The magic of one-on-one meetings
Why one-on-one is important; what it gives to you and your meeting partner; how it helps to accelerate your career and ship amazing products.
If you are a Tech Lead or an Engineering Manager, you’ve probably noticed that one of the biggest bottlenecks in every organization is communication. People are just not aware of what’s going on beyond the next door, if their career is going well, and how they can do better. This results in false assumptions, time spent on doing not the right things, and so on.
One-on-one meetings help you to learn more about your colleagues and projects. Let’s figure out what you can do to make them more productive, and what types of questions make the difference.
All types of one-on-ones
- Get to know your conversation partner. What they’re doing, how was their weekend, do you support the same football team?
- Create and share the document with meeting notes and commitments with your meeting partner.
- Use this doc for a meeting plan as well. You might want to accumulate open questions/updates during the week.
- You might keep a “template” of questions you’d like to discuss at every meeting. For example, status checks on projects X, Y, and Z.
One-on-one with your manager
In many companies, it’s common to have 1:1 time with your manager once every one or two weeks. There is no such thing as over-communication, just hold a slot for 1:1 every week, and cancel the instance if not needed. These conversations are crucial for your formal career and professional growth, so it is very important to come prepared. This is your time, and you’re responsible to get the maximum out of it.
- Check the big goal of your team and organization, and if you’re on track for it now.
- Get additional context and updates about things happening around.
- How do you feel about team dynamics, do processes work well?
- Share ideas of future projects you might want to work on. Don’t wait for guidance, offer your plan, and ask the manager to course-correct it.
- Share what you have achieved recently. Explain how cool you are, your manager is looking for a reason to promote you!
One-on-one with your direct report
It’s your turn to be a manager, let’s get the tables turned! Now your responsibility is to share updates and avoid collisions between people and projects. Even more, your responsibility is to listen. Think about these topics:
- How well are they doing? Do you have any feedback about their work?
- How much guidance do they need? Would they come up with a plan on what to do next?
- Can you challenge them with a complex problem? Something they can do after level-appropriate goals are complete, to exceed expectations?
- Where do they see a blocker in the organization, what can put projects on risk?
One-on-one with your peer
I believe that having regular chats with your teammates, and with your peers from other teams, is a great deal. Success is infinitely split, so let’s build a cool thing together!
- What they are working on, and how it collides with your project?
- What yours and their teams are up to, what was scoped and unscoped recently?
- How can you help them to be successful?
You never know if you don’t ask! Keep the conversation going, and best of luck with your next meeting!
Let me know which topics about Engineering Management you’d like to discuss, ping me on Twitter, or leave a comment here on Medium.
