There isn't a course or career training when it comes to the one to ones with a line-manager. Every manager conducts them in their own way, and what happens in them can sometimes feel secretive. So here's a look under the curtain on how to get more from these meetings.

When you realise that your manager is human these meetings become easier. Once you start giving more accurate descriptions on where you'd like to grow, what you want to work on and share what you've achieved the meeting becomes more productive.

Unfortunately these meetings rely on how well you know yourself. Since managers don't possess an innate ability to know what makes you happy or what your goals and aspirations are. Opening up can feel like a sign of weakness or make you feel more vulnerable, but the more you share the easier you make it for them to help you achieve your goals.

So what does a good one to one look like?¹

You set the agenda

We should approach setting the agenda pragmatically, if you are short on time come up with a few question that will lead to a productive outcome that you can ask in every catchup. The one question I typically ask is: How does the rest of the team feel?

This allows me to determine how confident other might be about a project. It helps me become aware of colleagues that are feeling stretched and could use my help or perhaps they wish me to help out in different ways. I've found this to be an effective way to find the gaps that need filling.

The areas you should be creating questions around should be on your general feeling about work, work-life balance, your growth, your interactions with others on your team and company and the progress you've made on tasks and goals. You don't need to fit this all into one catch up but theming your next catch up on one of these topics can help you prepare and get you started.

Achievements should be brought up. This is emphasised in a remote company, where your achievements can be missed if you're telling no one about them. A good manager will pass your achievements around the office, because typically their performance is tied to your own and you're trying to achieve as a team.

Sharing achievements builds trust, once those big ticket items land on the team's plate and they need someone to lead it. The rapport you've built up with your manager might just land you these challenges.

Coach your manager

If you layout sensitive scenarios for your manager this can help you broach a topic or help you handle those situations if you are ever in that position. It can also establish expectations and intent. As an example you could ask how they would let you know if you were underperforming or what an early sign might be.

Your manager is a sounding board. If you have someone in your team that isn't meeting expectations asking them for help is ok, but be sure to prepare how you'll handle the situation so it doesn't look like you're trying to avoid responsibility.

Align yourself with your manager's priorities. This can help you be more aligned with the business objectives and become more valuable to your manager. If you help them they'll probably want you to stick around and if their scope increases so might yours.

Give your managers work to do. If you find yourself working on something that is not challenging or can be tedious try giving it to your manager. If you pitch them something more important that you could be delivering they'll take the tedious blockers away from you.²

Sharpen your ideas

Only call the vote once you know you're going to win

There's an overhead to collaboration, and if you had to listen to every idea in the business you wouldn't have time to do any work. Use your manager to sharpen your ideas, convince them before convincing anyone else. If you slowly get people onto your side through catch ups when you present the idea to the business you'll already know how to answer the probing questions.

Use the time to develop your relationship and your ideas. Your manager has insight into who is working on what and they can direct you to the people that are excited to talk to you about your ideas and these people might know the challenges you are heading into.

Know Yourself

The classic "where do you want to be in 5 years" question isn't asked to determine if you will have a future at the company. The question is used to determine how well you know yourself. If you are managing someone that is unsure about what they enjoy or what makes them happy how are you going to put them on the work they are most passionate about.

It takes work to understand yourself so mentioning this to your manager can allow them to throw all sorts of tasks at you to see what you're best at. They can help you identify your weaknesses and strength. However they'll not do this unless you're comfortable with the challenge and the way to signal that you're comfortable is to ask.

Your manager will also provide you with work you enjoy and having a history of catch ups in which you've said "I really enjoyed working on x" can increase the chance you will work on those things.

Use your manager to polish your strengths and strengthen your weaknesses. Much of this comes with knowing yourself.

Discuss your weaknesses

The best way to deal with a weakness is by opening up to your manager. Then you can work to find situations that will allow you to improve and make mistakes. Don't expect them to provide you a magical solution to your weakness, some weaknesses take time to develop into a strength and skills take practice.

They can provide you some structure and ideas for actions but they can also provide you with work that allows you to stretch yourself. The best way to learn is to make note of mistakes so getting the opportunity to make more of them is worth while.

Not just your manager

When you're in a company you have access to people with all sorts of skills. People that know stuff that you don't, and you can utilise this for your own growth and understanding.

Try catch up with someone in sales and ask questions like, "What about sales would you like more software engineers to know?"

Or set one up with someone in product and ask how they ensure we are working on the best thing?

Finally

To summarise a lot of these meetings depend on what you want to get out of them and this article touches on some of the topics you might wish to dive into during these catch ups. Although they might be biased towards what I try to get out of them.

Perhaps managers could ask you to set up questions for the next meeting but they probably wish to avoid putting any unnecessary pressure on you as there can be personal reasons why someone doesn't wish to gun for more responsibility at this time.

The key is having more empathy with your manager, they probably have their own goals so use them as an example.