Your first one to one with a new employee

As a manager one of the things that you will experience is taking on the management of a developer who has recently joined the company. As part of this it is important that you have an initial one to one with them to help you get to know how they like to work and how they like to receive feedback.

In this post I will share my approach to these initial one to ones. If you have your own ideas on how you can make these initial one to ones effective or you have any questions please post in the comments as I am interested in hearing your thoughts.

The first one to one with someone you are managing for the first time is incredibly important as it allows you to set the expectations for how you will work together going forward. It is also one of the early opportunities to get to know your new developer a little better outside of the recruitment process they went through.

When I first take on the management of a new developer I like to spend some time getting to understand how they like to work with their manager. I don’t believe in having a one size fits all management style and I want to be able to adapt how I work with each person that reports to me based on how they want to be managed. I want to give the engineers that report to me the best possible support and guidance I can in a way that suits them.