Effective one-on-one meetings can revolutionize the way you manage.
Check-in meetings provide a structured, consistent container for managers and staff to get what you need from each other. Check-ins give you a place to connect, prioritize work, celebrate progress, solve problems, and share feedback.
Holding regular check-ins helps you establish a strong feedback culture, lay a necessary foundation for a conspire-and-align management approach, and build strong staff-manager relationships.
Use our one-on-one agenda template and practical tips below to make the most of your check-ins.
Unlock your full potential as a manager in our Foundations course Managing to Change the World! Gain the confidence, tools, and strategies to delegate effectively, ensure high-quality check-ins, check your biases, build relationships, and more!
Your Guide to Effective One-on-One Check-ins
Check-ins are great for sharing updates and prioritizing daily tasks. But that’s not all. Check-in meetings provide managers and staff with a structured, consistent container for getting aligned, keeping work on track, and ensuring sustainability along the way.
What is an Effective One-on-One Meeting?
Effective one-on-one check-ins provide a space for:
- aligning on decisions and prioritizing projects
- building your relationship
- discussing progress
- solving problems and addressing challenges
- coaching, staff development, and debriefing
- receiving and giving feedback
- serving as a resource to each other
Who Plans the One-on-One Meeting Agenda
Check-ins should be regularly scheduled conversations that your staff own, with your input and guidance.
Start with our check-in agenda template and sample. Then, review the template with your staff and customize it. Agree on a standing agenda format that will keep your check-ins consistent and focused.
Once you have your standing agenda, put your staff in the driver’s seat. Your staff member should prepare the agenda in advance and drive the meeting.
Pick a deadline for staff to send you their filled-out agenda. Then, review what they’ve submitted and add your agenda items before the meeting.
How Should Managers Prepare for One-on-One Meetings?
Just because your staff person owns the agenda doesn’t mean you should rely solely on their pre-work. Before meeting, determine what’s most important for you to discuss. Consider the following questions:
- What is one outcome I want from this check-in?
- Is there anything I’m worried about?
- What do I want to make sure we focus on?
For many managers, check-in meetings are the only time you get to engage 1-1 with your staff each week. Make it count. Make sure you are present and engaged. Before meeting, close your email or your twenty other tabs and put your phone aside. Be ready to empower your staff by “putting on the Green Lens” (learn more: The Four Elements of Strong Relationships).
How to Use One-on-One Time Effectively
Decide what needs to be discussed in realtime, be adaptive, ask questions to dig deeper, make space for feedback, and align on next steps.
Decide what to discuss
Don’t be fooled by our check-in agenda template and sample. While there are many components, not everything needs airtime. For example, your staff could share big rocks and updates on the agenda in advance, and you can skip discussing them unless you have questions. And some things don’t need written prep at all (e.g., the personal check-in).
We recommend protecting these check-in agenda sections for live airtime:
- Items for discussion (project alignment, problem-solving, debriefing, decision-making, etc.)
- Feedback
Adapt to the context
Your check-ins can be proactive or responsive, or both! You might want to discuss projects well before their deadline to anticipate and mitigate challenges, or repurpose your check-in to solve a problem that emerged 15 minutes ago. Consistency doesn’t mean rigidity.
Ask questions
Check-ins give you time to dig deeper, troubleshoot problems, or even mitigate them before they arise. Rather than asking, “How’s project X going?” find ways to get beneath the surface with probing questions like:
- What makes you say that?
- How do you know that you’re on track?
- What could go wrong?
- Are there any choice points that you’re weighing?
- Are there any equity or sustainability implications you’re considering?
Asking questions puts you in a coaching stance. Support your staff by guiding them to design solutions. When presented with a problem, ask:
- What do you think?
- What are some options you can think of? Which one are you leaning toward?
- If you were in charge, how would you approach it?
Make space for feedback and debriefs
Set aside time to share feedback with each other. Check-ins are a crucial opportunity for you to understand how you’re doing at managing. They’re also a space for your staff to grow, improve, or get back on track. Our agenda template includes an abbreviated approach to two-way feedback you can use for each meeting.
You should also discuss recently concluded projects by debriefing together. Assess how the project results and process compared to expectations and apply lessons to the next project.
Use our CSAW method for giving quality feedback and strengthen your ability to receive feedback, too.
Align on next steps
Always end the meeting with explicit agreements about next steps that surfaced, even if it’s just, “Let’s both think this over and discuss it again next week.” Share a repeat-back with each other, such as:
- a quick two-minute email summarizing your next steps, or
- a verbal recap of action items at the end of the meeting.
Stay Connected Between Check-ins
Check-ins are one container for communication and management, but they should never be the only one.
While you might save extensive strategic conversations for your one-on-one meetings, make sure your staff can still get what they need from you in between meetings. Agree on the best channels for different kinds of communications, communicate your working hours, and make yourself available when big things arise. Even a few minutes with you can keep them moving forward.
On the flip side, don’t forgo check-ins just because you communicate regularly. It’s tempting to skip a meeting, when you’ve been emailing or DMing all day. But remember: check-ins help you step back from the rush of day-to-day work. They give you a space to build your relationship and trust, ask bigger questions, invite feedback, and invest in your staff’s growth.
Check out Managing Through Uncertainty: Check-ins Add-on and 5 Tips For Better Check-ins During COVID-19 (or any crisis).
The Management Center is a 501c3 organization that helps leaders working for social change build equitable, sustainable, and results-driven organizations via trainings coaching, and online resources and tools.