Speaker: Alex Riviere (@fimion@notacult.social)

See the DevNexus live blog table of contents for more posts

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Bad One on Ones

• How was the conference?
• Anything you want to talk about?
• Ok, Talk to you next month

Assumption

• Collaborative environment
• Small team
• Non-hostile environment (aka if your manager is trying to get you fired)
• Ideal situation. Ok to not want to do some of these when lower trust

Types of one on ones

• Manager to employee (or team lead to team member)
• Peer to peer. People you work with
• Employee to Manager. Employee leads meeting.

Expectations

• Both parties state their expectations for the meeting
• What’s important to you
• ex: open and honest about how work makes you feel, clear understanding of work responsibilities or bring up if not, bring up if work not on track
• ex: don’t surprise me. “I’m going to talk to you about X in 5 minutes”
• ex: I want you to help me level up
• ex: I need brace when I mess up

Notes

• Have notes from last meeting on one side of screen and notes from this meeting on other side.
• Good when answers are the same from previous time.
• If answer changes, ask for more information.

Always ask

• Am I living up these expectations for you? Usually the answer is yes.
• Are there any expectations you want to edit or add? Circumstances change over time.

Manager to Employee

Meets monthly for up to an hour. Sometimes take 15 minutes, but can use up to an hour. Could be every two weeks if junior/need more involvement. That one is shorter.

• Check in on role. – Do you feel like you clearly understand your role in the business? Are you being asked to do work that doesn’t align with your role? What do you think about the company’s culture/vision/direction? Are you feeling burned out at all? What’s something you are doing a lot of today that you weren’t doing a year ago? (also can use these for annual review). Do you see any opportunities to change your role? What kind of impact do you feel you are making? Are you doing meaningful or important work?
• Reserve a time for a specific topic or question – What’s something I do that annoys you? (ok to say nothing) What technologies are you interested in that you wish you could be using at work? What issues do you think we should be prioritizing that we aren’t currently? Team specific question: (ex How do you think our QA process could be better)
• Set and track goal process – individual (employee wants to do) and assigned (from company) goals. Also can use for annual review as well)

Peer to Peer

He allocates 30 minutes; sometimes uses 15. Ok to be quarterly. Ensure next one scheduled before end prior one

• Fortering relations – Do you feel like you clearly understand my role in the business? Both answer this question. Are we asking too much/little of your team
• Retro checkin – What challenges have you faced since the last meeting? What went well since our last meeting. Cover schedule for next x days (a few days more than the meeting cadence to ensure enough notice)
• Vibe check – Are you feeling burned out/how’s it going?
• Track goals – Accountability buddies. Each have one goal want to achieve and check in on it

Employee to Manager

• What is coming up in the next x months that I should be aware of?
• Are there any tasks that you have concerns about our progress on?
• Are there things we are doing that concern you? (could be just one person or the team). Allows answer to be “no”
• What are things we are doing that you like?
• Is there anything we didn’t already cover that you want to talk through?

Other notes

• Track action items – carry forward if not done between meetings
• Repetitive by design
• Can add questions based on the person or level. ex: ask a junior what struggling with
• Never cancel a one on one. Ok to move, but don’t cancel as won’t communicate effectively.

Slides: https://github.com/fimion/1-on-1s-for-everyone

My take

It feels like it would be repetitive to ask the same questions every month. But these are great ideas of things to think about and bring up!