This document helps managers and individual contributors who want to establish effective 1:1s. The intent is to provide conceptual guidelines as well as examples of how they can be implemented.
- What constitutes an effective 1:1.
- Tips for getting the most out of 1:1.
- Resources for learning more about 1:1s.
Go to:
⬝ Why 1:1s Matter
⬝ Effective 1:1s
⬝ How to use repos for regular 1:1s
Sociological issues such as distrust and miscommunication can prevent a group of talented people from excelling as a team. Trust is the bedrock of high performing teams.
Building a relationship and trust with your people is the fundamental act of managing... The single most important thing you can do to improve your relationship, and therefore your results, with your team is to get to know the strengths and weaknesses of everyone who works for you as individuals, rather than as a group.
Source: Manager Tools Basics
- Build individual relationships. It is not a status meeting. It's an opportunity to build trust and learn what makes each team member tick.
- Are consistently scheduled. At least thirty minutes each week at a standing time, prioritized over all over types of work. Note that weekly is currently physically impossible for some managers at GitHub. This is discussed later in this document.
- Focus on the team member. The team member leads with what they want to talk about, not the manager.
- Include feedback. 1:1s are an opportunity to be a sounding board and provide feedback and coaching as well as ask for it.
👇 Learn more about effective 1:1s
🎯 1:1s BUILD RELATIONSHIPS
Over time, the following two things should result from your 1:1 conversations with team members:
- You know your team members as individuals.
- You build mutual trust with your team members.
KNOW THE INDIVIDUAL
To close the gap between where a person is and what that person is capable of, you need to know the person as an individual and their individual strengths and weaknesses. It's tempting to apply engineering principles to people, but different people require different things to do their best work. It's important to know what those things are.
1:1s are an effective way to foster relationships with your team members as individuals and will make your (and their) life easier.
BUILD TRUST
High performance teams are built on trust. So how do you build trust? Through good and frequent communication with your team members combined with follow-up on that communication.
1:1s exist to create a space for team members to come to you to with things that are interesting and important to them. Make time to do this. The focus is on them, not you or your work. Get rid of blockers and be a sounding board. It's not a status update meeting.
INTENTIONALLY BUILD YOUR RELATIONSHIP
Intentionally building the relationship and communication methods between manager and team member sets you both up for success. Some questions managers and team members may want to ask each other are:
- How would you like to define our relationship?
- What expectations do you have for a manager?
- What expectations do you have for 1:1s?
- When do you want to meet?
- What is OK to cover asynchronously or in Slack?
Team members, please set expectations with your manager on what you want from them in the 1:1 sessions. Do you want coaching, mentoring, sponsorship, career advice? Do you want to talk about career progression on a specific cadence? Be clear and communicative with your manager on what you want from them.
🚩 1:1 HOW-TO'S
It's important to have scheduled and consistent time for 1:1s.
Prioritizing scheduled and consistent 1:1s (optimally, weekly) tells your team members:
- "I will have time for you."
- "Time with you is important to me."
It also lets people prepare for them. The time for a 1:1 should be considered sacred. You cannot multitask a great relationship. Some tips on how to achieve this:
- Managers should avoid cancelling 1:1s
- Managers should avoid rescheduling 1:1s often with their team member unless they have gained agreement from their team member that this is okay. Frequently re-scheduling 1:1s can make a team member feel undervalued.
- Managers should avoid scheduling a 1:1 the same day without giving some context to their team member as to why they’re meeting.
Why Weekly?
- Data shows that people hate monthly 1:1s. People tend to keep a rolling window of 3 - 5 - 7 days in short term memory. For example, on a Monday, nobody knows their schedule a week from Thursday. Nor do they remember their accomplishments from two weeks ago. A weekly meeting keep results from 1:1s in play during the week.
- Also, consistent weekly meetings result in fewer interruptions for managers as team members tend to hold onto non-urgent issues until the weekly 1:1. They know they'll be guaranteed that time, it won't interrupt the manager, and it isn't too long to wait.
❗ At the moment, some managers at GitHub have teams too large to have weekly 1:1s. Our goal as an organization is to address this so that anyone who wants a weekly 1:1 gets it. Every other week is still much better than monthly.
The 1:1 is a business meeting, but with the purpose of developing a working relationship. Even though it's a "relationship" meeting, you can increase the value of the 30 minutes with a structured agenda.
A recommended structure is:
- 10 minutes for the team member
- 10 minutes for the manager
- 10 minutes about the future
Be flexible, of course. But remember, it's important to always give the first slot to the team member.
Their 10 minutes
The first 10 mins is about the team member, so turn it over to them at the beginning. A good way to do this is to start off with the same neutral question every time such as "What's on your mind?". Michael Lopp (aka Rands) starts every 1:1 with "How are you?"...
It’s a softball opener. I recognize that, but I lead with a vanilla opener because this type of content-free question is vague enough that the recipient can’t help but put part of themselves into the answer, and it’s the answer where the 1:1 begins.
Even a seemingly innocuous question can derail this. If you start with "How was your weekend?" you just hijacked the meeting. You started the meeting with what you want them to talk about, not what's on their mind.
They get to talk about anything they want to for that 10 minutes. Even if it's puppies 🐶 and rainbows 🌈. Especially if it's puppies and rainbows!
Sometimes, a challenge is that people want to talk too much. Remember, the schedule and agenda serves the needs of the meeting — to build the relationship. The goal is not to strictly enforce the agenda. If the person is still speaking at 10 mins about things important to them, don't cut it off. Let them continue.
At 29 minutes, you might want to tell them to wrap up. If a team member takes all 30 mins for a month, ask to reduce to 20 mins. Keep reducing each month till it's 10-10-10.
The Manager's 10 minutes
Now it's your turn! Hooray! You get to talk about what you want in your 10 minutes. But please, transition gracefully. Don't dismiss what they talked about as not important. "Nice, you just had a baby 👶, now onto the really important stuff 💰." 👈 Please, don't do that.
Some regular topics you may want to cover:
- Creating agreements/experiments consciously and revisit them.
Work with your report to try out new agreements or ideas for a period of time and them revisit. Encourage reports to add these items to 1:1 meeting agendas so you both remember to revisit. - Career planning, goal setting, and opportunity discussion. Be proactive about putting special time on the calendar for these. Encourage reports to evaluate themselves (e.g. career ladder) and ask for feedback. As a manager, encourage this ladder exercise well before performance reviews so your report isn’t surprised.
- If there’s anything going poorly, ask reports to flag it as early as possible. Help them practice bringing possible solutions to the discussion.
When managers only talk about what they want to talk about in a meeting, it distances the relationship.
This is not a meeting about work, it's a meeting about you and the team member working well together. Avoid anything that causes your team member to only talk about work because they believe that's the only thing important to you. Be human.
The Future's 10 minutes
The last ten minutes is a means of getting out of the weeds from time to time. Some topics for this time might be:
- Ask where do you see yourself in a year?
- The coaching to help them get there.
- What the company's future looks like in the short term and long term.
- Any concerns or worries about the future.
- How their work fits into the company's future.
Not every 1:1 will have enough about the future to fill ten minutes, but it's important to think about the big picture on a regular basis.
⏰ Don't have a lot of time?
Even 5 minutes makes a difference - Try using the below questions for the highest impact when time is short.
(Source: The Check-In Conversation)
💡 TIPS
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Keep notes during the meeting - Take notes during the meeting and refer back to notes from the previous meeting. "Last time we met, you mentioned you were frustrated by Hubot's attitude. Has that situation improved?"
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Keep notes during the week - Keep notes about potential topics for the next meeting. It helps keep conversations focused.
- Some managers use a shared google doc to keep notes as they go
- Some managers create a private repository (you can use GHE) and treat each 1:1 as a separate doc with a Pull Request
- Some managers keep a markdown file for every member of their team
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FOLLOW UP! - It builds trust when you take concerns seriously and act on them. No, you can't fix everything. But people appreciate that you tried. But do remember to call it out when the action lead to something. "I talked to Hubot about your concerns and he's going to work on maintaining a constructive attitude."
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Pause - "What's on your mind?" "Nothing" pause Sometimes all it takes is a pause to get people talking.
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Probe Every meeting is different. Sometimes gentle probing helps uncover meaty topics. Feel free to ask for feedback. Open ended questions can be a great technique for unlocking great conversation topics. For example, you might ask:
- What did you do well or learn last week?
- What's one thing you'd like me to do be doing more of/less of?
- What was your reaction to the write-up about Hubot's "Come at me bro" attitude?
- What's one thing our team is really good at, or could be doing better at?
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Be flexible - if something interesting comes up that deserves more attention, or if the team member needs some "therapy", feel free to dive in and go deep.
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Provide feedback - Especially on wins. Initially, focus on wins as you build trust.
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🌠 Relax and enjoy. Be human! If you end up spending an entire 1:1 talking about the movie, Interstellar , that's ok!
🧰 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- Manager Tools Basics - Useful podcast on multiple aspects of management.
- Rands - The Update, The Vent, and The Disaster - Michael Lopp was a manager at Apple and writes thoughtful pieces on management.
- Forbes - What Are Some Good Tips For 1:1s With Your Employees? - These tips are geared towards managers meeting with their team members.
- Forbes - 15 Tips to make your one-on-ones worth your while - These tips are geared towards people when meeting with managers.
🧭 FURTHER RESOURCES: 1:1s PROGRESSION
As you build the relationship, you can progress to more difficult topics to cover. Here's some guidelines on how to structure which topics you can bring up sooner versus later.Tips:
Sequencing is important. If you're not sure, you could ask: _"Would you like to bring X topic into our 1:1s soon, or wait for a bit?"_
❗ If you get to a "later" topic too early, you'll often only hear what you want to hear (safe answers) due to discomfort.
| Manager | Team Member | Both |
|---|---|---|
| ⬝ Create a running agenda doc where both people add items | ⬝ Proactively mention relevant and comfortable-to-share health information or religious preferences (like not working on the Sabbath) to your manager (because they can’t/shouldn't ask) ⬝ Share what you’re blocked on or need manager input for ⬝ Proactively bringing up blockers to your manager ⬝ Reviewing your calendar and talking about your priorities and where you spend your time to get feedback/guidance from your manager |
⬝ Discuss how both each of you like to give and receive feedback |
| Manager | Team Member |
|---|---|
| ⬝ Ask team members for advice and feedback on what’s needed in the team/business ⬝ Wait a few weeks to have long term goal conversations with new reports so you get to know them better |
⬝ Proactively bring up your long term goals as soon as you are comfortable ⬝ Actively soliciting feedback on a specific item, e.g. “One of the things I wanted to improve on is X - Do you have feedback for me on this?” |
| Manager | Team Member |
|---|---|
| ⬝ Critique specific work items to a high standard ⬝ Solicit input about process improvement, interpersonal challenges across the company |
⬝ Drive the agenda for 1:1 discussion - it’s your time! ⬝ Give upwards feedback ⬝ Solicit feedback on progress towards promotion eligibility based on written plans |
Setting up a series of repositories as a 1:1 tracking tool for your team members
- Set up a new Organization.
- Do not invite people to the Owners Team when prompted. This is a legacy permissions approach and tediously required one team per manager and team member.
- Open "The Orgs Room" and ask for your new organization to have Improved Organization Permissions enabled
- Once you've confirmed you have new org permissions features enabled, create a repository (seeded with a README) named as per the full name or handle of each team member.
- On each repository's collaborator settings, invite your team member (this is only possible with Improved Organization Permissions)
Using 1:1 repositories with your team members
- Each team member is responsible for creating a weekly issue using the title (
_PERSONNAME + MANAGERNAME • 1:1 on DATE_) and any other relevant parts from our issue template, early in the week - We use this issue to dialogue on important topics during the week
- Some team members use this to provide a progress report (this is entirely of their own accord, but has been a great discussion point)
- In our 1:1 video chat, we discuss the topics in the 1:1 issue and I take notes and follow-up actions for both the team member and I in the notes.
- The team member closes the issue at the end of each week.
Template 1
name: Weekly 1:1 about: Please fill this out ahead of our weekly 1:1 if it is helpful to you. title: 1:1 - {Date} created_by: Your name
- Anything that's on your mind! Work related or not.
- Difficult task you accomplished, work you're proud of, kudos you've gotten.
- How things can go smoother, times you were annoyed, areas where clarity is needed.
- Tasks you've committed to working on within your team's radar or within your own project plan or based on your personal goals.
Template 2
PERSONNAME + MANAGERNAME • 1:1 on DATE
A way to continually improve our work outcomes and interactions with colleagues.
- things you should do more of:
- things you should do less of:
- things that went well:
- things to improve upon:
- things you should do more of:
- things you should do less of:
- things that went well:
- things to improve upon:
- How are you doing?
- Taking enough vacation to feel recharged?
- Work feel rewarding?
- Something I can help unblock?
- Pairing with team members?
- Visit HQ or other offices?
- Prioritization?
- Personal plan for this week?
- Personal plan for this month?
- Personal plan for this quarter?
- TBD