Watch the 5 moves build, then make move 1 below before your next 1:1.
Answer yes or no for your last 5 1:1s.
2 or more yes: run this play.
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Send every direct report the same 3 questions, 24 hours before your next 1:1.
Move: one message per person: what decision do you need from me, what is blocked, what did you learn that I should know. Answer the same 3 yourself.
Input: your existing 1:1 invites.
Time: 15 minutes.
Done when: every report has the 3 questions in writing and your own answers are on the same page.
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Why now: the cost of preparing a coaching conversation went to near zero this year, so the last honest excuse for a status 1:1 is gone.
| Metric | How to count it | Your number today |
|---|---|---|
| Percent of reps at quota | Reps at or above quota / reps with a full-quarter quota | ___ % |
Leading signal you see first: decisions per 1:1 rise and updates fall, within 2 cycles.
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I hold my leaders to 30 minutes a week each, ideally 45, and it eats a large part of my calendar. I keep paying it because a prepared 1:1 is the only meeting in the business where the agenda belongs to the person doing the work.
This week I had one booked for 15 minutes. I arrived late, the meeting before it had run over, and I was already deciding which 3 things to cut. It ran past 75 minutes and it was the most useful hour of my week. Not because I found more time. Because both of us walked in with a written list.
The failure mode I watch for in myself is the drift into a pipeline review. That is a status meeting wearing a coaching label, and it is comfortable for both people, which is exactly why it wins. So my test is on me, not on them: if I could have got the same information from the CRM, we wasted the slot.
Where AI helps is narrower than the market claims and more useful than the sceptics allow. It will not coach anyone. It will remove the assembly, which is the reason coaching gets skipped in a heavy week. The judgment stays yours. And the last part is unglamorous: we document both sides every time, the topics and the next steps, so nothing has to be rebuilt from memory next week. A conversation that resets weekly is not coaching, it is a habit.
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