Let's talk about 1:1's. The first thing most new EMs know they need to do is start having 1:1's with their reports. Figuring out what a 1:1 is supposed to be tends to be less obvious. As an engineering leader, your 1:1's are one of the most effective tools in your tool belt. Done well, your 1:1's give you a direct line into understanding where the risks in your team are. They also give you a chance to influence and guide.
Let's start by talking about what a 1:1 is not. It is not a status meeting. It's not one-sided, where either you're pontificating or interrogating, or where your only role is to answer questions. It's not rigidly structured. It's not just another meeting that you need to get through to get to the gap in your schedule. It's not something you breeze into with no preparation (most of the time). It's not a social meeting to spend entirely on non-work topics. It's not a gossip exchange.
OK, so what is a 1:1, and what's it for? Think of a 1:1 the way you think about meeting up with a friend you haven't seen in a little while. When you meet up with them, it's a chance to catch up on what's new in their life, tell them about what's new with you, reinforce your connection, and reevaluate where the relationship is going (e.g. "We should do this more often!"). Same thing with a 1:1. It's probably only been a week since you last had a 1:1, but a lot can change in a week at most jobs.
To get the most out of your 1:1's, you should spend some time beforehand thinking about the people with whom you're meeting, and BE CURIOUS. What is it you want to know about them? If there's nothing specific, you should at least be interested in how things are going for them. My curiosity go-to's are how their project is going (not a status report; more qualitative), how things are going in the team, and how they feel like their career is progressing. The last one should be a regular once-a-quarter question. The second is maybe more frequent, but not weekly. The first one is good for every single conversation. In cases where there's something happening in their personal life that they've shared with you already, asking about it is a great way to be curious.
If you have even more time to prepare for the meeting, you should think about what you need to tell them that they wouldn't otherwise know, or what you need to reinforce. Doing the pre-work here is somewhat optional, because many managers are able to pull this stuff out without much thought. The risk of not preparing is not sharing something you meant to share, which can be easily corrected with a quick Slack message in most cases. There's an art to sharing without oversharing, but the rule of thumb is to share as much as you can without giving them anything new to worry about or creating expectations that may not pan out. I'm generally very open about what's on my plate and what risks I'm tracking. I also take every opportunity to either repeat my vision for the team or tie the conversation back to that vision.
A 1:1 is primarily a meeting to support business goals (indirectly by supporting the people who will achieve those goals), but it's also a great opportunity to build your relationships and establish trust. Make sure you take some time to talk about some things that aren't all business. Start the meeting by asking how the other person is doing, and actively listen to the answer. I've found that sharing my own personal details, especially anecdotes about where things didn't go so well, can be a very effective way to build the relationship and establish trust. Vulnerability invites vulnerability. Do try to cap the amount of time spent on chit chat to make sure you have time to bring it back around to the business. It's probably OK for one out of every few 1:1's to be spent entirely on socializing, but if every 1:1 is just a social event, it'll work against you.
In my experience, once I've established trust with my reports, they're generally hungry for feedback. Not necessarily full performance review stuff, but they always want to know if they're doing the right things to meet my definition of success. 1:1's are a great opportunity to offer some minor feedback in the moment. When your report tells you that they're proud of the way they handled that incident, that's your opening to give positive feedback on what you think went well and perhaps a suggestion on what could make their results even better. You should be guiding with positive feedback primarily and using constructive feedback sparingly where it will drive big impact. (Remember to SBI!) If you know ahead of time that you have constructive feedback you want to deliver, make sure you take the time to prepare. Write it out. Role play it. If it's worth giving the feedback, it's worth investing in making sure it lands.
Once you get the hang of high quality 1:1's, you'll come to rely on them as an important source of signal and a core part of how you manage. What's not obvious is that as one climbs the ladder, 1:1's don't become any less important. In fact, when you start managing managers, your world of 1:1's expands, because you now have skip-level (and double-skip, etc.) 1:1's to do. Making time to check in with everyone in your org periodically is hugely valuable. Depending on how big your org is, you may have to cycle through it slowly, meeting with most folks only monthly, quarterly, or even annually, but make the time to do it! And if you're a new leader coming into an existing org, one of your first priorities is to meet with every single person in your org. Yes, all of them! They know things that you need to know to be successful and that you won't find out any other way. And they need to know who you are, beyond being a face they see once a quarter at an all-hands.
I hope this quick guide to 1:1's is useful to you. One of the worst parts about being an EM is that the job doesn't come with an instruction manual. I wrote this post to try to fill some of that void. Let me know if you find it helpful or have feedback!
