1. Their agenda first (10 min)
Open with a single question: "What's on your mind?" Resist the urge to lead. Whatever surfaces in the first ten minutes is usually the real signal — career anxiety, a teammate frustration, a decision they're stuck on.
- What's been energizing you this week?
- What's been draining?
- Anything you want my input on?
2. Growth & feedback (10 min)
Pick one direction per session — don't try to coach on everything. Rotate between recent work, a skill they're building, and forward-looking career signal.
- One thing they did this week that you want to reinforce
- One thing you'd coach them to do differently
- Progress against their current growth area
3. Friction & blockers (5 min)
What's slowing them down that you could remove? Process, people, tooling, ambiguity. Capture an owner and a date for anything you commit to.
4. Signal & alignment (5 min)
Short status check — what's shipping, what's at risk, what they need you to know. This goes last on purpose: it expands to fill whatever time you give it.
Common pitfalls
- — Letting status eat the whole meeting — move it to async if it does.
- — Cancelling 1:1s when busy. The busy weeks are when they matter most.
- — Giving feedback only when something is wrong. Reinforcement is feedback too.