1:1 meetings with your manager

What a 1:1 is for

A 1:1 is a short, regular, private conversation between you and your manager. Half an hour, weekly or fortnightly, in the same slot. The slot matters more than the length: a standing meeting means a problem never has to wait for you to invent a reason to raise it.

It is not a status report. If the whole half hour goes on reading out where each job has got to, the meeting is doing work that a stand-up, a weekly email or the tracker already does, and you are paying for it with the only private time you get with your manager. One line each on the big things is plenty. Then move on.

What the time is actually for:

• Decisions you need from them, which is the fastest way to turn half an hour into a week saved.
• Priorities, so you find out early that the thing you are working on is not the thing that matters most.
• Feedback, in both directions, while it is still small enough to act on.
• How your work is seen beyond your own team.
• Anything that is hard to say in front of other people.
• Your own development, which nobody else will ever put on an agenda for you.

It is not your performance review either. The review is a formal, recorded event. The 1:1 is where the material for it is built, a fortnight at a time, so that nothing in the review is a surprise to either of you.

Getting one if you do not have one

Plenty of New Zealand workplaces do not run 1:1s at all, especially small teams where the manager is also doing the work. Asking for one is normal, and it does not need a reason beyond wanting to be useful.

Make it small, specific and easy to say yes to. Name the length, name the frequency, and say what you will bring:

"Could we put half an hour in the diary every second Tuesday? I will send three or four bullets the day before, so it needs no preparation from you. Mostly it is decisions I need, and anything you want done differently."

That does three things at once. It caps the cost, it moves the work to you, and it says what the meeting is for, so it does not sound like a complaint arriving in advance.

If the answer is no, or "once things calm down", offer the smaller version: fifteen minutes a fortnight, or half an hour a month. A short meeting that happens beats a long one that does not.

If there is still nothing, run it in writing. Send a short email at the end of each week or fortnight under three headings: where the main things are up to, in one line each; the decisions you need, with the option you recommend; and anything you need from them. Most managers answer email. You get your decisions, and you get something better than notes: a dated record in your sent folder of what you asked and what they said.

The agenda you bring

Send three to five bullets the day before. Short. Not a document, an email or a message.

The order matters, because 1:1s are cut short far more often than they run long. Put the thing you most need at the top.

Keep that last slot in every meeting. It is the only item nobody will ever raise on your behalf, and dropping it every fortnight is how people arrive at their review with nothing to say about what they want next.

Leave room for their items as well. A 1:1 where you talk for twenty-eight minutes is a briefing, not a conversation, and you will learn nothing from it that you did not already know.

Questions worth asking your manager

Ask one or two, not a list. A good question is worth more than anything you bring, because it gets you information you cannot see from where you sit.

About priorities:

• "What are the two most important things for the team this quarter, and where does my work sit in them?"
• "If I could only finish one of these this month, which one?"
• "What should I stop doing?" This one is uncomfortable and usually the most useful.
• "What is coming that I should know about?"

About how your work is seen:

• "How is my work seen outside this team?"
• "What would make the difference between solid and outstanding in this role?"
• "Is there anything I am doing that makes your job harder?"
• "If my review were written today, what would it say?" Ask that one a few months out, while there is still time to act on the answer.

If the answer comes back as a label rather than an example, ask for the example: "Can you give me a time when that happened?" A label cannot be acted on. An example can.

Write the answer down in their words, not in your summary of it. Your summary is already an argument with it.

The 1:1 is also where you find out how pay and promotion actually work where you are: who decides, when the budget is set, and what they look at. Ask that early in the year, and raise your own pay separately and in good time. Asking for a pay rise in New Zealand covers the timing.

Raising a problem early

A problem raised early is a work item. The same problem raised six months later is a complaint, and it arrives with the question of why you said nothing at the time. Early is easier for everyone, including you.

Four parts, in this order, and it fits inside a minute:

• What is happening, in facts, with dates. Not how it feels, yet.
• The effect on the work. What is late, wrong, at risk, or costing time.
• What you have already tried. This is what separates raising a problem from handing one over.
• What you are asking for. A decision, a change, their help with someone else, or simply that they know.

Something like: "Approvals are taking about three weeks and we quote two. Three jobs have gone past their promised date this month. I have been chasing them one at a time, which is not working. Could you raise it with the finance manager, or would you rather I did?"

Keep it on the work rather than the person where that is honest. It is not always possible, and when the problem is a person, facts and dates matter more, not less.

After a serious one, send a short email the same day: "Thanks for the time. To confirm, we agreed [what] by [date]." That is not a manoeuvre. It is how anything gets remembered. And some things are not 1:1 material at all: bullying, harassment, discrimination, an unsafe situation, or your pay, hours or leave being wrong. Those have their own route, and the last section covers it.

What to write down afterwards

Five minutes, within the hour, while you still remember the wording. Three things and a date:

• What was agreed, and who owes what by when.
• Any feedback, in their words rather than your paraphrase of them.
• Anything promised to you: a course, a change of duties, a title, a piece of work, a date to come back to your pay.

Then the date, and who you met. A note with no date on it proves nothing later.

"12 March, with Mere. Agreed: I take over supplier onboarding from April; Mere to confirm the budget for the data course. Feedback: the board paper was clear; next time send the draft two days earlier."

Three lines. That is the whole discipline, and it is the part people drop first.

Two cautions. Write your notes as though they could be read one day, because they can be. Keep them to your own work and to what was said to you, leave other people's private business out of them, and do not copy confidential customer or client material out of your employer's systems. Second, if something important was agreed only out loud, and especially anything to do with money, duties or a date, confirm it in a two-line email. A note in your own file records that you heard it. An email records that they said it.

Keep them all in one place, in date order, wherever you will actually keep going: a document, a notes app, or Your Career, which holds 1:1 notes beside your wins journal.

Why the notes matter later

The notes feel like admin for about eleven months, and then they do four jobs at once.

• At review time. They show what you were actually asked to do, so you are measured against that rather than against a target that moved in June. They show the feedback you were given and what you did with it, which is the clearest evidence of growth there is. And they turn a blank self-review form into an editing job. See How to write a self-review.
• For a pay case. When your pay was last set, what criteria you were given, what was promised and by when. "If I take on the Wellington accounts, we will look at your pay in March" is worth something in March only if it was written down in November, with a date on it. Without that you are arguing from memory against someone holding a budget.
• For your next CV and your interviews. The dated line where your responsibilities grew becomes a CV bullet. The problem you raised and then solved becomes the answer to "tell me about a time when". See How to write a CV in New Zealand.
• When your manager changes. A new manager arrives with a handover note and no memory of your year. Your notes are the only continuous account of it that exists, and they are the reason you can hand over a page of facts instead of hoping.

None of this needs a system. It needs the notes to exist, with dates, in one place you can find.

If your manager keeps cancelling

It is usually workload, not a message about you. Managers cancel on the person they think will forgive them for it. That is small comfort when it is the third one in a row, so work through it in order.

• Rebook it before you close the message. Never let a cancelled 1:1 lapse with no next date. That is exactly how they stop happening.
• Offer less, not more. "Happy to make it fifteen minutes this week if that helps" keeps the habit alive through a busy month.
• Let them pick the slot. If the time is wrong for the shape of their week, it will keep being the meeting that goes.
• Move it to writing in the meantime. Send the agenda anyway, with the decisions you need marked clearly, and ask for a yes or no by a date. You get the decisions and a record, and they get a smaller job than a meeting.
• Say it once, plainly, after three or four. "We have missed the last four. Is there a better time, or would you rather I sent these by email?" No grievance in the voice, just the question.

If decisions are being held up, ask who else can sign them off, and copy your manager on the request. That is not going over their head, it is taking work off them.

If it runs on for months and your work is suffering for it, raise it as a work problem rather than a personal one: decisions are late, here is what that is costing, here is what would fix it. If that changes nothing, the next section is for you.

When to take it further

A 1:1 is the first place to raise something, not the only one. Take it further when you have raised it two or three times and nothing has changed, when the problem is your manager, or when it was never a management question in the first place: bullying, harassment, discrimination, an unsafe situation, or your pay, hours or leave being wrong.

Good faith runs both ways. The Employment Relations Act 2000 requires employers and employees to deal with each other in good faith. Employment New Zealand describes that as being active and constructive in keeping up a productive employment relationship, being responsive and communicative, and not misleading or deceiving each other. It is a duty on you as well: raise things while they can still be fixed, answer when you are asked, and do not store a problem up and then produce it as a crisis.

The same Act says that where your employer is proposing a decision that is likely to have an adverse effect on your continued employment, they must give you access to the information relevant to that decision, and a chance to comment on it before it is made.

Where to go next, roughly in order:

• Your workplace policy. Most set out a process for problems, including one about your manager.
• Your manager's manager, or HR. Say what you have already tried, and when.
• Your union, if you are a member.
• Employment New Zealand, on 0800 20 90 20, which can also refer you to free mediation.

Get advice early rather than waiting to see whether it improves. There are time limits on raising a personal grievance under the Employment Relations Act 2000. Take your notes with you: dates and what was said are the first thing anyone helping you will ask for.