1:1 meeting template

To be a great manager, you need to foster a culture of trust on your team. But in order to create a culture where team members feel comfortable being open and sharing their thoughts, you need a safe space that encourages those conversations. The best way to do this is with 1:1 meetings.

What is a 1:1 meeting?

A 1:1 meeting is a private meeting between two team members—typically between a manager and their direct report—where your employee can update you on a project’s status, check in on professional goals, and share feedback or discuss questions. 

If you haven’t already, set up a recurring 1:1 meeting with each of your direct reports to recap what happened last week and what’s coming up next week. Ideally, aim to schedule these meetings weekly or biweekly so your employees know they have dedicated time on your calendar. 

You spend so much time finding great people, it’s worth it to help them grow to be the best they can be.”

What is a 1:1 meeting template?

1:1 meetings are critical—but without a clear structure and agenda, these meetings can sometimes feel pointless. To host a productive meeting and ensure you and your direct report are getting the most out of your time together, you need a space where you can share meeting agendas and capture action items. 

That’s where a 1:1 meeting template comes in. Our template makes it easy for you to set up and track what you and your employee want to discuss today, follow up on any resulting action items, and monitor longer-term career development or professional goals. Then, you can duplicate this template to create a dedicated 1:1 space for each direct report.

With a 1:1 meeting template, you can: 

• Track action items with assignees and due dates

• Track long-term career goals

• Exchange asynchronous feedback to help your employee action on work faster

• Quickly give new employees a home base

• Plan your meeting discussion points before you talk

• Streamline collaboration—especially for remote teams

• Follow up on any meeting questions

Tips to use a 1:1 meeting project

Your 1:1 meeting template is just the beginning. Once you’ve updated your template to include the sections and categories you want to discuss, duplicate the template for each direct report. 

Here’s how to use your dedicated 1:1 meeting project: 

• Add topics to it throughout the week—and encourage your employee to do the same. This can help you define your 1:1 meeting agenda in advance to ensure you don’t forget to discuss any of your top priorities.

• During the meeting, keep your project open so you can stay on track and capture any action items. Make your weekly meetings feel actionable, important, and beneficial to both you and your direct reports.

• Build a home base for your direct reports’ questions, goals, and workflows. Your 1:1 project should be a private space for you and your employee to collaborate in. 

• Share status updates and roadblocks in real time and asynchronously. This can help you keep track of employee initiatives without micromanaging. Review what your employee did during the past week to help them understand where they can improve.

• Share constructive feedback regularly so there are no surprises during bigger reviews. Make sure your employee is getting enough feedback—both positive and constructive—so they can grow and improve in their role.

• Use your project to track longer-term career goals. Not only does this serve as a way to remind you and your direct report of what their career goals are—it’s also a reference for when performance reviews roll around.

• Store reference information, documents, and goals in one place. 

What to include in your 1:1 meeting template

Your 1:1 meeting template should include:

• A section for live discussion topics

• A section for asynchronous questions

• A way to capture action items

• A way to track long-term career growth

• A place to store resources and references

While you can create a static to-do list in a tool like Google Docs or Microsoft Word, creating your 1:1 template in a project management tool like Asana allows you to quickly capture and keep track of information right where work happens. 

Integrated features

• Milestones. Milestones represent important project checkpoints. By setting milestones throughout your project, you can let your team members and project stakeholders know how you’re pacing towards your goal. Use milestones as a chance to celebrate the little wins on the path towards the big project goal. 

• Custom fields. Custom fields are the best way to tag, sort, and filter work. Create unique custom fields for any information you need to track—from priority and status to email or phone number. Use custom fields to sort and schedule your to-dos so you know what to work on first. Plus, share custom fields across tasks and projects to ensure consistency across your organization.

• Goals. Goals in Asana directly connect to the work you’re doing to hit them, making it easy for team members to see what they’re working towards. More often than not, our goals live separate from the work that goes into achieving them. By connecting your team and company goals to the work that supports them, team members have real-time insight and clarity into how their work directly contributes to your team—and company—success. As a result, team members can make better decisions. If necessary, they can identify the projects that support the company’s strategy and prioritize work that delivers measurable results. 

• Adding tasks to multiple projects. The nature of work is cross-functional. Teams need to be able to work effectively across departments. But if each department has their own filing system, work gets stalled and siloed. Asana makes it easy to track and manage tasks across multiple projects. This doesn't just reduce duplicative work and increase cross-team visibility. It also helps your team see tasks in context, view who’s working on what, and keep your team and tasks connected.

Recommended apps

• Zoom. Asana and Zoom are partnering up to help teams have more purposeful and focused meetings. The Zoom + Asana integration makes it easy to prepare for meetings, hold actionable conversations, and access information once the call is over. Meetings begin in Asana, where shared meeting agendas provide visibility and context about what will be discussed. During the meeting, team members can quickly create tasks within Zoom, so details and action items don’t get lost. And once the meeting is over, the Zoom + Asana integration pulls meeting transcripts and recordings into Asana, so all collaborators and stakeholders can review the meeting as needed.

• Vimeo. Text may get the point across, but written words lack tone, emotion, and expression. With video messaging in Asana, powered by Vimeo, you can give your team all the context they need, without having to schedule another meeting. Record short video messages of yourself, your screen—or both—then embed the videos in tasks, projects, messages, and comments to provide additional clarity and context. A transcript of the recording is automatically created by Asana, making it readable and searchable. Give feedback, ask questions, and assign tasks—all without leaving Asana.

• Loom. Loom videos help you add personality, context, and clarity to your Project Overview. You can easily embed Loom videos to explain your project, set expectations, and highlight key milestones. A Loom video message adds nuance and context to get your team up to speed on the project faster. The best part is—your team can watch the videos without leaving Asana.

• Microsoft Teams. With the Microsoft Teams + Asana integration, you can search for and share the information you need without leaving Teams. Easily connect your Teams conversations to actionable items in Asana. Plus, create, assign, and view tasks during a Teams Meeting without needing to switch to your browser.

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