1:1

A recurring private conversation between a manager and a person who reports to them.

Example

Thirty minutes weekly, agenda owned by the report.

It is their meeting, not your status update. The moment it becomes a progress report it stops surfacing the problems it exists to surface.

Feedback — Telling someone specifically what you observed and what effect it had, close to when it happened.
Management — Getting work done through other people — setting expectations, removing obstacles, giving feedback and holding accountability.
Delegation — Handing over an outcome, with the authority to decide how it gets done.

Isolation, and delivering bad news — Founding is structurally lonely, and telling people bad news early is a skill that protects the company as much as it protects you. (12 min)
Sustaining yourself over years — This takes longer than you think. The founders who succeed are usually the ones still functioning in year four. (10 min)
Onboarding someone properly — The first two weeks decide whether a good hire becomes a good employee. Most startups improvise this and lose months. (10 min)
Delegation — Handing over an outcome with the authority to decide how. Handing over tasks while keeping every decision is just queueing. (12 min)
Setting expectations — Most performance problems are expectation problems. People rarely fail at a job they clearly understood. (10 min)
Running 1:1s — Their meeting, not your status update. The moment it becomes a progress report it stops surfacing anything useful. (10 min)