The Anatomy of a 1:1 by Cate over at Accidentally in Code is a fantastic breakdown of how one manager structures their one-on-one meetings. I love the structured thinking, especially the development conversation flow.

My favorite 1:1 conversation continuer and relationship builder question is “Tell me more?”. When you get those single sentance answers to a question, or your counterpart comes to the end of a thought.

“… and the sellers really enjoyed the feature.” “Tell me more?”

“I really liked what you said in your top of minds e-mail about dealing with outages.” “Tell me more?”

“I’m interested in doing more strategy work, but I don’t have the time.” “Tell me more?”