---
name: one-on-one-meetings
description: Run one-on-ones the report owns, splitting career growth from status, with notes that compound. Use when establishing 1:1 practice as a manager or getting more from 1:1s as a report.
---

# One-on-one meetings

The 1:1 is the report's meeting: their agenda, their airtime, their
career. Status has other channels; this one exists for what has no
other channel: growth, friction, honesty.

## Method

1. **Let the report own the agenda, with a shared doc.** A
   running shared document both parties add to during the
   week; the report's items go first. A manager who fills
   every 1:1 with their own topics has taken the report's
   only reserved channel (see async-communication for what
   should have been written instead).
2. **Ban status by default.** Project updates live in
   standups, written updates, and dashboards (see
   status-updates); when a 1:1 keeps collapsing into status,
   name it and fix the missing channel. The exception:
   status *feelings* ("I am worried about this deadline")
   are exactly on-topic.
3. **Keep a stable question rotation.** What is dragging?
   What would you change about how we work? Where do you
   want more scope? What am I doing that helps or hinders?
   Who deserves recognition? Rotate a career conversation
   in monthly, a formal one quarterly (see
   mentoring-engineers for the growth-plan machinery).
   Silence after a question is thinking: hold it.
4. **Surface friction early, in both directions.** Small
   dissatisfactions voiced at week 2 are retention saves;
   discovered at month 6 they are resignation letters.
   Managers share their own context honestly too
   (reorg winds, priority shifts): a 1:1 where only one
   party is candid trains the other to stop.
5. **Write the actions down, and do them.** Two lines per
   meeting in the shared doc: decisions, commitments, who
   owes what: reviewed at the next open. Nothing kills 1:1
   trust like commitments that evaporate (see
   giving-feedback for when that conversation is needed);
   notes also feed honest performance reviews instead of
   recency-biased ones (see promo-packet's evidence
   trail).
6. **Protect the slot.** Weekly or biweekly 30-45 minutes,
   rescheduled rather than cancelled when collisions hit:
   a manager who routinely cancels 1:1s is telling the
   report their growth is the lowest-priority meeting on
   the calendar, and reports hear it clearly.

## Boundaries

- Serious performance conversations and compensation news
  get their own scheduled meetings; ambushing them into a
  routine 1:1 poisons the channel (see
  receiving-feedback for the other chair).
- Skip-levels and peer 1:1s have different contracts
  (context-gathering, alignment) and should not secretly
  become management-bypass channels.
- 1:1 privacy has limits (harassment, legal issues must
  escalate); be honest about that boundary rather than
  promising absolute confidentiality.