TL;DR: The 1-on-1 that Actually Works
Well-run 1-on-1s aren’t status updates; they’re the most reliable place for truth, coaching, and momentum. Treat them as a steady system - clear purpose, shared ownership, predictable cadence, psychological safety, light prep, evidence-based feedback, growth, and follow-through - and they become quiet multipliers for performance and trust.
- Purpose, not status: Use the hour for alignment, feedback, growth, and team/process health. Keep task review in stand-ups/tools.
- Shared ownership: Engineer leads the agenda; manager brings context, listening, and coaching. Aim for manager talk-time ≲ one-third.
- Cadence you actually keep: Monthly 45–60 minutes works for most teams. Consistency > frequency. If you must move it, reschedule immediately (don’t cancel).
- Safety first: Make confidentiality explicit. Model curiosity. Invite dissent and upward feedback.
- Prep and evidence: Maintain a living agenda and ground feedback in artifacts (PRs, incidents, metrics) - not adjectives.
- Two-way feedback → one experiment: End each session with a small, concrete behavior/skill experiment to try before the next.
- Growth as delivery: Tie development to real scope (own a review, lead a thread, fix a reliability risk) so progress shows up in shipped work.
- Close the loop: Finish with two actions + any decisions in notes; start next time by reviewing them. Quarterly, run a meta 1-on-1 to tune the ritual.
Done right, a 1-on-1 isn’t another meeting - it’s the system that keeps everything else running better.
The Most Honest Hour in Engineering
Business has no shortage of meetings. What it often lacks is a reliable place for two people to tell the truth.
When was the last time a 1-on-1 actually changed something - not confirmed a deadline, not summarized a sprint, but changed how you work, think, or feel about your job? That’s the point of a real 1-on-1: a private slot where an engineer and a manager trade context, surface hard problems, and choose what to do next.
Google’s Project Oxygen shows that top managers don’t just schedule 1-on-1s - they use them as coaching conversations, not status recitals. Andy Grove put it bluntly in High Output Management: “Ninety minutes of your time can enhance the quality of your subordinate’s work for two weeks.” It isn’t just a meeting. It’s leverage.
Skeptics aren’t wrong that poorly run 1-on-1s can drift into therapy or micromanagement. Structured well, they become quiet multipliers for performance and trust. Cadence matters, but what happens in the room matters more.
What if that recurring slot became the most useful system in your culture - a place to think aloud, surface friction, test ideas, and build trust before you need it?
This guide shows how to make that shift: from “just another meeting” to a structured, evidence-backed habit that drives alignment, engagement, and growth. We’ll blend lessons from Andy Grove, Camille Fournier, and Sarah Drasner with current research and practical examples - for engineering leaders who want their 1-on-1s to matter again.
What a 1-on-1 is (and isn’t)
A 1-on-1 is a recurring, private, real-time conversation between an engineer and their manager whose purpose is alignment, feedback, support, and career development - not task reporting. Camille Fournier is explicit: a one-on-one is the employee’s meeting, not a status ritual, and it’s the default forum for topics that never fit in stand-ups or sprint reviews.
Teams that institutionalize regular 1-on-1s see higher engagement - nearly 3× compared with teams that don’t - because these conversations surface blockers early, clarify expectations, and build trust. Meeting-science research points the same way: the quality of a 1-on-1 is judged by the direct report’s experience, and well-run 1-on-1s correlate with stronger commitment and performance; Steven Rogelberg argues 1-on-1s are among the most under-developed yet high-impact meeting types, deserving intentional design.
A 1-on-1 isn’t a mini stand-up or an off-cycle performance review. It’s an alignment conversation where support, outcomes, and growth meet. Andy Grove frames the 1-on-1 as managerial leverage - “Ninety minutes of your time can enhance the quality of your subordinate’s work for two weeks” - a simple habit that meaningfully shapes the next eighty hours of work. Modern engineering leadership texts reinforce that these meetings are a baseline responsibility and a primary channel for trust.
Working definition you can share in onboarding docs:
“A 1-on-1 is for alignment, feedback, support, and growth - not status. Status belongs in stand-ups and tooling”.
Define roles & shared ownership
Effective 1-on-1s are two-way by design. The engineer brings the signals that matter (wins, worries, blockers, questions, growth goals) - so the conversation reflects real work and real needs. The manager brings (context, active listening, coaching, follow-through) - and removes organizational obstacles so the engineer can execute. James Stanier offers a practical barometer for managers: if you’re talking for large chunks of the meeting, you’re probably crowding out what you most need to hear. Sarah Drasner pairs that with a reminder about power dynamics: the meeting only works if managers make it psychologically safe for the other person to speak plainly. This shared-ownership framing is common in high-engagement orgs, where the agenda is usually employee-driven rather than a manager monologue.
Why it matters: When 1-on-1s default to a manager monologue, you lose the hard truths and early signals you’re trying to surface. Engineer-led topics ensure relevance; manager-supported conditions (listening, coaching, unblocking) make it safe to be candid. Together, they raise engagement and make the meeting a lever for progress rather than a ritual.
Make it concrete (a short working agreement to paste into your kickoff 1-on-1): You bring: top-of-mind wins, blockers, questions, and growth topics. I bring: context, feedback, opportunities, and help unblocking. How we run it: employee-led agenda; manager talk-time ≤ ~30–33% unless explicitly coaching a skill; we both leave with 1–2 clear actions.
Ownership is necessary, but it only becomes practice with a steady rhythm - cadence, duration, and format you actually keep.
Cadence, duration, and format
Default to monthly 1-on-1s of 45–60 minutes. For many engineering teams, a monthly rhythm provides enough distance for meaningful change without adding meeting fatigue. It also fits neatly against typical milestone cycles, so you can reflect on visible progress rather than the noise of a single sprint.
Cadence is situational. During onboarding, performance recoveries, or high-stakes delivery windows, step up to biweekly or weekly. For stable partnerships or senior ICs who collaborate constantly through async channels, monthly is often ideal. What matters most is consistency. Repeatedly moving or canceling the meeting quietly signals that support is optional.
In distributed teams, format choices shape tone. Use video to restore non-verbal cues, try an occasional “walk-and-talk” to vary energy, and keep a shared note so the focus stays on dialogue rather than tabs.
Transition: A calendar slot helps, but candor needs more than scheduling.
Create Safety Before Strategy
A 1-on-1 only works if people can say the hard thing. Build that safety deliberately: agree on confidentiality up front; model curiosity; make it clear the meeting is a judgment-light zone. Small behaviors compound - (close the laptop) (allow silence) (paraphrase what you heard before you respond) (ask one follow-up instead of offering a fix). Research on manager–employee 1-on-1s highlights listening behavior as the keystone: when people feel heard, they bring real problems, not polite ones (Rogelberg, 2024). In remote/hybrid settings, Drasner recommends naming the power imbalance, explicitly inviting dissent, and slowing the pace so quieter voices can surface.
A single sentence you can add to the top of your shared notes reinforces the norm:
- “Confidential by default; if something must be shared upward, we’ll say so in the room”
With the container set, define the lane.
Scope boundaries: what belongs in a 1-on-1
A 1-on-1 is not a sprint review, backlog grooming, or a stealth performance rating. It’s the place for roadblocks, feedback, career direction, motivation, and team or process health - topics that require privacy, judgment, or longer-range thinking. When meetings drift toward status, resentment grows; a global culture study found roughly a third of employees dread their 1-on-1s, often because they’re misused as informal reviews or task triage (O.C. Tanner, 2020). Use Camille Fournier’s anchor: a 1-on-1 is for the employee - not a status ritual.
One-line scope rule to include in your agenda:
- “If it’s best handled in a stand-up or ticket, it’s not a 1-on-1 topic; bring systemic issues, feedback, or growth instead.”
When both sides follow that rule, the 1-on-1 stops turning into updates and starts producing clear decisions, sensible trade-offs, and focused coaching. It tells both of you this time is for real issues - roadblocks, career direction, and team or process health - not another stand-up or a back-door review. With scope set, agree on how you’ll prepare and keep a shared agenda so each meeting starts with a purpose and ends with one or two actions you’ll check on next time.
Preparation and shared agendas
Light preparation by both parties prevents improvised, low-signal conversations. The engineer captures wins, questions, risks, and growth notes throughout the week. The manager gathers observations, organizational context, and concrete opportunities. Keep a shared doc for agenda items, notes, decisions, and next steps; arrive having read it. Meetings with shared prep have 2–3× more follow-through on commitments because the time is aimed at the right problems and ends with clearer agreements. Beyond efficiency, preparation equalizes voice share. It ensures the 1-on-1 isn’t gated on recall or the manager’s talking points.
Mid-section structure that works well in engineering teams:
- Wins → Roadblocks & Asks → Feedback (both directions) → Growth Topic → Actions & Decisions.
Prepared inputs only help if the conversation is grounded.
Use evidence, not adjectives
Engineering culture runs on specifics. Replace “things are going great” with the artifact and the effect: the pull request that cut p95 latency, the follow-up that closed an incident loop, the design decision that reduced cost at the expense of flexibility. When you evaluate work, do it with observable behaviors and outcomes, not labels.
This isn’t about turning a 1-on-1 into a dashboard review. It’s about grounding claims so both of you can reason from the same reality. You’ll avoid unproductive debates and make feedback easier to hear.
Examples:
- “The batch job change reduced data latency from 25 to 9 minutes; error rate held at 0.3%.”
- “Two incidents closed; the follow-up removed a manual step that triggered the regression.”
Transition: With facts on the table, make feedback specific and bidirectional.
Exchange two-way feedback
Feedback should be timely, specific, and forward-looking. A simple pattern - situation → behavior → impact → next step - keeps you on observable ground. Ask for feedback on your own management as routine, not as a grand gesture. Upward feedback normalizes faster when leaders go first.
Keep the tone collaborative: “Here’s what I saw; does that match your read? What’s one tweak you’ll try?” And invert it occasionally: “When I did X in the architecture review, how did that land?” The goal isn’t to grade each other; it’s to adjust how you work together so progress accelerates.
Before you move on, agree on one forward-looking experiment:
- “In the retro (situation), you summarized two threads into a clear decision (behavior), which kept the room moving (impact). Let’s have you chair the next one (next step).”
- “I redirected the design review twice. That likely crowded your proposal. Next time I’ll wait for your summary before jumping in - does that help?”
Transition: Feedback fixes today; growth planning shapes the next arc.
Career development and growth
Great 1-on-1s connect today’s work to tomorrow’s capability. Discuss what the engineer wants to practice, how their scope can broaden responsibly, and which opportunities match both interests and organizational needs. Convert that into a near-term experiment - a mentorship, a cross-team initiative, or a reliability project - so progress is visible in weeks, not quarters. Employees explicitly want career advancement, yet nearly half report that their manager doesn’t know how to help (Atlassian 2025). Regular development conversations correlate with improved engagement and lower voluntary attrition, which squares with the observation that people stay where they grow.
Treat growth as part of delivery, not a side quest. Tie it to the roadmap: “Own the customer thread for release X,” “Co-lead the migration,” “Run the next design review.” Progress feels real when it’s attached to work that ships.
Questions to ask:
- “Which skill, if improved 20%, makes the rest of your job easier?”
- “Where can you lead next with support - design review, milestone, or customer conversation?”
Document actions and follow through
End each meeting with one or two clear actions and write them down. Start the next meeting by reviewing them. That simple “loop closure” is how trust compounds - people see that words become changes. Keep a tiny decision log in your shared note so you don’t re-open settled questions without new data.
Resist the urge to leave with seven intentions. Two actions with owners and dates are enough to maintain momentum without creating a second backlog.
Examples
- “You’ll schedule a canary by Wednesday; I’ll get capacity sign-off and document guardrails.”
- “I’ll invite you to shadow next quarter’s planning; you’ll prep a short scope brief.”
Refresh the ritual (the meta 1-on-1)
Once a quarter, run a 1-on-1 about the 1-on-1. What should we start, stop, or continue? Is the cadence right? Are we spending time on the right topics? Teams that periodically recalibrate their meeting rituals report higher satisfaction and better outcomes; in Rogelberg’s aggregation, simple structural tweaks - clarified agendas, explicit norms, time-boxed sections - produce large perceived quality gains because they address consistent failure modes. This renegotiation loop is how you prevent drift as roles, teams, and company constraints change.
Add a single meta-question to your quarterly calendar:
- “What one change would make our 1-on-1s twice as useful next quarter?”
Transition: With conditions in place, the title question becomes straightforward: what do effective pairs actually talk about?
So, what do you actually discuss?
A good agenda reads like a checklist you rarely finish and never ignore. In practice, most high-trust pairs cycle through the same six categories, emphasizing the one that matters most that week. Start with a brief human check-in and any material context; then move to the substance.
Progress and roadblocks: Share outcomes rather than a task list; then focus on the obstacles where managerial support will change the trajectory: cross-team alignment, priority conflicts, or resourcing. Returning to Grove’s leverage: time invested clearing a true block multiplies downstream.
Feedback and coaching: Discuss one situation that went well and one that didn’t. Use a scaffold like Situation-Behavior-Impact to anchor the discussion in facts, and agree on one small experiment to try before the next meeting. Managers should also ask for upward feedback; research links managerial listening quality to whether employees feel respected and supported.
Career development: Revisit growth goals as a standing part of the meeting. Engineers are explicit about wanting advancement, yet many report their managers aren’t sure how to help. Translate aspiration into a near-term experiment - a mentorship, leading a reliability push, or documenting a design - that can be evaluated next session. Organizations that do this routinely report improved engagement and lower attrition.
Team and process health: Use the privacy of a 1-on-1 to surface system-level issues - review latency, flaky tests, incident fatigue, unclear ownership - that don’t belong to one person. Decide the right forum to fix them, and record the next step so it isn’t forgotten.
Recognition and motivation: Close the loop on good work with specifics. Recognition loses power when it’s vague or delayed; precise praise (“your change dropped p95 by 40%, which unblocked the beta launch”) signals what you want repeated and why it matters.
Before you close this section, keep a tiny “menu” to pull from when the conversation stalls:
- Progress/blocks → “Which dependency is most at risk and what’s the fastest unblock?”
- Feedback → “What’s one tweak to my process that would speed you up?”
- Growth → “Which senior behavior do you want reps on next month, and where could we practice it?”
End by summarizing actions and decisions, and begin the next session by reviewing them. That small cycle - agree, record, revisit - is the engine that turns conversation into progress.
Frequently avoided pitfalls (and how to correct them)
Turning 1-on-1s into status updates is the most common failure mode - if your agenda mirrors the sprint board, you’re in the wrong meeting; push status to stand-ups/tools and reserve 1-on-1s for coaching, feedback, growth, and systemic issues. Cancellations and reschedules are common in distributed calendars and correlate with worse satisfaction; if you must move a 1-on-1, reschedule immediately and state why. Adjectives without evidence don’t change behavior; anchor feedback in artifacts and a simple scaffold (Situation → Behavior → Impact → Next step). Finally, avoid “talk with no action” by capturing 1–2 next steps and decisions in a shared doc and starting the next meeting with a review.
Memory hook: Not status. Not cancel-and-forget. Not vague. Not action-free.
A small operating loop you can adopt tomorrow
- Hold the cadence. Reschedule rather than cancel; reliability is the message.
- Use a living agenda. Two minutes of prep each keeps the conversation pointed and fair.
- Listen first, then diagnose. Summarize what you heard before solving.
- Anchor in artifacts. Decisions, metrics, PRs, incidents, and docs beat labels.
- Ask for feedback on your management. Make upward feedback routine.
- Close with two actions and a decision note. Start the next meeting by reviewing them.
Takeaway
The 1-on-1 lasts because it works. It’s where trust is built before you need it, where small corrections prevent big detours, and where growth becomes real because someone follows up. You don’t need flourish to get there.
Keep the cadence, define the lane, prepare lightly, ground claims in evidence, ask for feedback, and close the loop. Do that, and the specific topics - rapport, progress, blockers, feedback, growth, team health, recognition - will take care of themselves because the conditions are right.