Concept
The one-on-one
The one-on-one is the weekly meeting between a manager and one direct report that Andrew Grove treats as the subordinate's meeting: their agenda, their problems, most of the talking theirs, with the manager listening, asking one level deeper and teaching when asked. Among a manager's highest-leverage regular hours.
The most ignored rule of the one-on-one is whose it is. The manager who fills it with status updates and instructions has turned it into a reporting meeting and lost the only regular channel through which the problems people do not raise in a group would have reached them. Grove has the subordinate write the agenda beforehand and the manager ask past the answers: what happened, why, what would you do differently. Cadence matters more than length: weekly, thirty to sixty minutes, never cancelled and rarely moved, because a cancelled one-on-one tells the person they are less important than whatever replaced them, and people receive that message accurately. Grove's rule of thumb was that an hour in a one-on-one can improve the quality of a subordinate's work for two weeks. Kim Scott adds what the hour is also for: it is where caring personally is proven week after week, so that when the direct challenge comes it lands on trust.
A real-life example
Kerem manages six salespeople in Mersin and holds one-on-ones monthly, when there is time, to review the pipeline. He switches to weekly, on the salesperson's agenda. In the third week the quietest member tells him she has been fielding a complaint from the largest client for two months and did not think it was her place to raise it in the group.
How to use it
- 1Same slot every week for each person; cancel only when you would cancel a client meeting.
- 2Ask them to bring the agenda; open with what is on your mind, and ask one level deeper.
- 3Keep notes you reread before the next one; the pattern across weeks is the information.