1:1s

The 1:1 is your most important meeting as a manager. They are the focal point of your team's relationship with you, and they are your best point of leverage to enact any changes you want to make.

1:1s provide a regular touchpoint with each direct report, so that you can:

• Build trust and rapport
• Provide your direct report with coaching and support so they can do their best work
• Enable your direct report to share what's going on honestly (both good and bad)
• Give and receive feedback that makes both you and your direct report more effective

Here's one way you can structure your 1:1s, including sample topics for each section. Feel free to adapt this to your team's needs.

Relationship building

• How are you feeling?
• How is everything?
• What’s something fun you did last weekend/have coming up this weekend?
• What have you been watching/reading lately? 
• What was your highlight for the week?

Wins

• What’s something you’re celebrating?
• What were you most proud of?
• What about this makes it such a big win for you?
• What did you enjoy most about it?
• What could have made it even better?

Challenges

• What’s been challenging or frustrating the past week?
• What is the most frustrating part?
• How long have you felt this way?
• Which projects are you nervous/worried about?
• Which projects feel risky or could potentially become risky in the future?
• How can I help?

Support

• Where (if anywhere) do you feel blocked?
• How can I and others support you in your goals this week?
• Is there anything else it would be helpful to talk about today?

Feedback & Recap

• Give developmental and/or reinforcement feedback
• What can I do better as your manager?
• Recap any next steps identified throughout the meeting

Career Conversations

Great managers honor their team members' dreams. They care not only about near term results but also about their direct reports' medium and long term aspirations.

Career conversations enable you as a manager to:

• Understand your team's goals and aspirations beyond their current day-to-day work
• Build rapport and trust by communicating your support for their goals
• Coach them on how to work toward their goals

Effective career conversations enable your team members to feel valued, empowered, motivated, and supported. If you only care about their current day-to-day work, it's unlikely you'll retain your most talented people.

It's important to keep in mind that:

• Career conversations are separate from performance reviews. Performance reviews are primarily about evaluating your team member's performance relative to the company's expectations and deciding when someone gets promoted. Career conversations are about understanding your team member's aspirations, independent of what the company expects of them.
• Someone's current job and company is just one phase in their lives. At some point, everyone working at your company will leave. Your goal is to try and make it one of the best phases of people's lives and set them up for whatever they want to do next. It's hard for a direct report to say this to their manager, so you have to take the lead and give them permission to think beyond this role and this company. A lot of direct reports will keep their true goals hidden so that they are not looked upon as disloyal or having conflicting goals with the company.

Here's one way you can structure your career conversations, including sample topics for each section. Feel free to adapt this to your team's needs.

Medium Term (next 18 months)

• What would success look like in your current role?
• Which part of your current role are most energizing for you? Which are the least energizing?
• How does professional success intersect with personal happiness in the context of your current role?
• What would be the perfect role for you?
• What goals (inside and outside of work) do you have over the next 18 months?

Long Term (next 5+ years)

• What would you like to be doing five years from now? If you're not sure, what are some hypotheses?
• Write down five to ten skills or competencies you think are required to get to this place, and then rate yourself on each of these on a scale of 1–10.

Action Plan

• What are some ways you could test your longer term career hypotheses in the near term?
• What are some ways you could start learning and honing the skills you'll need for your eventual career?
• Who are some people (e.g. mentors, experts) that'd be helpful to meet as you think about your future career?

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