The Team Lead Handbook · Becoming a Team Lead
Effective 1:1s
Make 1:1s the most useful half-hour of the week for each person: their agenda, regular, and focused on growth and problems, not status.
Scenario
Example team: the checkout lead holds 1:1s every two weeks, cancels them when busy, and uses them to ask "how's your ticket going?". An engineer resigns; in her exit conversation she says she'd been unhappy for months but "there was never a moment to talk about it".
What you see on the team
- 1:1s cancelled or shortened frequently.
- Conversations that repeat standup: ticket status.
- Surprises: resignations, burnout, conflicts the lead never heard about.
- Engineers who don't know what the lead thinks of their work.
The common mistake
Treating 1:1s as the lead's status meeting instead of the report's time — and as optional when things get busy.
Why it happens
Status is easy to talk about and feels productive. Personal topics, feedback and career conversations are harder and get postponed. When the calendar fills up, 1:1s look like the most movable meeting. GitLab's public handbook on 1-1s treats the 1:1 as a regular, agenda-driven meeting that belongs to the team member, not a status check.
The playbook
Cadence: weekly or every two weeks, 30 minutes, same time. Reschedule rather than cancel.
Their agenda first. Keep a shared document; the report adds topics before the meeting; you add yours after.
A balanced rotation of topics over a month:
Shared 1:1 doc - Ana / Sam
Recurring prompts (pick what's relevant):
- What's on your mind this week?
- What's getting in your way? What can I do about it?
- Feedback: one thing going well, one thing to adjust (both directions)
- Growth: progress on your goal for this quarter
- Monthly: how are you feeling about the team / your workload (1-10)?
- Quarterly: career - where do you want to be in a year?
2026-10-14
- (Ana) Support rotation clashes with the payment-provider migration
- (Sam) Feedback on the design review presentation
Actions: Sam to move Ana off support for 2 weeks; Ana to draft migration plan
Take notes and follow up — actions from 1:1s that never happen destroy trust faster than not having 1:1s.
Ask, then listen. Open questions, silence, and "tell me more" work better than solutions.
Use it for feedback both ways. Ask for feedback on yourself regularly; make it easy with specific questions ("what's one thing I could do differently in planning?").
What to say
Starting a new 1:1 relationship:
"This is your time. Bring anything — work, frustrations, career, ideas. I'll keep a shared doc; add topics before we meet. I'll bring feedback and updates too, but your topics come first."
When someone says "nothing to discuss":
"Then let's use it for something we rarely get to: on a scale of 1 to 10, how was your last month? What would make it a point higher?"
Trade-offs
- Weekly vs bi-weekly: weekly for new people or during change; bi-weekly can work for experienced, stable relationships.
- Structure vs flexibility: prompts help, but don't turn it into an interrogation.
- Remote 1:1s need cameras on and a quiet setting; walking 1:1s can work for some people.
Signals it's working
- People bring real topics: frustrations, ideas, career questions.
- Few surprises — you hear about problems weeks before they escalate.
- Actions from 1:1s get done.
- People say they know where they stand.
Key points
- 1:1s belong to the report: their agenda first, in a shared doc.
- Regular cadence; reschedule, don't cancel.
- Cover blockers, feedback (both ways), growth and wellbeing — not status.
- Take notes and follow up; listen more than you talk.
Practice questions
An engineer resigns, saying there was never a moment to raise her concerns. What was wrong with the 1:1s?
Answer
They were irregular, often cancelled, and used for ticket status, so they never created space for concerns, feedback or career topics. Regular, report-owned 1:1s with a shared agenda would likely have surfaced the issue months earlier.
Who should own the 1:1 agenda, and why?
Answer
The report. It's their time to raise what matters to them; the lead adds topics after theirs. This shifts the meeting from status reporting to support, feedback and growth.
What do you do when someone says they have nothing to discuss in a 1:1?
Answer
Use a prompt that opens a different kind of conversation — rate the last month 1–10 and what would raise it, ask for feedback on yourself, or discuss their growth goal — rather than cancelling.
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