He looked me in the eye in a 1:1 and asked, "What do I need to do to get to the next level?" He was hungry, driven, and teachable ... and had no clear road to run on. That is when I was reminded that most 1:1s fail because they pretend to be development conversations while operating like status meetings.
A strong engineer came to me and asked a direct question. "What do I need to do to get to the next level?" He had drive. He was faithful, approachable, and teachable. He was not missing hunger. He was missing a road, and that detail matters more than most managers want to admit. The lazy leadership answer is "stop waiting for a roadmap and build one." It sounds empowering, and it is also nonsense when someone is trying to get to a place they have never seen clearly defined. If you do not know what the destination looks like, you can run hard and still run wrong.
I have watched this happen more than once. High-agency people do exactly what you ask them to do, then get frustrated when "doing everything right" does not translate into growth. They are not usually missing effort. They are missing signal quality.
The pivotal line in that 1:1 was simple. "I have your back, and I will help create the road" ... not "I will carry you," not "you are on your own." Support first, clarity first, then ownership.
We partnered with HR and built a role matrix across engineer, senior engineer, tech lead, and manager. We defined what each level looked like in behavior, scope, and delivery expectations. Then we mapped where he stood, where he needed to grow, and what evidence would count as real progress.
Within a year, he moved into a senior role. Within 2.5 years, he replaced me. That is one of the proudest moments I have had as a leader ... replacing yourself on purpose.
You are not mentoring when you say "figure it out" without defining what "it" looks like.
The Manager Mistake
Most managers do one of two things in 1:1s. They do status updates, or they do emotional reassurance. Neither one builds growth by itself.
Status-only 1:1s train people to report, not to level up. Reassurance-only 1:1s train people to feel seen, but not necessarily challenged. You need both care and clarity. Without clarity, care turns vague. Without care, clarity turns cold.
The reason this gets missed is predictable. Status updates are measurable and immediate. Career development is slower and messier. It is easier to ask, "Any blockers?" than to ask, "What behavior is holding you back from next level right now, and what are we both doing about it?" One question protects the sprint. The other question changes a career.
This is why your 1:1 should function like a career contract.
- Here is where you are.
- Here is where you want to go.
- Here is the definition of that level.
- Here is the evidence that will prove growth.
- Here is what I own as your leader.
- Here is what you own as the engineer.
If any of those are missing, the contract is ambiguous, and ambiguous contracts create frustrated engineers.
And frustrated engineers do what adults do when the system is vague ... they start running experiments in political survival.
Ambiguity also creates politics. When growth criteria are unclear, people optimize for whatever gets attention. They present harder. They perform confidence. They play proximity games. None of that builds the capability you actually need as an organization.
Build the Road, Then Hand Over the Keys
There is a sequence that works.
- Define the destination in concrete terms.
- Create short-cycle growth checkpoints.
- Pair feedback with evidence, not vibe.
- Move ownership to the engineer once the map is clear.
That sequence is the difference between mentorship theater and real development. Leaders who skip Step 1 usually blame motivation. It is rarely motivation. It is missing architecture.
You would not ask an engineer to ship a complex system with no requirements and then call them weak when they miss. Yet that is exactly how many leaders run career growth.
If your instinct is "they should just figure it out," ask yourself a harder question ... would you use that same standard for a production migration with real customer impact? If the answer is no, do not use it for someone's growth path either.
The same leadership logic applies.
- define the target state
- define acceptance criteria
- define review cadence
- define ownership
Career development is architecture work with human consequences.
Why This Matters More Right Now
In fast teams, especially AI-assisted teams, output can hide growth gaps for longer than it used to. Someone can look productive while stalling in judgment, influence, or leverage. If your 1:1 is only about updates, you will miss that drift until it gets expensive. Career clarity is leadership infrastructure, even when HR paperwork makes it look like a side process.
When people know the road, they can self-correct faster, ask better questions, and build confidence that comes from progress, not posturing.
When people do not know the road, they optimize for visibility because visibility is the only signal left. That is how you accidentally build a culture of performative growth. People learn to narrate progress instead of creating it, managers start rewarding confidence instead of capability, and then everyone wonders why the same succession gaps keep showing up.
This is also why your 1:1 quality predicts retention more than most leaders think. People can tolerate hard problems. They do not tolerate feeling stuck with no credible path forward.
The Leadership Contract Most People Skip
There is one uncomfortable part here that leaders love to avoid. Your side of the contract. Most growth plans fail because they are written as employee commitments with manager encouragement. That reads like cheerleading. It is delegation, not something both sides can inspect.
Your side should be explicit.
- what feedback cadence you will hold
- what opportunities you will create for stretch work
- what sponsorship you will provide in calibration conversations
- what standards you will enforce even when delivery pressure gets loud
If you do not write your side down, people stop trusting the process because it looks like another "work on these things and we will see" loop. Trust grows when progress is inspectable for both sides.
What This Looks Like Over 90 Days
If you want this to work, run it in 30-day loops.
Month 1 is definition.
- role target is explicit
- behavior criteria are explicit
- growth evidence is explicit
Month 2 is execution.
- one stretch behavior is practiced in real work
- feedback is tied to observed behavior, not impression
- misses are corrected in-week, not at quarter close
Month 3 is calibration.
- what changed
- what stalled
- what needs support shift
- what proves readiness now versus later
This cadence sounds basic, and that is the point. Leadership systems should be boring enough to run consistently and sharp enough to change outcomes. If this feels too formal, good ... informal growth systems are usually where ambiguity and bias hide, and formality is not bureaucracy when it creates fairness and clarity.
The 1:1 Failure Pattern You Can Spot in One Question
If you want to know whether your 1:1 system is real, ask one question at the end of the conversation ... "What changed in your growth plan from this meeting?"
If the answer is vague, your 1:1 was probably morale support plus project updates.
Useful for feelings. Useless for promotions.
If the answer is specific and behavioral, your 1:1 was leadership work.
I started using this question because I got tired of walking out of meetings that felt productive and then watching nothing actually change. We had good conversations. We had trust. We had positive sentiment. We did not have movement. That is a brutal thing to admit as a manager, because it means your intent can be strong while your system is weak.
When this question is built into your cadence, it exposes the exact gap:
- no clear behavior target
- no evidence criteria
- no owner for next check
- no timeline for reassessment
And when those are missing, your team usually fills the gap with performance language. You get cleaner updates, better optics, and stronger meeting energy ... but no durable growth.
One practical upgrade that helped me was adding a 3-line closeout doc after each 1:1:
- behavior we are targeting
- evidence we expect by next check-in
- support I owe as leader before then
That tiny artifact made the contract inspectable. People stopped guessing what mattered. If you cannot point to a changed behavior contract after a 1:1, you did not run a growth meeting. You ran a conversation.
This Week
Take one high-drive engineer and run one contract-style 1:1.
- Define their next-level target in writing.
- Agree on 3 observable behaviors that prove readiness.
- Set one 30-day growth commitment on each side.
Then hold yourself accountable to your side first.
A 1:1 is where you either build a growth system or build attrition.
If this post lands, pair it with Your Team Doesn't Need a Buddy. It Needs a Coach. for the feedback side of the same problem.
The people on your team are not waiting for another update meeting. They are waiting for a leader who can define the road and walk it with them until they can run it alone. That is the real 1:1 job. Everything else is admin.
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