Sep 1, 2026 · 15 min
A four-part agenda turns one-on-ones into useful management time
How to make 1:1s the most impactful meetings of your week
When recurring one-on-ones are canceled or poorly structured, managers lose a dependable space for trust, candor, and problem-solving.
- 1One-on-ones remain valuable because informal and team interactions rarely replace dedicated individual attention.
- 2Cancellations and weak structure can erode trust, making consistency part of the meeting’s impact.
- 3A four-part agenda—highlights, lowlights, blockers, and feedback—keeps conversations focused and useful.
Don't miss
Lia Garvin distills the meeting into four prompts—highlights, lowlights, blockers, and feedback.
The brief
Lia Garvin challenges the idea that one-on-ones are redundant when colleagues already meet in teams, with clients, or informally.
The case for keeping them is practical: dedicated one-on-ones create space for individual concerns that other interactions can miss.
Canceled meetings do more than remove a calendar slot; repeated cancellations can weaken trust and signal that the relationship is not a priority.
Garvin’s compact framework uses four prompts—highlights, lowlights, blockers, and feedback—to turn a recurring meeting into a focused conversation.
The broader lesson is that one-on-ones become impactful through consistency and structure, not simply because they recur on the calendar.
Books & mentions
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