emergency, or a major change in the team or company.
Schedule 1:1s on the calendar
1:1s should be blocked on the calendar well into the future, such that they become a natural part of both the manager and employee’s work schedule.
Pre-scheduling 1:1s ultimately makes it difficult to fall out of the habit of conducting 1:1s, especially when the workload intensifies for either or both the manager and employee. Those periods are often when 1:1s are most needed, yet also the periods where they are most likely to be forgotten or skipped. In cases where a 1:1 needs to be moved or skipped, pre-scheduling means the manager and employee already have the next one on the calendar.
Set the agenda and conversation topics
The employee and manager have different roles to play to achieve an effective and successful 1:1. The employee’s role is to come prepared with topics they would like to discuss, while the manager’s role is to serve as a career-development coach, who also asks questions that may help uncover insights about the employee experience, well-being and performance.
Some topics that may be top of mind for the employee are:
- What is going well vs. what is not going well
- Confusion about role, responsibilities or specific deliverables
- Struggling with achieving goals
- Blockers to successfully completing work
- Needing help thinking through something in particular
- Facing challenges working with others in the company
- Experiencing anything unusually challenging in their personal life, that might end up affecting work
- Frustration or unhappiness with something at work
What the manager should be trying to uncover and resolve:
- Is the employee connected to the company’s purpose and mission
- Are the strategy and goals clear to the employee
- Do they understand their individual goals and how they connect to the team or company goals
- Do they believe that their individual goals and the team or company goals are achievable
- Do they have everything they need to get their work done
- What blockers are they dealing with
- What’s the health of their team (incl. who’s doing well & who’s struggling)
- How is their relationship going between their team and key collaborators
- How can you better support them, or get out of their way
- How are their personal & professional goals coming along
- How are they feeling overall in their role and at the company
- Do you have constructive feedback for the employee, on strengths they are demonstrating or areas of improvement
Run an effective 1:1 meeting
- Set and share the agenda in advance, including topics for discussion
- Prioritize topics to fit the conversation within the allotted time slot
- Agree on how much time to dedicate to each prioritized topic
- Let the employee do most of the agenda-setting because it’s their meeting
- Play the role of coach, and not the role of judge
- Make a note to revisit the deprioritized topics, whether in a future 1:1 or in another channel (e.g. asynchronously via email, Slack, etc)
- Take notes during the meeting, and highlight action items
- Set a timeline for following up on action items