If you’re like many managers, you treat your 1:1s with your team members as quick status updates. You’ll let your team members know where they’re excelling and improving, and where they could see some change. Perhaps you might suggest some ways they could propel themselves forward in their career and achieve more within their role.
However, that approach is not the most effective in 2025. Employees want managers who care, are empathetic, and human-led, according to recent research by Harvard Business Review.
That means adjusting your entire leadership and management approach. Your 1:1 meetings with team members should unlock growth and potential. The meeting should focus holistically on the employee–not just their performance on the job, but their professional growth and development as a whole.
The GROW model is a framework I used whenever I conducted one-to-ones with my team. The acronym was coined by coaching pioneer Sir John Whitmore, and is mentioned frequently in his book, Coaching for Performance, which I’d highly recommend you read.
(Coaching for Performance teaches you how to use the coaching leadership style to lead your teams to strong performance success, with some of the advice taken from sports coaching principles.) Instead of micromanaging or dictating, coaching brings the best out of your team and directly translates to high performance.
I’m not just saying that because I’ve read it from the book. I’ve seen it play out in my own leadership career, with my own teams.
Whenever I coached my teams individually and collectively, I saw superior results. My team was the highest performing team for six consecutive months within our region. We were the role model team in the company. We consistently achieved and exceeded KPIs. At one point, we exceeded our monthly targets by as much as 140%.
My team was fully engaged, and seven of my direct reports were able to progress and get promoted to other roles internally.
Why?
Because instead of being lazy with my management style, going through the performance review form, telling them what to do, handing out updates, and sitting back like that was the end of my job, I coached them using the GROW model.
This transformed our 1:1 conversations from a checkbox filler into what turned out to be the most valuable 30-60 minutes of the week/month.
How To Use The GROW Framework To Plan Your 1:1 Meetings
The GROW model acronym stands for:
G = GOAL
R = REALITY
O = OPTIONS
W = WILL or WAY FORWARD.
1. Goal
This is where it’s often too easy and tempting to jump into past performance first. But this is not the way you should start the one-to-one performance review meeting. Instead of discussing what the employee did well (or did not do so well,) reiterate or define, as the case may be, their long-term goals as well as their short-term goals.
These goals should extend beyond on-the-job metrics like sales targets, new accounts opened, etc. And they should extend to career goals that focus on learning and personal and professional development. You can even set upskilling goals. And you can even set PTO goals (yes, that’s a thing). Because, ironically, many employees don’t claim their full PTO each year, which causes burnout and decreased sales.
Other goals I set with my team include goals to complete specific actions they could take to advance their career and prove specific skills such as peer mentoring or stepping in to support another team.
2. Reality
R is Reality.
This is where you explore how their current reality, what’s happening now, their actions now, are impacting or progressing them towards their overall goals. For instance, this is where you’d ask questions such as:
- What challenges are you currently facing on this project?
- What support do you feel that you’re lacking?
- What have you tried so far and what have been the results?
This encourages your employee to be self-aware and reflect honestly.
3. Options
The O is for options.
It’s way too easy to give the answer and to provide a solution to your employee. But instead of doing this, take the curious approach of brainstorming together. Make it a collected effort, a partnership. In this way, you’re just facilitating their professional growth experience.
4. Way Forward
Once they’ve assessed their options, the final part is the W, which is the Will or Way Forward. This is where you get your employee to select from one of the options they discussed, and now develop concrete steps to achieve their short-term miniature goal, so they can achieve their overall medium-term and long-term goals. They tell you what they will do next to bring themselves closer to the ideal. This part is essential because it holds them accountable. They’re the ones creating the action plan, not you.
And they will feel more committed when they are creating the action plan than when you are. Always clarify what their commitment is before ending your 1:1 session.
These steps move your performance review from a simple check-in to a career coaching and growth session. It shows your employees that you care about them, that you trust them as competent human beings, and it provides them with autonomy while simultaneously boosting their performance.
Try this approach on your next one-to-one meeting with your team members this month, and watch how your employees become more motivated and their performance improves.