Effective 1:1 Meetings: Tailoring Your Approach Based on Team Member Experience

We’ve all experienced it: “This week I worked on updating the…” The dreaded status-update 1:1 meeting. Too often these sessions devolve into long lists of tasks completed without any meaningful discussion. What gets said is lost, action items are forgotten, and both parties leave feeling their time was wasted.

This doesn’t have to be the case. When properly structured, 1:1 meetings can be powerful tools for coaching, building trust, and developing team members at every level of experience.

General advice about 1:1 meetings

The general consensus on 1:1 meetings is that they should:

• Have an agenda. Don’t just leave the meeting open for anything that pops up. Like any meeting, this one needs to have an agenda to drive the conversation and stay on topic. Ask your team members to prepare an agenda 24-48 hours in advance.
• Let the meeting be driven by the employee. It’s their time, they should set the agenda and discussion topics.
• Don’t focus on status updates. There is time and a place for status updates. 1:1 meeting should be about employee engagement, forward looking, and coaching. Leave the status updates out of it to ensure your team members get the space they need to thrive.
• Come prepared, don’t just wing it. You have an agenda, use it to prepare the information you need.
• Don’t reschedule or cancel frequently. It’s best to make a schedule and stick to it. Things happen, just don’t let them keep happening. Problems arise, just don’t let them always impact the 1:1 meetings for the same people. Study your patterns and schedule to that pattern.
• Listen more than speaking. It’s important to let your team members have space to speak. This is a coaching opportunity, by letting your team members work through problems, you will be giving them the skills needed to succeed in the future.
• Document what’s covered. Write it down. Keep the document up to date. I prefer to use a shared document.
• Summarize what’s covered in your shared document. This is your job. You write down what was covered. Your team member then confirms it.

Tailor to job level

While these general principles apply to all 1:1 meetings, truly effective managers understand that the approach must be tailored based on the experience level of each team member. A one-size-fits-all strategy fails to address the unique developmental needs of junior versus senior employees.

Speaking about high level strategy with junior employees may not have the same impact as if you were talking with senior team members. When working with junior staff your role is to coach or train them into a senior staff position. You are not trying to keep people in junior positions forever. You are building senior team members. When working with a senior staff member your role is to leverage the skills they have built to solve problems. Your approach to 1:1 meetings must reflect this same dynamic.

Missing for junior employees

Junior team members need more guidance. You are working to help them grow into their role. You should focus 30% on growth, 30% task specific questions, 20% project health, 20% career coaching. Junior members will tend to focus 100% on task updates and project status. It’s your role to teach them how to best use 1:1 meetings as part of their growth strategy. Prioritize psychological safety. Create a space where they can have open discussions about anything.

Make sure to ask open end questions that help them introspect on their current skills and how they interact with their team and organization as a whole.

• Which part of our codebase or processes feel confusing to you?
• What part of your current work feels unclear or confusing?
• What have you recently learned from people in the organization that are outside your current team?

Focus on shorter timeframes. Think next few weeks to months. Ask questions focused on the now.

• What did you learn this week that surprised you?
• What would help you be more productive this coming week?
• What skills would you like to develop in the next few months?

And while agendas should be team member driven, you sometimes need to teach team members what a good 1:1 looks like. Recommend the following starting agenda.

• Check-in and wins. (3 minutes)
• Growth focus: Discussion of current learning goals. (9 minutes)
• Task-specific questions and clarifications. (9 minutes)
• Project health check. (6 minutes).
• Career coaching moment. (3 minutes)

Once they are comfortable with this they can begin to tailor it to their needs.

Not pushing senior employees

If you were using these same tactical questions with senior team members you would be doing them a disservice. Switch the ratio of topic coverage. Spend 40% on initiatives and blockers, 30% on building leadership behaviors, 30% on leveling up.

Ask broader questions that help them inspect larger areas of ownership.

• What trade-offs are you considering in your solution?
• How are you coordinating with teams you depend on?
• What would you need to demonstrate to operate at the next level?
• How are you balancing delivery speed with code quality?

Focus on a longer timeframes, 6 to 18 months.

• Where do you see opportunities to improve our team processes?
• How do you see your systems evolving as we grow?
• What parts of our current roadmap excite you?

Avoid micromanaging their decisions. Coach them on decision making and owning the outcomes of their own work.

A great rule to set, the more senior they are, the more they should drive the 1:1 agenda.

The best 1:1 meetings are dynamic and individual

Of course, these are simple rules of thumb for good 1:1 meetings. The best 1:1 meetings need to be tailored to the individual. Ask for feedback. What topics do they feel are not being covered? Are your responses helpful? Too technical? Not specific enough? It’s important to build a relationship with your team members and 1:1 meetings are a key component to that relationship. Using a cookie cutter approach is going to fail everyone involved.

Start by looking at the recommendations for good 1:1 meetings. Make sure you are hitting the basic requirements. Then listen to your team members. What do they want to discuss? Help them grow, and you will grow with them.

Improve yourself by measuring your effectiveness:

• Track action items completion rates.
• Survey team members quarterly about 1:1 value.
• Monitor career progression milestones.
• Assess increases in coached skills (autonomy, decision making, technical acumen).

Conclusion

1:1 meetings are an important tool that takes practice to get right. Starting with a strong basic structure and tailoring it to a team member’s level is a good way to improve your practice. Take the time to inspect your current 1:1 meeting process today. What changes are you going to enact?