One-on-one meeting template.
The most important meeting you'll be tempted to skip.
A 1:1 is the report's meeting held on the manager's calendar. The templates below protect that: their agenda first, status updates banned, notes in one running doc. Three formats: the weekly standard, the quarterly career conversation, and the skip-level.
The weekly 1:1
The workhorse. The first section being "their agenda" is not decoration; if their topics routinely take the whole slot, that's the meeting working exactly as designed.
1:1: [Manager] + [Report], [Date] ## Their agenda first (15 min) [Whatever they bring. This section exists so the meeting is theirs, not a status update] ## Check-ins (10 min) - Energy: how's the workload actually feeling? - Blockers: anything I can unblock? - Team: anything I should know about how the team is doing? ## My topics (5 min) - [Feedback, context from above, upcoming changes] ## Carried forward - [ ] [Open item from last time] - [Owner] ## Notes [Kept in the same running doc every week, newest on top]
The quarterly career 1:1
Career conversations die when they share a slot with weekly operations, so give them their own quarterly meeting where status is explicitly banned. The written record doubles as the raw material for reviews and promotion cases.
Career 1:1: [Manager] + [Report], [Date] (Quarterly. No status updates allowed today.) ## Where do you want to be pulling toward? [Role, scope, craft. Their words, not a ladder document] ## What's the gap? [Skills or evidence between here and there, named honestly] ## What did the last quarter add? [Wins and growth since last time. Write them down; reviews are built from this] ## What will the next quarter add? - [ ] [Concrete opportunity or stretch] - [Who makes it happen] ## What should I (manager) do differently? [Ask it every time. The first three answers will be "nothing". Keep asking]
The skip-level 1:1
For leaders meeting their reports' reports. The framing sentence at the top is the whole game: without explicit confidentiality, you'll hear a rehearsed performance.
Skip-level 1:1: [Senior leader] + [Report's report], [Date] Framing to say out loud: "Nothing here gets relayed with your name on it." ## How's the work, really? [What's energizing, what's grinding] ## What's getting in the team's way? [Process, tooling, decisions taking too long] ## How's the support? [About their manager, asked with care: what should I know that helps me support them and you better?] ## What would you change first? [If they ran the team for a week] ## Anything I can do this week? - [ ] [Item] - [Owner]
Six questions that get past "fine"
Rotate them; any question asked every week becomes furniture. Recurring 1:1s live on your calendar anyway, which is why Amie attaches notes to the event itself: the running history of every past 1:1 sits one click from the next one, and action items become todos on your schedule.
Questions, answered
Related templates: meeting notes, meeting agenda, weekly planner. Or browse all templates.