How to run 1:1s

Until recently, few researchers studied these meetings. When Jonathan Flinchum, Steven Rogelberg, and colleagues at UNC Charlotte reviewed the research in 2022, they noted that 1:1s make up nearly half of all workplace meetings and had not been studied as a topic in their own right²2. Flinchum, J. R., Kreamer, L. M., Rogelberg, S. G., and Gooty, J. (2023). One-on-one meetings between managers and direct reports: A new opportunity for meeting science. Organizational Psychology Review, 13(4), 478–505. doi.org.

Google tested whether managers are needed. In 2002 its founders removed engineering managers altogether. The change lasted a few months, until too many people were taking questions about expenses and disagreements with colleagues directly to Larry Page³3. Garvin, D. A. (2013). How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management. Harvard Business Review, December 2013. hbr.org. Some years later, Google’s people analytics team set out to show that managers made no difference, and found the opposite. Teams with better-rated managers had lower staff turnover, and retention was more closely linked to the quality of the manager than to seniority, performance, length of service, or promotion. The list of eight behaviours Google then wrote for its managers starts with being a good coach. It also includes taking an interest in people’s success and wellbeing, listening, and helping with career development. Each of these needs regular time with each person individually, which a team meeting does not provide.

Larger studies support this. Ryan Gottfredson and Herman Aguinis combined 35 meta-analyses, covering 3,327 studies and more than 930,000 observations, to test how the four most studied kinds of leadership behaviour improve performance⁴4. Gottfredson, R. K., and Aguinis, H. (2017). Leadership behaviors and follower performance: Deductive and inductive examination of theoretical rationales and underlying mechanisms. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(4), 558–591. doi.org. In every case, the largest effect came through the quality of the relationship between manager and report, as the report saw it. Whatever a manager’s style, it affects performance mainly through that relationship, and the 1:1 is where the relationship is built. The authors note that the relationship measures overlap with the leadership measures, so the finding is strong but not conclusive.

You may have seen the claim that managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement. It comes from Gallup’s analysis of engagement scores across business units⁵5. Beck, R., and Harter, J. (2015). Managers Account for 70% of Variance in Employee Engagement. Gallup Business Journal, 21 April 2015. news.gallup.com, and it should be treated with care. Gallup measures engagement with its own 12 questions, and several of them describe things a manager usually does, such as caring about you as a person, encouraging your development, and talking to you about your progress in the last six months⁶6. Gallup (2021). How to Measure Employee Engagement With the Q12. Gallup Workplace, 22 October 2021. gallup.com. A survey that partly asks about managers will find that managers matter. Many of the questions also describe what happens in a good 1:1, from knowing what is expected of you to being asked how your work is going.

UK employers have room to improve. The Chartered Management Institute found in 2023 that 82% of people who become managers have no formal training for it, and only 27% of workers rated their own manager as highly effective⁷7. Chartered Management Institute, with YouGov (2023). Taking Responsibility: Why UK PLC Needs Better Managers. Chartered Management Institute report, October 2023. managers.org.uk. The CIPD’s 2025 survey of 5,017 UK employees found that 1:1s with a line manager, team meetings, and staff surveys were available to only about two-thirds of staff, and only 59% of managers said they had enough time to manage people well⁸8. Young, J., and Tong, D. (2025). CIPD Good Work Index 2025. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, June 2025; survey of 5,017 UK employees. cipd.org.

Rogelberg’s research includes a global survey of 1,000 knowledge workers, a US survey of 250 people who run or attend 1:1s, and interviews with nearly 50 senior leaders⁹9. Rogelberg, S. G. (2022). Make the Most of Your One-on-One Meetings. Harvard Business Review, November to December 2022. hbr.org. Employees at every level rated a weekly meeting of about 30 minutes as the most desirable pattern, and it was linked with the highest engagement. A fortnightly meeting of 45 to 60 minutes came second. Monthly meetings were rated least desirable and were linked with smaller gains in engagement. Rogelberg also points out that over a month, issues from the first week are less likely to be raised by the fourth. He suggests weekly meetings for junior staff, new starters, and managers new to a team, and fortnightly meetings for teams of ten or more.

Gallup’s research points the same way. It finds that 15 to 30 minutes is enough for a useful conversation if it happens often, and that short, regular conversations have more impact than conversations of 30 to 60 minutes¹⁰10. Gallup (2023). A Great Manager’s Most Important Habit. Gallup Workplace, 29 May 2023. gallup.com. It also found that only 16% of nearly 15,000 employees described their last conversation with their manager as extremely meaningful, which suggests the problem is usually the quality of the conversation and not its length. Gallup has also reported that employees whose managers hold regular meetings with them are almost three times as likely to be engaged as those whose managers do not¹¹11. Harter, J., and Adkins, A. (2015). Employees Want a Lot More From Their Managers. Gallup Workplace, 8 April 2015. gallup.com. Managers who hold regular meetings probably differ from other managers in other ways too, so this is an association.

Frequency is not enough on its own. In a two-wave survey of 303 employees, Jonathan Flinchum found that the quality of 1:1s, and especially the manager’s relationship-building behaviour, did more for engagement than their number, as long as they happened at least monthly¹²12. Flinchum, J. R. (2022). A New Approach to Promote Employee Engagement: One-on-One Meetings Between Managers and Direct Reports. Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, two-wave survey of 303 employees. graduateschool.charlotte.edu. Two older studies add a warning. Michele Kacmar and colleagues found, in samples of 188 and 153 workers, that frequent communication with a supervisor went with better performance ratings when the relationship was good and worse ratings when it was poor¹³13. Kacmar, K. M., Witt, L. A., Zivnuska, S., and Gully, S. M. (2003). The interactive effect of leader-member exchange and communication frequency on performance ratings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(4), 764–772. doi.org. Frequent contact seems to strengthen whatever relationship already exists, so improve the quality of your 1:1s before you add more of them.

On cancelling, Rogelberg’s advice is to avoid it. When you cannot, rebook within the same week, earlier rather than later, or shorten the meeting instead⁹9. Rogelberg, S. G. (2022). Make the Most of Your One-on-One Meetings. Harvard Business Review, November to December 2022. hbr.org. He writes that frequent cancelling makes people feel they are low on your list of priorities. Figures for how often 1:1s are cancelled can be found online, but the ones found for this guide came from calendar software companies, so they are not used here. Your own calendar is a better source, and checking the last quarter takes about five minutes.

The time needed is smaller than many managers expect. Thirty minutes a week with one person comes to about 25 hours a year⁹9. Rogelberg, S. G. (2022). Make the Most of Your One-on-One Meetings. Harvard Business Review, November to December 2022. hbr.org. Gallup puts the median team at five or six people. The average has risen to 12.1, because about 13% of managers now have 25 or more reports¹⁴14. Harter, J., and colleagues (2026). Span of Control: What’s the Optimal Team Size for Managers?. Gallup Workplace, 13 January 2026. gallup.com. A manager with six reports and weekly half-hour 1:1s spends three hours a week on them. A manager with 25 reports cannot do this, which means the team is too large for one manager.

Many managers think 1:1s are too informal to need an agenda. Rogelberg found that having an agenda strongly predicted whether a 1:1 was effective, and that who wrote it mattered even more⁹9. Rogelberg, S. G. (2022). Make the Most of Your One-on-One Meetings. Harvard Business Review, November to December 2022. hbr.org. Managers and reports both rated meetings highest when the report had contributed to the agenda or written it. His suggested routine is for each of you to bring a list. Go through theirs first, and use the remaining time for yours.

Status updates are the most common reason this routine fails. A 1:1 that starts with the manager asking for an update usually spends most of its time on updates, because every project has more detail than the time allows. Status is information that can be written down and read in two minutes before the meeting. Discussing it in the 1:1 uses the only private time you have with the person on the one topic that does not need privacy. The exception is a status update that reveals a problem, and in that case the problem is what to discuss.

Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer’s diary research explains why obstacles should come first. They collected nearly 12,000 daily diary entries from 238 knowledge workers in 26 project teams across seven companies¹⁵15. Amabile, T. M., and Kramer, S. J. (2011). The Power of Small Wins. Harvard Business Review, May 2011. hbr.org. Progress in the work was the most common feature of people’s best days, appearing on 76% of their best-mood days, and setbacks appeared on 67% of their worst. When the researchers asked 669 managers to rank five ways of motivating staff, only 35 of them (5%) ranked supporting progress first, and most ranked it last. The most useful question in a 1:1 is therefore a version of asking what is slowing the person down and what you can do about it.

Rogelberg also notes that even a well-run 1:1 tends to be taken over by the week’s urgent problems. He recommends giving longer-term topics, such as career and development, five or ten minutes in every meeting, or a whole meeting in every three or four⁹9. Rogelberg, S. G. (2022). Make the Most of Your One-on-One Meetings. Harvard Business Review, November to December 2022. hbr.org. Your own list should be short and specific. It should cover what you need from them, decisions that affect them, and feedback in either direction.

Managers who skip 1:1s often say their door is always open. The evidence suggests this is not enough. Frances Milliken, Elizabeth Morrison, and Patricia Hewlin interviewed 40 employees about times they had not spoken up at work¹⁶16. Milliken, F. J., Morrison, E. W., and Hewlin, P. F. (2003). An Exploratory Study of Employee Silence: Issues that Employees Don’t Communicate Upward and Why. Journal of Management Studies, 40(6), 1453–1476. doi.org. Of the 40, 34 (85%) said that at least once they had felt unable to raise an issue with their boss even though they thought it mattered, and only half said they generally felt comfortable speaking up. The most common reasons were fear of being seen as a troublemaker or a complainer, fear of damaging a relationship, and a belief that speaking up would change nothing. A study of 40 interviews cannot show how common this is, but the pattern is familiar.

A much larger study shows what makes a difference. James Detert and Ethan Burris surveyed 3,149 employees and 223 managers in a restaurant chain¹⁷17. Detert, J. R., and Burris, E. R. (2007). Leadership Behavior and Employee Voice: Is the Door Really Open?. Academy of Management Journal, 50(4), 869–884. doi.org. Whether staff saw their manager as open to their ideas was more consistently linked with speaking up than transformational leadership, the inspiring and visionary style often taught on leadership courses. The link worked through psychological safety, and the manager’s behaviour made the most difference to the best performers.

Psychological safety is Amy Edmondson’s term for a shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk, such as admitting a mistake, asking for help, or asking for feedback. In her study of 51 teams at a manufacturer, psychological safety went with more of that learning behaviour, which in turn went with better team performance¹⁸18. Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. doi.org. Coaching by the team leader was linked with psychological safety, although in her data only at the edge of statistical significance, and she noted that her measure of leader behaviour was imprecise. Psychological safety is measured at team level, and a 1:1 involves two people, but Detert and Burris’s results suggest the same applies between a manager and one report.

An open door leaves the person to decide that their problem is worth your time, to find a moment, and to raise it without warning. A regular 1:1 removes all three barriers. Google found this even among its best-rated managers. One of them learned from upward feedback that a member of her team did not think she held regular 1:1s, although she saw that person every day³3. Garvin, D. A. (2013). How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management. Harvard Business Review, December 2013. hbr.org. Seeing someone every day is different from giving them protected time to talk. Acas makes the practical point for UK managers. Staff who find you approachable and willing to listen bring problems to you early, while you can still do something about them¹⁹19. Acas (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) (2014). Challenging conversations and how to manage them. Acas guide for line managers, July 2014. acas.org.uk.

In Rogelberg’s research, the strongest predictor of a 1:1’s success was how much of it the employee spent talking⁹9. Rogelberg, S. G. (2022). Make the Most of Your One-on-One Meetings. Harvard Business Review, November to December 2022. hbr.org. The best range in his data was 50% to 90% of the time, and he advises managers not to talk more than their report. Most managers assume they already do this. In his book, Rogelberg reports that nearly half of employees found their 1:1s lacking in substance even when their managers rated them positively, and that managers rate their own skill at 1:1s higher than their reports do²⁰20. Rogelberg, S. G. (2024). Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings. Oxford University Press. global.oup.com.

Wider research on listening points the same way, with limits. A registered meta-analysis led by Avraham Kluger combined 664 effects from 122 papers covering 400,020 observations²¹21. Kluger, A. N., Lehmann, M., Aguinis, H., Itzchakov, G., Gordoni, G., Zyberaj, J., and Bakaç, C. (2024). A Meta-analytic Systematic Review and Theory of the Effects of Perceived Listening on Work Outcomes. Journal of Business and Psychology, 39(2), 295–344. doi.org. Feeling listened to correlated with work outcomes at .39, with the quality of working relationships at .51, and with job performance at .36. Three-quarters of the studies relied on self-reports, which inflate associations, and when those were excluded the link to performance fell to .21. That is still a meaningful correlation for something that costs nothing. Only one study in the set tested experimentally whether listening improves performance, so it is not yet proven that listening causes better performance.

Niels Van Quaquebeke and Will Felps describe asking open questions and listening carefully to the answers as respectful inquiry. They argue that it meets people’s needs to feel competent, connected to others, and in control of their own work²²22. Van Quaquebeke, N., and Felps, W. (2018). Respectful Inquiry: A Motivational Account of Leading Through Asking Questions and Listening. Academy of Management Review, 43(1), 5–27. doi.org. They also argue that it happens least in the situations where it would help most, which include large differences in power, time pressure, and physical distance. Most 1:1s involve the first two.

Acas gives UK managers practical guidance¹⁹19. Acas (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) (2014). Challenging conversations and how to manage them. Acas guide for line managers, July 2014. acas.org.uk. Start with open questions, follow with probing ones, and use closed questions only to check facts. Avoid leading questions, which suggest the answer, and multiple questions, which leave the person unsure which part to answer. Most good 1:1 questions are variations on a few open ones. Ask the question, then wait for the answer without filling the silence.

In 1996 Avraham Kluger and Angelo DeNisi reviewed about 3,000 papers on feedback and performance and found that only 131 had a design good enough to use²³23. Kluger, A. N., and DeNisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119(2), 254–284. doi.org. Those papers produced 607 effects from 23,663 observations of 12,652 people. On average, feedback improved performance by 0.41 of a standard deviation, a moderate effect. But more than 38% of the effects were negative. In more than a third of cases, the people who received feedback did worse than the people who received none. The variation was far too large to be chance. Even after removing one researcher’s series of laboratory studies, which were unusually negative, a third of the remaining effects were below zero.

Their explanation is the most useful part of the paper. Feedback works when it keeps attention on the task, and fails when it moves attention to the person. Feedback designed to discourage had an average effect of −0.14, against 0.33 for feedback that was not. Feedback that most threatened self-esteem averaged 0.08, against 0.47 for the least threatening. Praise also weakened the effect, averaging 0.09 against 0.34, which fits their view that praise moves attention to the person. Feedback that gave the correct solution did better (0.43 against 0.25), and so did feedback that showed change over time (0.55 against 0.28). Spoken feedback did worse than other forms (0.23 against 0.37), which matters for a meeting that is mostly spoken. The studies ranged from memory tests to physical tasks, in settings very different from a 1:1, so the numbers show which way each kind of feedback pushes performance, and say little about how large the effect would be in your team.

Older workplace evidence points the same way. In the early 1960s, researchers at General Electric observed the annual appraisals of 92 employees at one plant²⁴24. Meyer, H. H., Kay, E., and French, J. R. P., Jr. (1965). Split Roles in Performance Appraisal. Harvard Business Review, January 1965. hbr.org. The average employee reacted defensively to 54% of the criticisms made, and constructive responses averaged less than one per interview. Employees who received more criticism than average showed more than five times as much defensiveness, and 10 to 12 weeks later the areas their managers had criticised most had improved least. Part of the reason was that expectations differed. Before the appraisal the average employee placed himself at the 77th percentile, and 75 of the 92 left believing their manager rated them lower than they rated themselves.

GE replaced the annual appraisal with regular meetings to review progress, solve problems in the job, and agree goals, with no ratings and with pay discussed separately. This was an early form of the modern 1:1. In a year-long comparison, the people who moved to the new system reported more help from their managers and took more action to improve, while the group that kept the annual appraisal showed no change. One plant of men in the 1960s is limited evidence, but it agrees with the modern research.

The feedback sandwich, which places criticism between two pieces of praise, is a common approach with almost no evidence behind it. The only direct test found for this guide, two studies of written peer feedback among medical students, showed that the students believed sandwiches improved performance and found no evidence that they did²⁵25. Parkes, J., Abercrombie, S., and McCarty, T. (2013). Feedback sandwiches affect perceptions but not performance. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 18(3), 397–407. doi.org. It is a narrow study, and it is consistent with Kluger and DeNisi’s finding on praise.

This is not an argument for less feedback. Gallup finds that 80% of employees who received meaningful feedback in the past week are fully engaged¹⁰10. Gallup (2023). A Great Manager’s Most Important Habit. Gallup Workplace, 29 May 2023. gallup.com, although this is an association, and engaged people may be the ones managers find easiest to talk to. In the UK, only 62% of employees say their manager gives them helpful feedback, and the CIPD estimates that around 10 million employees do not believe they get useful feedback from their manager⁸8. Young, J., and Tong, D. (2025). CIPD Good Work Index 2025. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, June 2025; survey of 5,017 UK employees. cipd.org. Feedback should be about the work, specific enough to act on, compared with the person’s own earlier work, and followed by a next step. It should be kept separate from pay reviews. If feedback is given regularly in 1:1s, nothing in a formal review should come as a surprise, which is the standard Acas sets¹⁹19. Acas (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) (2014). Challenging conversations and how to manage them. Acas guide for line managers, July 2014. acas.org.uk.

Development is the topic most likely to be left out of a 1:1, because the week’s urgent problems seem more pressing⁹9. Rogelberg, S. G. (2022). Make the Most of Your One-on-One Meetings. Harvard Business Review, November to December 2022. hbr.org. Helping with career development was one of Google’s eight behaviours of good managers, and when Google gave managers their scores, the lowest-rated improved most in coaching and career development³3. Garvin, D. A. (2013). How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management. Harvard Business Review, December 2013. hbr.org. Among the leavers in Gallup’s study who had a conversation with a leader before they left, only 29% talked about their future career¹1. Tatel, C., and Wigert, B. (2024). 42% of Employee Turnover Is Preventable but Often Ignored. Gallup Workplace, 9 July 2024; survey of 717 US employees who had left an employer voluntarily, November 2023. gallup.com. In the UK, 64% of employees say their manager supports their learning and development, so more than a third do not⁸8. Young, J., and Tong, D. (2025). CIPD Good Work Index 2025. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, June 2025; survey of 5,017 UK employees. cipd.org.

Managers who believe a person cannot change tend to put less into that person’s 1:1s. Peter Heslin, Don VandeWalle, and Gary Latham found in two field studies that managers who believed ability was largely fixed coached their staff less, as rated by the staff²⁶26. Heslin, P. A., VandeWalle, D., and Latham, G. P. (2006). Keen to help? Managers’ implicit person theories and their subsequent employee coaching. Personnel Psychology, 59(4), 871–902. doi.org. In a third, experimental study, a short exercise that persuaded such managers that ability can be developed made them more willing to coach a poor performer, and improved the number and quality of their suggestions.

Development conversations also carry a risk. Maria Kraimer and colleagues studied 264 professional employees and their supervisors²⁷27. Kraimer, M. L., Seibert, S. E., Wayne, S. J., Liden, R. C., and Bravo, J. (2011). Antecedents and outcomes of organizational support for development: The critical role of career opportunities. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96(3), 485–500. doi.org. Support for development went with better performance only when people also saw real career opportunities in the organisation. Where they saw opportunities, development support was linked with fewer people leaving. Where they did not, it was linked with more people leaving. In a 60-person company with two management roles, for example, this is a reason not to talk about growth as if promotion were the only form of it. Growth in the current job, through a harder project, a new skill, or more of the work the person does best, is available to everyone and does not depend on a vacancy.

Rogelberg’s suggestion of five or ten minutes in every meeting, or a whole meeting in every three or four, gives development a regular place⁹9. Rogelberg, S. G. (2022). Make the Most of Your One-on-One Meetings. Harvard Business Review, November to December 2022. hbr.org. Decide together what to cover in that time, and keep the time in busy weeks, because those are the weeks it is most often dropped.

All of this can be done with your existing calendar and a few rules.

1. Start with your own record. Look back over the last quarter and count, for each person, how many 1:1s were booked and how many took place. The gaps are usually uneven, and the people with the fewest meetings are rarely the ones who need them least.
2. Tell the team at your next team meeting, so nobody feels singled out. Rogelberg recommends introducing or relaunching 1:1s this way⁹9. Rogelberg, S. G. (2022). Make the Most of Your One-on-One Meetings. Harvard Business Review, November to December 2022. hbr.org. Explain that the meeting is theirs, that they bring the first list, and that it does not mean anyone is in trouble.
3. Set how often to meet for each person. Weekly half-hour meetings suit new starters, anyone new to you, and teams of fewer than ten. Fortnightly meetings of 45 to 60 minutes suit experienced people in larger teams. Do not go below monthly, which is the minimum Flinchum’s data supports¹²12. Flinchum, J. R. (2022). A New Approach to Promote Employee Engagement: One-on-One Meetings Between Managers and Direct Reports. Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, two-wave survey of 303 employees. graduateschool.charlotte.edu.
4. Fix the order of each meeting. Status updates arrive in writing before the meeting. Their list comes first, with obstacles at the top, and your list uses the remaining time. In every third or fourth meeting, or for ten minutes of every one, talk about longer-term growth.
5. Decide your rule for cancelling now. Move a 1:1 earlier rather than later, shorten it before you cancel it, and always rebook it.
6. Within the next fortnight, measure how much you talk. After six weeks, ask the team three questions anonymously, as Rogelberg suggests, about what is going well, what is not, and what they would change⁹9. Rogelberg, S. G. (2022). Make the Most of Your One-on-One Meetings. Harvard Business Review, November to December 2022. hbr.org. Then change what is not working, and tell them what you changed.

Headwater is built for companies that want to run on one plan with a regular weekly rhythm, and the 1:1 is where that plan meets each person. In Headwater, each 1:1 opens with the person’s recent work, their climbs, and their issues, so the time can go on their obstacles and their growth. The meeting still belongs to the person.