4 Types of 1-on-1 Meetings in Office

If you are an employee or a manager, 1-on-1 meetings are very important in office life - especially in IT companies.

During the 1-on-1 meeting, the participants do not only focus on the project. It is the time when the employee gets to express certain concerns or things that they want to speak about but couldn't do in regular meetups.

I will explain why these meetings arise in various situations in the office. It is very interesting to know how and why these take place with or without your knowledge. They lead to different consequences that directly or indirectly determine your business and eventually your career.

#1. By Manager with an Employee

This type is pretty official. It is actually one of the responsibilities of the manager to conduct 1-on-1s with their direct reports. It depends from manager to manager on when they conduct these meetings depending on their daily schedule.

Some managers prefer to have them periodically and they schedule it on their calendars. These types of managers are usually very sophisticated in their workday. Some managers have the 1-on-1 meeting when they "feel like"... You guessed it. They aren't sophisticated.

Outcome: During the meeting, the manager will give feedback about how the employee is doing and also give them improvement points to work on. Some managers start with a greeting and will be positive throughout the course of the meeting. They make sure that the employee takes the improvement points in a positive way - these are sophisticated managers. Some managers take this opportunity to point out the mistakes, which is not recommended if you want to have a healthy relationship and want the employee to improve in the future.

#2. By Employee with a Manager

There will be instances when an employee decides to have a 1-on-1 with the manager. This happens due to a certain issue or aspect that the employee is willing to talk to the manager privately. This usually is not a good sign.

Reasons when an employee decides to have a 1-on-1 with the manager:

1. The manager was not taking 1-on-1s regularly.
2. The employee is facing a certain problem in the workplace.
3. The employee wants to move on. (This is unfortunate but it's the reality folks)

Outcome: The employee will express the situation and will expect the manager to do something about it.

#3. Between Employees at the Same Level in the Hierarchy

Certain employees in the same team/organization will gel well together in office. Some just don't. You will see them arguing in code reviews and other work-related things.

Eventually, they will try to have 1-on-1 with each other in the interest of the following 2 outcomes:

1. To know why they have not been able to gel well and what can be done from both ends to fix the problem.
2. To just let each other know how they feel (This is usually not positive and doesn't solve the situation.)

#4. Between Employees Who Belong to Different Teams

So now we have a real situation here. Two employees of different teams/organizations are willing to have 1-on-1 with each other. As strange as it sounds, I have seen this happen in offices.

The reasons are:

1. Employee 1 is interested to move into a new team due to a certain dissatisfaction in the current team. So he is trying to consult Employee 2 about how it is going on in their team.
2. Real bad situations have happened between the two (non-work related in most cases) and one of them is expressing the discomfort - this is a bad sign and should be avoided.