1-1s at BlueDot

Abstract

The central lesson from four years of BlueDot’s shifting 1-1 practice is that 1-1s exist for the report, not the manager — success is defined by how useful the coachee finds the time, not by whether the manager felt it was well spent. A manager who reflects questions back rather than supplying answers builds ownership; and when a structure stops serving the mission, it should be scrapped or redesigned rather than preserved.

Context

• The author was BlueDot’s first hire in late 2022, when the org was three co-founders plus her.
• Over four years the 1-1 structure evolved through: a few subheadings → scorecards → project trackers → doing away with them entirely → reinstating them with more open-ended prompts.
• A few months before writing, she was tasked with proposing a 1-1 structure and began running them herself.
• Framed explicitly as a personal account; others on the team may see it differently.

Own the mission

• BlueDot operates on a high level of trust, true from the start and still true.
• The co-founders wanted a high-agency, mission-aligned team they’d be excited to “go to battle with” — people who push each other to grow, be more ambitious, and have fun.
• 1-1s with Dewi (CEO and everyone’s manager) focused on helping her figure out what to work on and how, rather than telling her what to do.
• He almost always reflected her questions back; she’d attempt an answer and they’d discuss it. If she believed a proposal served the mission and her reasoning was sound, she’d just do it.
• Result: an incredible sense of ownership over everything she worked on.

No one has the answers

• For her first two years she had weekly 30-minute 1-1s with Dewi: a brief personal check-in, then reflection on recent work, unsticking, or planning the next project.
• Early on he seemed to have an answer to everything and the time felt highly valuable.
• As she moved into newer functions and worked more independently, the sessions became less useful — he sometimes lacked the context or prior experience to advise, and the questions he asked were ones she was already asking herself.
• The confusion came from a faulty model of management: she had assumed her manager held the answers and was training her to do the job as well as he could.
• When she raised it, Dewi encouraged her to find an external coach or mentor. He also said he wanted to use the time to support her — a point she only internalised once she ran 1-1s herself.

1-1s are for the report, not the manager

• She knew 1-1s weren’t for status updates or urgent matters, but had no positive definition beyond “private standing time with my manager.”
• Because her manager was busy, she felt pressure to make the time look productive for him — manufacturing a challenge to work through, or reflecting on completed work — and felt most stressed when she had nothing to ask for help with.
• Reading two Ben Kuhn blog posts (via Wave’s engineering blog) clarified it: the goal of a 1-1 is to support the coachee, and success is measured by the coachee’s judgment, not the manager’s.
• Effects on her own behaviour: more motivation to prepare, a better sense of what to share, more ownership over driving the discussion, and permission to “selfishly” use the time for what she found most useful.
• When running her own 1-1s she has the coachee lead and repeatedly reminds them the time is theirs.

Form follows function

• BlueDot is not wed to particular systems.
• About two years in, 1-1s were scrapped entirely — private sessions were creating communication silos and friction, and weren’t serving the mission.
• When Dewi reinstated them he made them public, so the team could learn from each other, and pushed for all internal communication into public Slack channels.
• Asked to propose a better structure, she found from surveying best practices that he had already implemented most of what fit BlueDot’s needs. Her main addition was clarifying the goal of 1-1s with coachees.

Care personally

• The way 1-1s are run reflects how much leadership trusts and cares for individuals: audible in questions about her personal life, visible in generous physical and mental health policies.
• Running 1-1s now is how she carries forward the trust and care she felt as the first hire.