You know that awkward silence in one-on-one meetings, no matter which side you'd been on. You're not sure where to take the discussion in this semi-informal meeting, so you're just suffering in silence.One-on-one meetings are the platform to build trust and rapport in a manager-report relationship to make teamwork effective. The idea is that you both give up time to sit down together every week and talk about whatever your member of staff wants to.There are different approaches to this, but I recommend you hold one-on-one meetings weekly . A regular, predictable cadence is essential, so your employee knows that you’ll make time for them.It’s a great idea to take notes over the week and to bring them to the meeting . They can be observations about the dynamics in the team; they can be specific to your report or to any question that comes up. When it comes to engineers, you may ask questions about design or architecture; both are good topics of conversation.

One on one meetings

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Communication

The Ultimate One-on-One Meeting Guide: Beat the Awkwardness

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The Ultimate One-on-One Meeting Guide: Beat the Awkwardness - Interview with James Stanier, SVP of Engineering, Brandwatch

You know that awkward silence in one-on-one meetings, no matter which side you'd been on. You're not sure where to take the discussion in this semi-informal meeting, so you're just suffering in silence.

Don’t worry, it’s not just you.

It’s every engineering manager and engineering leader ever.

This leads to a lot of pressure when you're running one-on-ones. Until you gain experience it’s not obvious at all how to approach them, what tone to use, and what topics to discuss. Yet running effective one-on-one meetings has become a basic requirement to be able to call yourself a good manager.

How do you get the basics right without jumping in at the deep end completely unprepared, and embracing the pain until you improve?

Get good at running one-on-one meetings using the experience of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jstanier/">James Stanier </a>, SVP of Engineering at <a href="https://www.brandwatch.com/">Brandwatch </a>, and author of <a href="https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/book/">Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager </a> . The interview is from the <a href="https://codingsans.com/engineering-management-podcast">Level-up Engineering podcast </a>, hosted by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/karolinatoth/">Karolina Toth </a>.

<ul><li><a href="#Goal">The goal of a one-on-one meeting </a> </li><li><a href="#Frequency">The ideal frequency of one-on-one meetings </a> </li><li><a href="#Template">One-on-one preparation tips for engineering managers </a> </li><ul><li>Mix it up </li><li>Discuss career development </li><li>Share more to learn more </li><li>Keep it friendly </li> </ul><li><a href="#Personality">Handling challenging personalities </a> </li><ul><li>The quiet type </li><li>The venting type </li> </ul><li><a href="#Document">Documenting your one-on-one meetings </a> </li><li><a href="#Feedback">Critical feedback at one-on-ones </a> </li><ul><li>One-on-ones are a regular feedback opportunity </li><li>Give warning before critical feedback </li> </ul><li><a href="#Mistakes">Common mistakes of engineering managers </a> </li><ul><li>Turning one-on-ones into status updates </li><li>Giving space for too much venting </li><li>Not involving outside help when necessary </li> </ul><li><a href="#Number">The number of direct reports you can handle doing one-on-ones with </a> </li><li><a href="#Setting">Walking versus sitting one-on-one meeting </a> </li><li><a href="#Contracting">Doing a one-on-one with a new team member </a> </li><ol><li>Strengths and weaknesses </li><li>Feedback preferences </li><li>Potential challenges </li><li>Red flags </li><li>Confidentiality agreement </li> </ol><li><a href="#Questions">One-on-one meetings questions and topics </a> </li><ul><li>Talk about work with the quiet types </li><li>Bring whatever topic your report is comfortable with </li> </ul><li><a href="#Engineers-vs-Managers">Doing one-on-ones with individual contributors vs managers </a> </li><ul><li>Use a coaching strategy on managers </li><li>Talk to managers about their teams beyond themselves </li> </ul><li><a href="#Train">Preparing engineering managers to run one-on-ones </a> </li><ul><li>Training and workshops </li><li>Shared resources </li><li>Make your culture do the work </li> </ul><li><a href="#When">When to start doing one-on-ones </a> </li><li><a href="#Employees">How direct reports should prepare for one-on-ones </a> </li><ul><li>Take note of whatever topic comes to mind </li><li>Bring your proactivity </li> </ul><li><a href="#Bonus">Bonus advice </a> </li><ul><li>Integrate one-on-ones into your culture </li><li>Use peer one-on-ones to build your network </li> </ul> </ul>

James’s passions are technology, management and leadership. He loves building things, and building people; this is why he recently wrote a book called <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50363684-become-an-effective-software-engineering-manager">Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager </a> .

He’s currently SVP of Engineering at Brandwatch, and he is a passionate dog owner and runner on the side.

What is the goal of a one-on-one meeting?

One-on-one meetings have different names written in different forms, like one-to-one, 1-on-1, one on one, 1-1 or even 1:1. The goal of these meetings is to form the core of the relationship between managers and their direct reports. It’s especially useful with creative people, where management isn't about telling people what to do.

One-on-one meetings are the platform to build trust and rapport in a manager-report relationship to make teamwork effective. The idea is that you both give up time to sit down together every week and talk about whatever your member of staff wants to.

Always remember; the one-on-one meeting belongs to your report. As a manager, you have an opportunity to steer the discussion in a particular direction and to help your reports solve their problems. It’s also a great opportunity to work on <a href="https://codingsans.com/blog/from-junior-to-senior-developer">career development with your engineers </a>.

How often do you have one-on-one meetings?

There are different approaches to this, but I recommend you hold one-on-one meetings weekly . A regular, predictable cadence is essential, so your employee knows that you’ll make time for them.

It’s okay to not fill a whole hour; if you do it weekly, sometimes it'll only last 20 minutes, because there isn’t a lot to discuss. You both build up things you want to talk about with time, then you have an opportunity to discuss them, and the cycle repeats.

You can talk outside meetings too, as you likely do. The one-on-one meetings are about creating a private space, which is essential for many topics.

How do you prepare for one-on-one meetings as an engineering manager? Do you use a one-on-one meeting template?

A template implies that you say the same things every time. I don’t have a template; I have a bag of different topics I can pull from. You can mix up a lot of questions for every meeting with different prompts to switch in and out.

It’s a great idea to take notes over the week and to bring them to the meeting . They can be observations about the dynamics in the team; they can be specific to your report or to any question that comes up. When it comes to engineers, you may ask questions about design or architecture; both are good topics of conversation.

You should also mix in career development. The focus shouldn’t be on a performance review, but on asking how your team member is doing and what they're working on. You should try to learn if it’s in line with where they want to go and with what they'd like to try in the future.

The information flow can go from the manager to the report as well. You can discuss topics that are interesting and ones that your report doesn’t know about. You can get their input and share insight from the management level.

Don’t forget, it’s a friendly conversation, so ask about how they are, what they've been up to recently, what they were doing on the weekend. You’re building rapport and trust, as well as discussing topics closely or loosely related to their jobs.

The bottom line is, use a wide spectrum of questions, and pull out a different mix every week.

Common challenging personalities at one-on-one meetings for engineering managers

I’ve had many quiet people as a direct report. Understanding that they don’t like to share thoughts and feelings helped me with them. This way, I could talk to them knowing it’s not that they don't want to talk to me; it’s just their personality.

I have to prepare more for one-on-one meetings with them and bring more prompted questions . I also know if we cover everything with them, and there's nothing left to talk about, they’re happy with that.

I encourage you to be open with your reports if you notice this and say, “We never seem to use the full hour, but it doesn't feel like there’s a lot left out every week. Is it okay, or is there something you may be hesitant to share?” These people on my team are usually fine.

I’ve dealt with employees who were venting all the time. I’m a good listener, but it can backfire when I run into these people. The first time I had a direct report do this early in my management career, I had no idea what to do.

Many weeks went by until I finally said, “How can we turn this negativity around into something positive?” It turned out that person didn’t even realize they'd been doing this. In this case addressing the problem head-on made it possible to start working towards a solution.

How do you document your one-on-one meetings?

The meeting note is a shared document.

I create a private Google doc between myself and my direct report. Only we can see it and no one else. We keep a rolling meeting agenda in it, and I encourage my reports to add anything to it at any time.

This document collects information over the course of the week, and I open it up 15 minutes before the meeting to prepare. We both read through it, put the topics in order, and work through the list. As we're talking, the bullet points end up with actions we assign to ourselves, and we make sure we get them done.

It also serves as an archive of every one-on-one meeting you've had. You can check back anytime and see what you talked about. You can see the last time you spoke about a topic, like career development.

Do you give negative feedback at one-on-one meetings?

One-on-ones are a frequent feedback opportunity

I give both positive and negative feedback. You can refine the way you deliver feedback if you read the book called <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29939161-radical-candor">Radical Candor </a>by Kim Scott. It's about how to give critique and praise in a constructive, meaningful and honest way.

You want to get your relationship to a point where you can give negative feedback to each other without any hard feelings. It’s not about attacking anyone as a person; it’s about challenging ideas and behaviors. One-on-one meetings are a frequent opportunity to <a href="https://codingsans.com/blog/handling-conflicts-giving-feedback">give positive and negative feedback </a>.

The manager should always specifically ask for feedback too, for example:

<ul><li>Is there anything I could do better? </li><li>Have I been doing something recently that could have been better for you? </li> </ul>

Give warning before a constructive feedback

I don’t want to give negative feedback as a complete surprise, but writing a long, painful monologue about how everything's wrong is a bad idea. I tend to write an action item of the wider topic or a specific interaction or meeting I want to give constructive feedback about.

Then they enter the meeting knowing what topic we’ll discuss. This way, I have a chance to bring up positive and negative elements too, rather than spend half an hour heavily critiquing my team member.

Giving them an idea about what’s coming is helpful.

<a href="https://codingsans.com/blog/feedback-culture">Click here to learn about GitHub's feedback culture from Ryan Nystrom! </a>

What are the common mistakes in one-on-one meetings for engineering managers?

You can avoid the common mistakes reliably by listening to your gut feelings. They always give you red flags.

You shouldn’t allow your one-on-one meeting to turn into a status update. You can discuss what you’ve been up to recently, but going over daily tasks and avoiding topics like career development is a common mistake. This makes the meetings boring and unproductive, since you don’t learn anything new.

All the information about tasks is available on your Jira or Trello board, so it’s redundant to discuss in person. A one-on-one meeting isn’t about making sure your direct reports are doing their jobs.

You can easily tell if you’re doing it wrong. If you’re bored in one-on-one meetings, you need better material. When you’re discussing work-related topics, take whatever they're working on and look for things around the edge that make the conversation interesting.

Sometimes you end up with a report who vents at you all the time. You sit down with them every time knowing they’ll go on for an hour about how things are annoying, bad, take too long, or how they don’t like someone. When this happens, you need to intervene; otherwise, it’ll keep going indefinitely.

Remember; venting to your manager is fine. Sometimes people get frustrated and need to blow off steam in a private setting. You should support this.

If it becomes a recurring thing though, it's your duty as a manager to turn this into constructive energy. In this situation, you rarely have anything to say; you're just listening to a frustrated person. Sometimes you try to turn the conversation in a positive direction, but they just vent more, and you end up getting frustrated yourself.

You should talk to these people about how to solve their problems and about how to engage with a negative situation to make it better.

Personal or mental health issues make you discomfortable

In time you get to know your team members closely. Everybody goes through challenging periods. As their manager, you can help them with many things, but there are issues you aren't qualified to help with.

You can’t fix mental health issues, medical issues, or personal things going on in their lives that affect their work. The fact that people bring them to you shows that they trust you, which is good news. At the same time, it makes you feel discomfortable because you can't help.

This is the time you bring in outside assistance. It may be from your HR team, maybe you can use another employee benefit, or refer them somewhere.

Being a manager doesn't make you a therapist. All you can do is recognize the situation and involve outside support. There is no training for this, but you can usually pick up on it based on your instincts.

How many direct reports can you handle doing one-on-one meetings with weekly?

In my experience, if you have more than seven or eight direct reports, it's starting to get too much. Ending up with more direct reports than that tends to be an organizational problem. You may need to promote middle managers to support you.

I currently have six direct reports, and the maximum I’ve had is ten, which was too much. If you're spending an hour every week with each of your direct reports, it takes seven hours with seven people. That’s a full day.

If you add in prep time for each one-on-one meeting and follow-up, it takes a big chunk of your week just to go through the one-on-one cycle. On top of this, you have a lot of work to do.

I say five to seven direct reports is the sweet spot with weekly one-on-one meetings .

What setting do you need for one-on-one meetings? Do you prefer walking or sitting one-on-ones?

Currently, we’re <a href="https://codingsans.com/blog/become-remote-company">working remotely due to COVID-19 </a>, so we’re using private Zoom rooms.

The default setting is a private room, and the trust you bring with yourself. That's what matters. A place where no one else can hear you allows both of you to talk about whatever you want to.

People sometimes go to coffee shops, and that's fine. It’s more interesting than sitting in a random room, but it's tricky, because you don't always feel comfortable talking around strangers.

There's a nice coffee shop near our office in Brighton, and our people started going there for one-on-one meetings. Suddenly, so many of us were there regularly, that you couldn't have a private conversation because colleagues were sitting just a few seats away.

I prefer to do one-on-one meetings sitting down , but a walking one-on-one is an option too.

Walking meetings are more adventurous, but they can be distracting for both of you. It also makes taking notes a pain, so you have to remember everything you’ve discussed, and write it down as soon as you return to the office. In a meeting room, you can take notes easily.

You could also ride a bike, but then you’ll only be able to talk so much. I also tend to lose the ability to keep track of the discussion effectively.

How do you use one-on-one meetings to build trust with a new team member?

There's an exercise for this, called contracting , which I learned in management training. You write a contract between the two of you the first time you have a on- on-one meeting together. There are five questions to go through:

Which areas would you like the most support with?

It’s about figuring out what elements of their role they think you could help the most as a manager. It’s useful to set your focus areas about them.

How would you like to receive feedback and support?

This is about finding out whether they like receiving feedback in the moment or if they prefer to sit down privately. They may prefer written or spoken feedback, and you can explore this area further.

The Ultimate One-on-One Meeting Guide: Beat the Awkwardness

One on one meetings

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