Prepare an Effective One-on-One
Added 2026-10-31
Turn status reporting into problems, support needed and feedback, leaving room for them to talk.
I have a one-on-one with my manager next week. I will give recent work, difficulties and what I want. Help me prepare: 1) three questions I should raise myself (not status updates); 2) one support request I have avoided, phrased concretely; 3) if I only get ten minutes, which two sentences come first; 4) one piece of specific, actionable feedback for them; 5) the one thing I should not do in this conversation.
Site original
Chinese original
How to use
一对一不是汇报会，是解决问题的时间。
Try tweaking it
- Ask for three columns: conclusion, owner, deadline — ready to paste into a table.
- Let it organise only your notes; do not add decisions that were never made.
What you should get
- Task list with owner, deadline and blocker
- Escalations that need a decision, listed separately
Common mistakes
- Feeding raw notes and letting it fill in decisions that were never made.
- Getting owners without deadlines, so no task can be created.
How to check the output
- Every item has an owner and a date — ready to become a task.
- It does not record decisions that were never made.
Where it works
- Good for: turning verbal discussion into owner, deadline and blocker.
- Watch out: let it organise only the notes you supply — never let it infer decisions that were not made.