One-on-One Meetings: Building Trust and Driving Growth

Run 1:1s that serve as safe spaces for honest conversations about work, growth, blockers, and career development.

Context

You are designing or improving 1:1 practice for your team. One-on-ones are the most important investment a tech lead makes: they build trust, surface problems early, and create opportunities for growth.

Poor 1:1s become status updates (wasteful), performance reviews (scary), or don't happen (relationship erodes). Good 1:1s are employee-driven, consistent, and focused on what's underneath the surface work.

Domain Context

• Camille Fournier's "The Manager's Path": Regular 1:1s are the foundation of trust between leads and reports
• Will Larson's "An Elegant Puzzle": Good 1:1s surface organizational dysfunction before it becomes a crisis
• Research (Culture Amp): Engineers who feel heard in 1:1s have 30% higher engagement
• 1:1s are for the report, not the lead: Their agenda, their priorities
• Consistency beats content: A blocked 30 min every week builds trust; reactive 1:1s feel like performance reviews
• Surface what's not being said: Great 1:1s reveal unspoken concerns, blockers, ambitions