1:1s & Feedback
Running 1:1s that belong to the report, giving feedback that's specific and timely with situation, behavior and impact, and having the hard conversations early.
Once someone is onboarded, the 1:1 is where the working relationship lives. It's the one meeting where the person who reports to you sets the agenda. When it turns into a status update, both lose: the manager gets information a standup would have given them, and the report loses the only regular, private time to raise what's actually on their mind.
Their Meeting, Not Yours
I keep a shared doc per person with a running agenda; either of us adds to it during the week, and their items come first. When they arrive with nothing, that's a signal too, and a good time for open questions: what's frustrating you, what would you change about how the team works, what are you not getting enough of. If a 1:1 is mostly "what did you ship this week", the team is missing a better place for status, and the conversations that need privacy aren't happening anywhere.
Cadence
Weekly, 30 minutes, for direct reports: often enough that small things get raised while they're small. Move them when you must, but don't cancel them; a manager who regularly cancels 1:1s is telling the report where they rank.
Start a new relationship by learning how the person works. Lara Hogan's first 1:1 questions are a good set: how they like to get feedback, what makes them grumpy and how you'll know, what they want from the next year, and how they like to be recognized. Her advice is to have the answers "WAY before you need them".
Giving Feedback
Feedback that's vague ("be more proactive"), late (saved for the review), or about character ("you're careless") changes nothing; the person can't act on it, and often can't tell what it's about.
The structure I use is the Center for Creative Leadership's Situation-Behavior-Impact:
- Situation: when and where. "In Tuesday's design review..."
- Behavior: what they did, observably. "...you cut Sam off twice before he finished his proposal..."
- Impact: what it caused. "...and he didn't raise his concern about the migration, which turned out to be right."
Then ask about intent, the extra step CCL adds: "what was going on for you there?" The person may have had a reason you didn't see, and the conversation becomes two-way instead of a verdict.
- Timely. Within a day or two, while both people remember. Feedback saved for review time feels like an ambush and arrives too late to help (see Performance Reviews).
- Positive feedback in the same form. "Good job" teaches nothing. "The way you wrote up the rollback plan before the migration meant we recovered in ten minutes" tells someone exactly what to keep doing.
- Private for corrective, public (if they like it) for praise.
Receiving Feedback
Ask specifically: "what's one thing I could have done better in that planning meeting?" gets an answer; "any feedback for me?" gets "nope, all good". Thank the person, ask questions to understand, resist explaining yourself, then visibly act on it. Nothing stops a team giving feedback faster than seeing nothing change.
Growth Conversations
Every few weeks, set aside a 1:1 for the longer view: where they want to be in a year or two, what they want to learn, what work energizes them. Tie it to the career ladder so "growth" has a shared language, and to real opportunities: the project they could lead, the design they could own. Growth that only exists in 1:1 notes isn't growth.
Keep notes in the shared doc: what was raised, what you agreed, who's doing what. A promise made in a 1:1 and forgotten does more damage than no promise, and notes show patterns over months that no single conversation does. Skip-levels, for managers of managers, are covered in Growing Managers.
Hard Conversations
The hard conversation you postpone gets harder: the performance problem, the behavior hurting the team, the promotion that isn't coming this cycle. Waiting feels kind and isn't; it denies the person the chance to fix it and guarantees they'll be surprised later. Say it early, plainly and privately, with situation, behavior and impact, then what good looks like and how you'll support getting there. Follow up in writing, so there's no ambiguity about what was said.
References
In practice
- Center for Creative Leadership: Closing the Gap Between Intent vs. Impact, the Situation-Behavior-Impact model and asking about intent
- Lara Hogan: Questions for our first 1:1, learning how each person likes feedback and recognition