I think that meeting weekly, one-on-one, with everyone you manage is the 80/20 of management.

If you do this, you’ll likely build a good relationship with them, help keep them unblocked, and track their progress. This will go a long way to keeping them happy and productive.

Logistics

This is where I suggest you start:

• Timings:
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Weekly
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For 1 hour
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Scheduled at the same time each week
• Structure:
• Shared Google Doc (start with my template)
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Both of you prep beforehand
• Where?
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Phone or video call is fine. Video > phone
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Not in public, but doesn't have to be in private

Setting up 1:1s

Message your report, and tell them that you’d like to meet with them weekly, to give them feedback and support and help keep them unblocked. Set up a regular time (I suggest 1 hour/week), and invite them, and tell them that you’d like them to do some prep beforehand.

Before the 1:1

Before the 1:1, send them a copy of the prep template, and ask them to fill it in, ideally the day before your meeting.

Once they’ve done their prep, but before the meeting, you can go through and fill in your sections, and also comment on what they wrote. Think critically about what they’ve written. For instance, are you happy with their progress over the last week? Spend some time sharing feedback, and thinking about how you can be proactive and grateful in response to their feedback.

If you both take the prep seriously, you’ll find that you’ve resolved many of the key issues before you even meet, which will allow you to spend your precious in-person time on the thorniest topics.

During the 1:1

Agenda setting

• It’s probably best to just catch up a bit before you start - talk about your weekend or whatever.
• The meeting should be focused on your direct report’s issues. By this point you’ll have resolved many things in writing, so their list might have changed a bit. Ask them what they would like to talk about.
• Once you’ve talked about what they want to talk about, you can move onto what you want to talk about. You don’t need to get through everything on their list, but sometimes that might be best. There’s not a hard-and-fast rule here, use your judgement.
• If there are time-sensitive issues that you need to cover in this meeting, it might be best to cover them up front, so you take the pressure off a bit.
• Don’t feel like you need to cover all of the items in the agenda: it’s generally better to properly sync up about the most important/thorny issue, and leave the other issues for another time.

What to use 1:1s for

How to approach 1:1s

In general, you should just be trying to work together to set your report up for success and resolve any issues they have.

Lean towards asking them open-ended questions and thinking things through for themselves. But sometimes they’ll just want you to give them guidance. It’s hard to know when to coach vs. giving answers - experiment with this, and we can talk about it more in future weeks!

Ideally, take notes on paper: these don’t need to be super detailed, but make sure you clearly record any action items for either of you, or any important conclusions.

Advanced: Tweaking the format

I recommend you start out with this basic format. But as you develop as a manager it’s fine to tweak it so that it suits you better. And you may also want to tweak it for specific direct reports - for instance, if someone is working on prioritizing more clearly, they might want an extra prompt for them to reflect on their prioritization decisions this week.