The success of your team can grow exponentially when you invest in your people, and one-on-one meetings are among the most powerful tools for driving employee engagement, building meaningful relationships, and enhancing team performance.
Imagine you are given $25,000 and told to invest it. Your task is to get the greatest return. In five years, you can keep the profits for yourself.
What is your strategy?
Do you throw the $25,000 in to an account and leave it and hope for the best? Will you monitor progress and make adjustments? Do you get so busy doing other things that you completely forget about it?
One-on-one meetings (or 1:1s as I call them) are one of the most important and effective ways you invest in your team members for the great return. Return for your team member, for you, and for your organization.
These meetings offer an invaluable opportunity to connect with your team members on a deeper level and guide individual growth. Done well, they can boost motivation, provide clarity and direction, and reinforce alignment across the organization.
Maximizing the impact of your 1:1 meetings requires intentionality, preparation, and a clear strategy. Keep reading to learn more about the 8 strategies that have helped me to unlock the power of my 1:1s.
1. Set Clear objectives for your 1:1s
Have you ever wondered why you need to have 1:1s with your leader?
You’re busy, you have deadlines, and now you have to squeeze in meetings with your manager? To do what? Provide updates on what you are working on? Talk about the weekend?
1:1 meetings work best when they have a clear purpose.
Every meeting should have specific goals, whether addressing performance, discussing development opportunities, or aligning on strategic priorities.
As a leader, it’s essential to tailor the objectives of each meeting to meet the needs of your team members.
Are you providing feedback, brainstorming solutions, following up on a development item, offering guidance on career growth?
Align these objectives with the individual’s role, their personal goals, and broader team strategy to ensure both parties leave the meeting with clarity and actionable next steps.
2. Prepare! Key Steps to Ensure a Productive Meeting
Preparation is critical to the success of 1:1 meetings. Both leaders and employees should come to the table ready to engage in a focused and productive conversation.
As a leader, it’s essential to set a structured agenda, review previous meeting notes, and gather any relevant feedback.
When I start my workday, I review my schedule and spend some time first thing in the morning preparing for the day’s 1:1s. I review previous 1:1 notes for any items to follow up on; I make note of any projects or big tasks I know my team member is working on so that I can find out if and where I can provide any support; I note any recent wins or highlights that I want to recognize further; I think about the team member’s goals and development items so that I can have a meaningful discussion about how they have grown since our last 1:1 and offer future opportunities for continued development.
Encourage your employees to bring their own agenda items – any news, important updates, questions, roadblocks, etc. to ensure that they take ownership of the conversation.
In my practice, I use a shared OneNote with each team member and create a tab for 1:1s with a new page for each meeting. Over the years, I have perfected a 1:1 template that I use for each of my meetings. My team members add their agenda items to the template. Offering this consistency helps my team members feel more comfortable and prepared for our meetings, giving us more time to have a free-flowing and productive discussion.
This collaborative approach enhances the value of the meeting and ensures that important topics are addressed in a timely manner.
3. Create a Safe and Open Environment for Candid Conversation
To get the most out of 1:1 meetings, creating a safe and open environment is paramount. Team members must feel comfortable sharing their thoughts, challenges, and feedback without fear of judgment or retaliation.
Building psychological safety encourages candid conversations, enabling you to identify potential challenges or performance concerns early and address them constructively.
Active listening is key – be fully present in the conversation, show empathy, and provide thoughtful responses.
Neutral Mindset
One of my favourite pieces of advice I ever received was to take a few moments to refocus before your next meeting. Use the washroom, take a quick walk around the office, grab a coffee – whatever you need to do to enter your next meeting with a neutral mindset so that you can be fully present without thinking about your to do list, something that was raised in a previous meeting, your email or chat messages, etc. When I am in a 1:1, giving my undivided attention and focus to my team member is a nonnegotiable.
When I was a new leader, I mistakenly thought that in order to provide value to my team members, I needed to offer solutions and advice.
Wrong.
Over the years I have learned to stay in my neutral mindset, stay curious, and use open-ended questions to probe further or help my team members find their own solutions.
“I am intrigued. Tell me more about that.”
“Thank you for sharing that with me.”
These are thoughtful responses that signal that you are listening actively to what your team members have to say.
Let Your Team Member do the Talking
Generally, my team members do most of the talking during 1:1s.
According to Steven G. Rogelberg, author of Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings, “these meetings are most productive when they’re focused on the employee — on their needs, concerns, and hopes — not just whatever is top of mind for the manager.”
Further, leaders might think they are actively listening but what they are really doing is forming their response.
“The problem isn’t with giving advice. Instead, the problem is when giving advice becomes our default response.” urges Michael Bungay Stanier, author of The Coaching Habit and The Advice Trap. “The first issue with advice giving is that we’re often solving the wrong problem. The second issue is that our advice is not nearly as good as we think it is. The third issue with giving advice cuts a little deeper …for the person who’s on the receiving end of your advice monster, they’re getting the message that they can’t figure this out by themselves, which cuts away at their sense of confidence and autonomy.”
4. Balance Performance Feedback and Development Conversation
Effective 1:1 meetings should strike a balance between addressing immediate performance and focusing on long-term employee development.
Regularly providing feedback ensures that team members understand how they are performing in their role while also giving you an opportunity to acknowledge successes and address areas for improvement.
Please don’t get me wrong – constructive feedback should be offered immediately. For instance, if your employee gave a presentation and you observed that they could have communicated their point more clearly to keep their audience engaged, you should let them know shortly after the meeting. Use your 1:1 to follow up and build on those feedback discussions, if appropriate.
Continuously Bridge Gaps in General Performance
One of my favourite ways to discuss general performance at a 1:1 is to review a team member’s key job accountabilities and the team’s strategic priorities and ask them where they think see any gaps or where they can improve to go from A to A+. Further, performance isn’t linear – it should adapt to team and organizational changes. By having transparent performance discussions throughout the year, by frequently reiterating expectations, and by supporting team members to bridge any gaps or make any course corrections, your team member is set up for so much success when it comes time to evaluate their overall annual performance. An annual performance review should never come as a surprise to your team member.
At the same time, you should use these meetings to discuss your team members’ career goals and development plan. Even if a team member doesn’t have immediate goals to get a promotion or move in to a leadership role. There are always ways for people to improve or boost their effectiveness in their current role.
As team members master specific skills, perhaps they move on to mentoring or training others. Perhaps they lean in to proactivity and taking initiative. As companies grow and adapt to shifting market challenges, discussions about alignment with organizational values and strategic priorities are imperative.
Identify Behaviours & Skills That Move the Needle
Is your team member demonstrating the right behaviours that will move the needle for them and the organization?
Imagine an organization is going through a period of large-scale change by implementing new technology. What behaviours could a team member demonstrate that would help them to move the needle on this? I would look for the team member’s willingness to embrace change and to respectfully seek any necessary clarification. I would look for a desire to learn and implement the change and not stick to the status quo, as well as the ability to lead by example by sharing knowledge and speaking constructively and positively about the change.
By leveraging your 1:1s to reiterate performance expectations, be transparent about the changing needs of the team and organization, and by encouraging your team members to think about how they can be the most effective in their role, you can empower your team to grow and take ownership of their professional growth.
5. Manage Difficult Conversations: Delivering Tough Feedback with Care
At times, 1:1s require navigating difficult conversations and delivering tough feedback. Especially if you need to offer timely feedback and your 1:1 happens to be coming up soon.
Addressing underperformance or sensitive issues is never easy, but it’s necessary for growth.
I like to remind myself that pressure and heat forms diamonds. Done well, difficult conversations can be transformational.
The key is to approach these conversations with care and a constructive mindset. Frame feedback as an opportunity for improvement, offering specific examples and actionable suggestions for how the employee can course-correct. Rather than lecturing people, I find that asking questions can be an effective tool to encourage self-reflection and ownership.
When team members come to realizations or solutions on their own, it’s more likely to resonate and stick.
By emphasizing your belief in their ability to succeed, and making it clear that you are invested in their improvement, you can make your team member feel safe and valued, providing the nudge they need to move forward and not backwards or stagnant because they feel disrespected and small.
6. Leverage 1:1s to Strengthen Employee Engagement
1:1 meetings are an incredibly powerful tool for boosting employee engagement. In fact, I have seen a team’s engagement spiral downwards because of the poor quality of their 1:1s with their manager.
These conversations allow leaders to tap into what motivates and fulfills their team members, while also providing a forum to discuss their contributions and impact.
Use these meetings to ask open-ended questions. What energizes your team members in their role? What challenges do they face? How they see their future in the organization? This personalized approach fosters a sense of ownership and commitment, enhancing engagement across the team.
Leadership and engagement aren’t one-size-fits-all.
Measure What Matters
Again, active listening is key. Your job is to collect as much quality data as possible by listening to your team members. I suggest taking a few minutes post-1:1 to identify any themes or patterns that emerged. By completing this exercise, I was able to identify my team member’s values, interests, and the “citizenship behaviours” that filled their cups. Once I feel I have a good understanding of these patterns and themes, I verify them with my team members.
For instance, one of my team members speaks a lot about her volunteer work. A-ha! Helping others and being generous fills her cup. Previously, this team member focused a lot on developing her technical skills by watching training videos.
Yet she never made the time to watch the videos! (not a surprise, right?)
When we pivoted and identified behaviours that were aligned with her values of generosity and helping others, this individual took initiative to create a one-of-its-kind volunteer committee for the entire department, and she thrived in a mentorship role. During our 1:1s, she lights up when she speaks about her plans for team volunteering or about how she has helped a new employee to succeed through training and mentorship.
And guess what else?
She no longer loads up her development plans with training videos and courses. This allows her to focus her time and attention on the behaviours and skills that truly light her up.
7. Be consistent and follow up to ensure accountability and progress
So you had a really productive 1:1 meeting with a team member – awesome!
Now what?
1:1s should not be treated as isolated events, but as part of an ongoing dialogue between leaders and team members.
After each meeting, it’s essential to set clear action items and expectations for follow-up. This ensures accountability and helps track progress over time. Reviewing and following up on these items in future meetings strengthens the continuity of your conversations and reinforces a culture of accountability.
One morning, I stopped by one of my team members’ desks to say hello. Another employee who reports to a different manager was also nearby and joined in on the conversation. My team member told us about her morning preparing for work and how she excitedly told her friend that she gets to have a 1:1 with her manager today. I shared her excitement – I couldn’t wait to spend quality time with my team member and pick up where we left off from our last 1:1. The other employee looked on in complete shock.
If you, as a leader, view 1:1s as a privilege and not a box to check off, your team will feel it.
8. Use 1:1s to Drive Team Alignment and Strategic Goals
Beyond individual development, 1:1 meetings are an opportunity to align team members with broader team and company goals.
These conversations allow you to connect individual contributions with the organization’s overall strategy, helping employees understand the “why” behind decisions and changes.
This alignment not only motivates team members, it gives them a bigger sense of purpose and helps them understand their value. It also ensures that everyone is working towards the same objectives.
When individuals see how their efforts fit into the bigger picture, they are more likely to stay engaged and committed to the team’s success. Further, they are more likely to be self-aware and mindful of their performance and pivot according to the organization and team’s changing needs.
Unlocking the Full Potential of 1:1 Meetings
1:1 meetings are an essential tool for leaders to drive team performance, engage employees, and foster growth.
By setting clear objectives, preparing thoroughly, and creating a safe space for open communication, you can unlock the full potential of these conversations. Consistency and follow-up are crucial for ensuring accountability and progress, while balancing feedback with development helps team members grow in their roles.
With a thoughtful and intentional approach, you can use 1:1s not only to strengthen individual relationships but also to align your team with the strategic goals of the organization, making them an indispensable part of your leadership toolkit.
