1:1 Agenda

1:1 Agenda

The 1:1 is the manager's highest-leverage meeting, and it belongs to the report. The costly failure it prevents is invisible until it isn't: the resignation that "came out of nowhere", the burnout nobody asked about, the career stagnation that festered because growth only came up at review season. A structured rolling agenda keeps the meeting about the human, not the task list.

Core principle

The 1:1 is their meeting. Status belongs in standups and written updates; this time is protected for what does not fit there - blockers, growth, feedback, and how they are actually doing. The report should lead roughly 70% of the talking. If the manager is doing most of it, the meeting has become a broadcast.

Operating procedure

Step 1: Gather inputs

Before setting up (or fixing) a 1:1 practice, establish:

• The reports and their seniority. Default cadence is weekly; biweekly only for very senior, autonomous people - and treat that as the exception to justify, not the default.
• Meeting length: 30 minutes minimum. Under 30, the check-in gets skipped and the meeting degrades to status.
• Where status currently lives (standup, written update, dashboard). If nowhere, fix that first, or status will recolonize the 1:1 no matter what the agenda says.
• Any history to carry in: existing career goals, recent feedback, open action items.

Step 2: Set up the rolling agenda doc

Keep one shared, persistent doc per report, visible to both. Both parties add items between meetings - this kills "so... how's it going?" cold starts and creates continuity across weeks. The doc, not memory, carries action items and career threads.

Step 3: Schedule for trust

• Same time, recurring, weekly. Predictability builds trust.
• Never cancel without rescheduling. Cancelling signals the report does not matter; a rescheduled 15 minutes beats a skipped 30.

Step 4: Run the balanced agenda

Cover these over time - not all every week:

1. Check-in (always): "How are you doing - really?" Energy, workload, life. Never skip it; it is the early-warning system.
2. Their topics first: blockers, decisions they need, things on their mind. Their items outrank the manager's.
3. Current work: only the parts that need the manager - unblocking, prioritization, context. Not a status walk-through.
4. Feedback, both ways: give specific feedback using SBI (pair with feedback-writer), and ask "what could I do better?" Asking is what makes giving safe.
5. Career and growth, revisited monthly: progress toward goals, skills, opportunities. If a month passes without it, it goes first on the next agenda.

Step 5: Go deeper than status with the question bank

Rotate these when the agenda is thin - a thin agenda usually means the real topics feel unsafe, not that nothing is happening:

• "What's the most frustrating part of your work right now?"
• "What would make next week better than this one?"
• "Where do you want to grow that you're not getting to?"
• "Is there anything I'm doing (or not doing) that's making your job harder?"
• "What are you most proud of since we last talked?"

Step 6: Follow up

• Capture action items with owners in the doc; open the next meeting by reviewing them. Following through is how trust compounds - a dropped action item teaches the report that raising things changes nothing.
• Note career conversations as they happen, so advocacy at review and promotion time cites specifics instead of vibes.

Template: rolling 1:1 doc

Copy once per report and keep it alive:

# 1:1 - [FILL: Manager] & [FILL: Report]
Cadence: [FILL: weekly, day/time]   Length: [FILL: >=30 min]

## This week
- [FILL: their topics - always first]
- [FILL: manager topics]

## Parking lot
- [FILL: bigger items to schedule dedicated time for]

## Action items (review at open, carry until done)
- [ ] [FILL: item] - [FILL: owner] - [FILL: due]

## Career & growth (revisit monthly - last discussed: [FILL: date])
- Goals: [FILL]
- Development areas: [FILL]
- Evidence to cite at review time: [FILL: running list]

## Feedback log (both directions, SBI format)
- [FILL: date - given/received - one line]

Deliverable

Produce a per-report rolling 1:1 doc from the template, plus the operating rules for the practice: cadence and length settings, the five-part balanced agenda with the check-in marked non-skippable, the question bank, and the follow-up loop (action items reviewed at open, career notes dated monthly).

Do NOT

• Do not let the 1:1 become a status report - that is what standups and written updates are for; status here crowds out everything irreplaceable.
• Do not do most of the talking - target the report leading 70%; a manager monologue teaches the report to stop bringing things.
• Do not cancel without rescheduling, or routinely cut it short - both tell the report they are low priority, and they remember.
• Do not defer career conversations to review season - growth is continuous, and review-time surprises are a management failure.
• Do not run it agenda-less from memory - cold starts waste the first ten minutes and dropped threads erode trust.
• Do not use the 1:1 to deliver a formal review verdict - that is a separate, prepared conversation (performance-review-writer).

Quality bar

• Cadence weekly (or justified biweekly for senior autonomous reports), 30+ minutes, recurring at a fixed time.
• A shared rolling doc exists per report, with both parties adding items between meetings.
• Check-in happens every single session; their topics precede the manager's.
• Career and growth discussed within the last month, with a dated note proving it.
• Every action item has an owner and is reviewed at the next open; the feedback log shows both directions, not just manager-to-report.