Purpose

One-to-one meetings offer a regular time for employees and their managers to connect, discuss progress toward goals, share information, address obstacles, review project statuses, provide feedback on what’s going well and where adjustments are needed, partner on growth and development plans and much more.

Scheduling

Regularly scheduling one-to-one meetings helps make them part of your routine, which makes it less likely that you’ll reschedule or cancel. The cadence of a one-to-one meeting is up to the employee and manager, but we recommend that you collaboratively decide how often you’ll be meeting. For some, a weekly meeting is appropriate, while others will meet bi-weekly or monthly. Regardless of cadence, we strongly encourage meeting regularly.

Agendas

It can be helpful to have a general, flexible agenda for one-to-one meetings to ensure your time is well spent. Working together to decide what you’d like to talk about on a regular basis can help you ensure that both of you get what you need from the meetings. Being flexible about the agenda can help you change course when unexpected things arise that don’t fit neatly into a rigid agenda. The agenda doesn’t even have to be the same from meeting to meeting. You might consider setting aside one meeting per month or quarter to focus on growth and development, instead of general topics.

Here’s an example of a general agenda that a manager created for one-to-one meetings with a new employee:

• What’s on your mind?
• What’s on your plate?
• What do you need from me?
• Two-way feedback.
• Action items.

Here’s an example that focuses more on goals:

• Tell me about how you’re doing on the goals we set for this time (month, quarter, six months, year)
• What went well?
• What would you change next time?
• My take on your progress…
• Let’s discuss team/department priorities and how your efforts support them.
• What actions will you take next?

Here’s an example that focuses more on growth:

• What are you most proud of from the last… (month, quarter, six months, year)? Why does that stand out for you?
• Based on feedback you’ve received recently, where do you see areas for improvement, growth, and development?
• Here’s my input about that…
• How can we use this information to craft a plan for your development?
• What does support from me look like?
• What are your next steps?

For more useful tips, please review the video resource below.