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2020-07-25 #articles

One-on-One Meetings: The Most Important Tool For Engineering Team Leader

This is a chapter Team Lead 101: Manage and Grow Engineering Teams in Small Startups book. Click here to learn more


One-on-one (1:1) meetings is an inexpensive yet highly effective tool to build relationships, solve personal issues, drive development, and keep teammates motivated and happy.

A 1:1 meeting is a private meeting with a member of your team for discussing all sorts of questions in person.

1:1 meeting should not touch on questions about current projects or tasks.

1:1 meeting are great for the following:

You have no control over the team when you aren’t receiving feedback, and people are usually hesitant to share their opinions. 1:1 meetings are a tool to reveal internal team issues that prevent people from speaking freely.

Don’t expect grand results from the first 1:1 meeting. Like in every relationship, you need time to build the team’s trust in you and trust in the tool.

It’s not common to be bombarded with personal opinions on your first date. More often, it takes about 3 to 4 meetings over a couple of months before people will start to become open to you. This all depends on people’s personalities.

How you interact in 1:1 meetings is also important. Try to follow these important principles:

I used to take notes during 1:1 meetings while people were talking. Now I consider this to be a bad practice. It makes the other person think that they’re under interrogation. Instead, jot down notes in a teammate card right after the meeting.

Here is my agenda for 1:1 meetings:

In the very first meetings, I love to ask my teammates what kinds of tasks they enjoy doing and what irritates them. I love to ask what they love and hate in programming. I ask them to assess themselves from 0-3 on the tools we use, such as the programming language, frameworks, libraries, practices, and general skills, such as OOP, functional programming, refactoring, code design, architecture, debugging, etc. Answers to these questions allow me to compile initial data for their teammate card.

At 1:1 meetings, you can make some commitments to a teammate—just make sure you deliver on those commitments. To build trust in 1:1 meetings, you should provide direct value to your teammates, and fulfilled commitments will help. Another important aspect is to not expose information that you agree to keep confidential in 1:1 meetings.

For given and received commitments, make sure to specify a time when they should be fulfilled. When it’s your teammate who committed to something, it works best to schedule it with them directly during the meeting. This creates a sense of responsibility.

According to the TinuPulse 2018 report, there are five major reasons why people leave their companies. 1:1 meetings addresses all of them:

  1. Poor management performance. Employees who rate their supervisor's performance poorly are four times as likely to be job-hunting. In 1:1 meetings, you encourage your peers to give constructive feedback. Use this to improve.
  2. Lack of recognition. Nearly 22 percent of workers who don't feel recognized when they do great work have interviewed for a different job in the last three months, compared to just 12.4 percent who do feel recognized. In 1:1 meetings, you should alway give positive feedback. If you don’t think you have anything positive to say, why is this person still working with you?
  3. Overworked employees. In a 1:1, you have a chance to notice or ask about the person’s workload and adjust the load.
  4. Company culture is not a priority. The research found that culture has an even bigger impact on an employee's decision to stay or go than their benefits package. In 1:1 meetings, you can receive feedback about processes in the company and either address them or transfer them to the executive level.
  5. No growth opportunities. It was found that employees who feel they are progressing in their careers are 20 percent more likely to stay at their companies in one year's time. On the flip side, employees who don't feel supported in their professional goals are three times more likely to be looking for a new job. In 1:1 meetings, always ask about personal goals. See how you can help your teammates achieve them.

In case if your team remote 1:1 meetings become even valuable. With remote work, the opportunities to notice a change in behavior become much less, and the importance of personal meetings increases.

With 1:1 meetings, I have solved personal and team issues discovered ways to improve, bonded the team, and built personal relationships with each team member. They have helped me to better manage others, ask important questions, and make thoughtful decisions. I see no reason not to use 1:1 meetings if you are in a leadership role.


This is a chapter Team Lead 101: Manage and Grow Engineering Teams in Small Startups book. Click here to learn more