The 1:1 (pronounced one-on-one or one-to-one) is a regular meeting organized by a manager and a team member. In this article, I explain why the 1:1 is a must in management, what it brings to managers and their direct reports, how often they should be organized, and how to maximize their value.
❯ What 1:1 offers
There are many advantages to organizing such meetings, both for the manager and the person they manage.
❯ For the manager
The 1:1 is an opportunity to pass on information directly to an employee (about the company or the introduction of new team processes), to ask for information about the progress of a particular project (and thus free up the reporting aspect often found in Daily Scrum Meetings, The latter return to their original function of synchronizing the team), request feedback on another member of staff (as part of 360 feedback, for example, or to monitor a trial period), set or monitor individual objectives, give one or more pieces of feedback, etc.
❯ For the direct
It’s an occasion to ask administrative questions, gain more visibility on an upcoming project or information passed on at a previous meeting, ask for help with work-related bottlenecks, resolve interpersonal difficulties with a team member, or report a human, technical, or other bottleneck.
❯ How long does a 1:1 last?
I recommend conducting 30-minute 1:1s between you and your collaborator. 30 minutes is the perfect balance between the time you need to exchange views on the various subjects that animate you while still keeping a reasonable amount of time.
At the start of my career, I experimented with 1:1 meetings lasting 1 hour: in practice, these usually ended 30 minutes before the end, or the second part turned into a café du commerce. Holding 1:1s lasting more than 45 minutes seems unreasonable, as attention tends to decrease when a meeting exceeds this duration. What’s more, it puts a heavy strain on your schedule. While it’s relatively easy to find 30 minutes of free time between you and a team member, it’s generally much more complicated when finding a 1-hour slot… and at regular intervals! You end up having to postpone or cancel these meetings regularly, which is detrimental to the professional image you project, as people think they can’t count on this meeting. In less than 30 minutes, you generally tend to overrun, which, if you have several 1:1s in a row, has a snowball effect, with you arriving later and later at your next meeting. What’s more, you’ll try to make up for your delay in attempting to get through particular messages more quickly or even by omitting some of them.
I don’t recommend the practice of allowing 15 minutes between 2 1:1s, “just in case.” It forces us to remain synthetic in the 1:1 (which is all the more true when both participants tend to talk a lot). To keep to this, I keep an eye on the clock to let my interlocutor know that it’s time to move on to my part and that I also have things to pass on. If a subject requires more time than is available in the 1:1, it’s possible to continue in asynchronous mode or propose an ad-hoc meeting. Finally, depending on the subject’s urgency, don’t hesitate to save it for the next 1:1!
I want to finish by quoting a study by Mark Horstman in his book"The Effective Manager"with numerous managers. The study reached the same conclusion: the optimal effectiveness 1:1 is reached for 30 minutes. Beyond that, the gain is insignificant compared to the additional time allocated to 1:1.
❯ How often should a 1:1 be repeated?
Every week, for several reasons. Firstly, the week remains the essential temporal granularity in the working world. It consists of 5 consecutive days, interspersed with two days for a reset. The week generally begins with a team meeting. We discuss the week’s objectives. Meetings are scheduled during the week or the following week. An event occurring at the start of the week will generally be resolved during the week, … for teams operating a 2-week scrum, the first week is the start-up week, during which we begin working on the sprint topics, and the second week is the week when we converge on what the team has committed to…
Following the same logic, I organize a weekly 1:1 with my directs. It’s a guarantee for them and me that we’ll always have a moment to discuss the week’s special events. It’s also a good way of getting feedback on an event that happened at most a week ago (i.e., between the previous 1:1 and the current one). I use this point to obtain visibility on current projects without the need for other ad-hoc points in addition to the 1:1s. Finally, it allows me to monitor the individual objectives of my team members from a reasonable distance.
There are several objections to this recurrence, generally preferring a 1:1 every two weeks. Among the arguments put forward:
Thirty minutes each week is too much time spent with my colleague. This argument is also generally used when setting up 1:1, which the manager sees as a pure and simple waste of time. A first response to this objection: if we consider working around 40 hours a week and doing a 30-minute 1:1 every week with a colleague, we dedicate 0.5/40 = 1.25% of our weekly working time to them. Which is quite reasonable. This point also allows you to build a bond with your colleagues, follow up on your objectives, set your own, delegate, or give feedback, … in the end, during this 1.25% of the time, you’ll exercise the overwhelming majority of your role as a manager!
We don’t have enough subjects to discuss to have a 1:1 every week, depending on the individual, their propensity to talk a lot, or the topics of the moment. Generally speaking, the first 1:1s can be a little awkward because there are so few subjects to discuss. This is normal: after all, the aim of the 1:1 is to create a bond, which takes time. As I’ll describe in the next section, a few weeks are usually enough to eliminate this argument, mainly if you apply the 1:1 structure. While you’re waiting for the mayonnaise to take hold, don’t hesitate to prepare the 1:1s a little further in advance, in particular by preparing the subjects you’d like to discuss (asking for feedback on a ritual you’d like to set up, talking about the progress of a project, preparing feedback on an initiative taken by your direct reports, etc.).
I’m a manager and an individual contributor, so I don’t have as much time to devote to my colleagues. It depends on the company, but being an individual contributor and tech manager is standard. However, as a manager, your two main missions are to Retain your employees and the Results your employees produce; what you make as an individual contributor is secondary to these first two objectives. Cf. the arguments I gave above, the 1:1s used wisely will be the most influential meetings to act on retention and results.
Finally, I try to schedule my 1:1s from Tuesday to Thursday as far as possible. Monday is too early to be effective, and on Friday, the potential problems that may occur during the week are probably now resolved. This is to limit context switching. I also try to schedule all these meetings in the morning to avoid context switching, both for my team and me; this allows us to keep the afternoon free to work on tasks with an uninterrupted focus.
❯ The 1:1 structure
I divide my 1:1 into three parts of ten minutes each: The first 10 minutes are dedicated to the direct. They have 10 minutes to talk about whatever is on their mind: whether it’s about the work they’ve been assigned, asking for help with a blockage they’ve encountered, communication difficulties, asking for further explanation of an announcement made with great fanfare by the CEO a few hours earlier… or to talk about the latest video game released this weekend or share photos of this weekend’s hike with their son. These are their 10 minutes, and they can use them as they like!
The following 10 minutes are dedicated to you. As a manager, as said before, you can use it, in particular, to get visibility on what they are actively working on, set up or follow objectives, and practice the subtle art of delegation, … but it’s also your 10 minutes, so nothing prevents you from talking about the movie you watched last evening. 🙂
The last 10 minutes are 10 minutes you dedicate to giving feedback to your direct. About their work, their role in the team, or any other relevant subject. Dedicating 10 minutes by 1:1 encourages you to use this time to give feedback on their action in the team. In particular, you can encourage them to take the initiative or describe the impact of their attitude in meetings on developers more junior than them. Of course, you don’t necessarily have 10 minutes of feedback to give every week to every employee. But those 10 minutes are a placeholder you can use. If you take all the 1:1s you’ve done in a year, you’ll find about 1/3 of the time dedicated to your direct, 1/3 to you, and 1/3 to feedback.
❯ With every team member?
There is, however, one exception: for 1:1s to remain effective, the number of people you manage directly has to remain reasonable (by which I mean, beyond eight people, it starts to take quite a bit of time and energy to remain effective). There’s a lot of literature on the subject: Jeff Bezos theorized that an ideal team should be able to share two pizzas; in Scrum, the perfect team contains between 5 and 8 people; according to Hackman, the ideal team is between 4 and 6 people (and should never exceed 10); finally, at Google, the magic number for team size is 7. In my personal experience, the critical size for a team is eight people, including the manager. Up to this team size, 1:1 with each team member per week is reasonable. Beyond that, consider splitting the team into two new teams (by recruiting or promoting internal movements to ensure that the team contains all the essential trades to work autonomously). While you’re waiting for this team transformation, you might consider delegating some of your managerial responsibilities to one or more members of your team: they’ll act as 1:1s with one or more team members and act as intermediaries, enabling you to maintain a link with each team member while mitigating the time needed to keep these 1:1s effective.
❯ A recurring meeting?
Or a different moment every week? I recommend that the 1:1 be a recurring meeting. In modern calendar solutions (like Google Calendar, for example), you can define a recurrence for meetings (every week, on the same day, at the same time). This means you don’t have to reschedule a 1:1 with every live person every week, which is a waste of time. A recurring meeting adds a reassuring aspect for your collaborators: the 1:1 is a ritualized moment; they know they can count on this regular exchange point with you.
❯ Can I cancel a 1:1?
No, unless you don’t have any working days in common during the week (e.g., you’re both on vacation for a whole week). In all other cases, you must impose the discipline of having a 1:1 with each team member. If you’re invited to a meeting that you can’t refuse (with a customer, an external partner, a meeting initiated by your line manager, etc.), try as far as possible to move the meeting as quickly as possible, and ideally to a slot before the initial one: this sends the message that you couldn’t do otherwise, and that you had to postpone the meeting, but that you want to honor it, it’ s important to you, and you’re taking the initiative to bring it forward.
❯ What if no one has anything to say to each other?
When you first set up 1:1s with your team, it’s common for you not to have much to say to each other. This is especially true if you’ve just joined the company. The first challenge of the 1:1 is to create a bond with your colleague, which takes time. I advise you to apply the 1:1 structure I’ve shared with you. If the person you’re talking to has nothing to discuss, don’t insist, and get on with your part. For the first 1:1s, don’t hesitate to prepare them in advance with a set of topics to discuss: asking for critical feedback on a team meeting to improve yourself (and get the team’s point of view regarding you and your work), visibility on the progress of a project, etc.
❯ 1:1 and laptop use
What does the law say?
The literature on the subject is more along the lines of not using a laptop, phone, or anything else but taking notes in a notebook on the subjects discussed during the 1:1 to be able to keep track of the subjects discussed, the actions and decisions taken, and keep a history, for example with a view to future quarterly and annual reviews. In practice, the laptop is mainly indispensable for efficient 1:1s, especially in the post-COVID era, with the ubiquity of remote working. Of course, if your contact is remote, video-conferencing software is the closest you can get to a face-to-face 1:1. In practice, the laptop is largely indispensable for efficient 1:1s, especially in the post-COVID era, with the ubiquity of remote working. Of course, if your contact is remote, using video-conferencing software is the closest you can get to a face-to-face 1:1.
I also replace the traditional notebook with an online document that I share with the collaborator, which, in my opinion, has many virtues far outweighing the disadvantages: both you and the collaborator have access at all times to the notes taken during the 1:1 (which also guarantees that you’ve captured the messages your direct has passed on to you, or that you haven’t forgotten a subject along the way). It also allows you to accompany your speech and spell out in writing the messages you’ve conveyed orally, particularly objectives, expectations, or feedback. Finally, it will enable you to prepare, for yourself and for the other person, the subjects you’ll be talking about during the next 1:1 asynchronous session. It allows the other person to prepare for the next point. However, there’s one thing you need to bear in mind: you mustn’t be disturbed during these 30 minutes: you’re dedicating this time to your direct contact and them alone. Ensure you deactivate as many notifications as possible (e-mail, SMS, company e-mail notifications, etc.). Most of the time, any messages you receive can wait until the end of your 1:1.
❯ Last words
In conclusion, although every manager is different and has their style, 1:1 is the ritual in which every manager should invest time and energy because it enables them to cover a large part of our expectations of their role. With this article, I hope to have succeeded in sharing with you the many benefits 1:1s bring to everyday life and the keys to implementing these 1:1s with your team(s).
