Discussing growth and development in one-on-one meetings helps employees feel supported in their career progression. According to Spinach AI's 2019 State of One-on-ones report, 75% of managers include these topics, which is linked to higher employee engagement and productivity as supported by Gallup's State of the Global Workplace research.
Effective questions include: What areas of the company would you like to learn more about? Do you feel you’re getting enough feedback? What’s something you’d like to focus on next quarter? Who in the company would you like to learn from? What resources can help you excel further in your role?
Managers can ask about skills employees want to develop, how they’d use their education budget, what conferences they’d like to attend, and discuss work/life balance or professional goals for the next 6-12 months.
Common blockers include lack of feedback, insufficient resources, unclear career paths, and limited opportunities for learning or involvement in new projects. Addressing these in one-on-ones can help employees perform to their fullest potential.
Spinach AI provides AI-powered Meeting Insights, helping managers balance conversations, track growth topics, and ensure feedback and development are consistently addressed in one-on-ones.
Spinach AI offers features like Meeting Insights, agenda templates, and performance feedback tools to help managers structure and improve their one-on-one meetings.
You can sign up for Spinach AI for free and explore its features for running effective meetings, tracking goals, and sharing performance feedback. Visit the Spinach AI homepage to get started.
Check out Spinach AI's features for one-on-ones, explore the platform for running a high-performing organization, and share helpful resources with your network on LinkedIn or X (Twitter).
Regular feedback in one-on-ones increases emotional and psychological attachment to work, leading to higher productivity and performance, as shown by Gallup's research and Spinach AI's survey findings.
According to Spinach AI's 2019 State of One-on-ones report, 75% of managers discuss growth and development in their one-on-one meetings.
Managers can add growth and development as a recurring agenda item in every one-on-one meeting, using Spinach AI's agenda templates and Meeting Insights to track progress.
Questions include: What skills would you like to develop? How would you use your education budget? What professional goals do you want to accomplish in the next 6-12 months? Where do you see yourself in 5, 10, or 25 years?
Spinach AI's Meeting Insights and automated note-taking features help managers document discussions, track action items, and monitor employee progress over time.
Agenda templates ensure important topics like growth, feedback, and development are consistently covered, making meetings more productive and focused.
Spinach AI provides tools for sharing performance feedback quickly and efficiently, helping managers deliver actionable insights and support employee development.
Not discussing growth can lead to missed opportunities for employee development, lower engagement, and reduced productivity. Regular growth discussions help employees feel valued and motivated.
Spinach AI's Meeting Insights feature helps managers ensure a balanced focus on growth, communication, work, and motivation during one-on-ones.
Managers should integrate growth questions into their regular one-on-ones, explore Spinach AI's features for meeting management, and share best practices with peers.
Spinach AI enables managers to set, track, and review goals within meetings, ensuring alignment and accountability for both managers and employees.
Spinach AI's automated note-taking and meeting insights help distributed teams stay aligned, maintain clear communication, and ensure everyone is on the same page regardless of location.
By capturing and tracking discussions about career goals and aspirations, Spinach AI enables managers to provide targeted support and resources for employee development.
Spinach AI offers automated note-taking, action item tracking, AI-powered meeting insights, agenda templates, and seamless integrations with tools like Zoom, Slack, Jira, Salesforce, and more.
Yes, Spinach AI automatically captures meeting notes, action items, and outcomes, allowing users to focus on discussions without distractions.
Spinach AI integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Slack, Google Calendar, Microsoft Calendar, Jira, Trello, Asana, ClickUp, Linear, Monday.com, Notion, Confluence, Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, Attio, BambooHR, Rippling, Workday, OKTA, SCIM, Zapier, NetSuite, and SAP. For a full list, visit the Spinach AI integrations page.
Yes, Spinach AI provides a Transcript & AI Summary API, available on all plans. It allows users to access transcripts and AI-generated summaries for enhanced integration and automation.
Spinach AI offers comprehensive technical documentation, including printed and digital instructions, online help files, technical documentation, and user manuals. Visit the Spinach AI Help Center for more information.
Spinach AI streamlines administrative tasks, automates meeting recaps, proposals, and CRM updates, and integrates with popular tools to ensure smooth communication and collaboration across teams.
Yes, Spinach AI analyzes user feedback and meeting content to uncover trends, pain points, and opportunities, enabling data-driven decision-making for teams.
Yes, Spinach AI offers tailored features for various teams, such as PRD generation for product managers, sprint plans for engineering, and meeting insights for HR and recruiting.
Spinach AI's seamless integrations and automated updates help remote and distributed teams maintain alignment and improve communication, regardless of location.
Spinach AI is designed to improve workplace experiences by fostering feedback, transparency, and trust, while enhancing collaboration and productivity through automated meeting management and actionable insights.
Spinach AI automates onboarding and follow-ups for customer success teams, allowing them to spend more time building relationships and delivering value to clients.
Customers can expect time savings, improved workflow efficiency, enhanced decision-making, increased productivity, better customer engagement, and cost efficiency by reducing manual processes.
Spinach AI is designed for rapid implementation. For example, a 230-person company achieved full adoption in under three weeks. Free account setup, onboarding programs, and dedicated customer success managers are available for support.
Customers have praised Spinach AI for being intuitive and easy to use. For example, Josh Guttman (CRO at Altrio) described it as 'easy to install, intuitive, AI and automations are helpful and constant delivery of new features.'
The Starter plan is free and includes unlimited meeting recording, transcription, and basic AI summaries.
The Pro plan is pay-as-you-go, starting at $2.90 per meeting hour. It is designed for unlimited users and includes advanced AI features.
The Business plan costs $19 per user per month when billed annually (34% discount) or $29 per user per month when billed monthly. It includes unlimited meetings and advanced AI features.
Yes, the Enterprise plan offers advanced security, control, and customization with volume discounts. Pricing is custom and requires consultation with the sales team.
Spinach AI is certified for SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and HIPAA, ensuring adherence to industry-leading security and privacy standards.
Spinach AI uses best-in-class encryption, access controls, and intrusion detection software. It enforces a zero data retention policy with AI subprocessors and undergoes regular third-party audits.
Yes, Spinach AI is compliant with both GDPR and HIPAA, ensuring data privacy and protection for customers in regulated industries.
Spinach AI is designed for product managers, sales teams, customer success teams, engineering, HR, recruiting, and marketing teams. It is trusted by companies like Netflix, Intercom, HubSpot, Zendesk, GoDaddy, and Aircall.
Spinach AI solves problems like manual note-taking, repetitive administrative tasks, inefficient documentation, lack of actionable insights from meetings, and challenges in team alignment and collaboration.
Spinach AI tailors its features for each persona: product managers get PRD generation and insights, sales teams get CRM integrations, customer success automates onboarding, engineering teams use sprint planning, and HR/recruiting benefit from meeting insights.
Yes. For example, Kushal Birje (Senior Director of Revenue Operations at EDB) said, 'Spinach has 100% changed how our team handles meetings and projects.' Jason Oliver (Product Director) praised its specificity for product management, and Belén Medina (Do It Consulting Group) noted improved team communication.
Key benefits include automated note-taking, streamlined administrative tasks, improved workflow efficiency, AI-powered insights, customizable solutions, enhanced collaboration, and improved customer engagement.
Descript is known for audio/video editing and transcription. Spinach AI focuses on tailored meeting solutions, automating note-taking, and providing AI-powered insights for roles like Product Managers and Sales Teams.
Fireflies.ai offers transcription and meeting summaries. Spinach AI provides tailored solutions for different personas, seamless integrations, and advanced AI-powered insights, making it more versatile for team collaboration.
Otter.ai specializes in fast transcription. Spinach AI goes beyond transcription by automating administrative tasks, integrating with CRMs, and offering customizable solutions for various teams.
Meetgeek provides meeting summaries and insights for remote teams. Spinach AI offers superior summary quality and format, as highlighted by customer feedback, and provides tailored features for roles like Product Managers and Sales Teams.
Supernormal focuses on meeting summaries and automating follow-ups. Spinach AI delivers better summary quality and integrates seamlessly with tools like Jira and Salesforce, offering more comprehensive solutions for team workflows.
Trint specializes in transcription and video captioning. Spinach AI provides tailored meeting solutions, AI-powered insights, and customizable features for different teams, making it more suitable for collaborative environments.
Sonix offers automated transcription and translation. Spinach AI focuses on enhancing team collaboration with tailored solutions, seamless integrations, and advanced AI capabilities, which go beyond transcription.
Spinach.ai is enterprise-ready, offering robust security and compliance with SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and HIPAA certifications. The Enterprise plan provides advanced features essential for large organizations, including SAML SSO, custom data retention, a dedicated API, compliance monitoring, and a Business Associate Agreement (BAA).
25% of managers don’t discuss growth and development in their one-on-ones, even though it’s proven to make employees more productive and engaged.
Hiba Amin
In our recent report, The 2019 State of One-on-ones, we surveyed over 200 managers across multiple industries, experience levels and departments to uncover how they approach one-on-ones.
The report found that 75% of managers surveyed discuss growth and development within their one-on-one meetings. But, what about the other 25%?
TLDR:
Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace found that when employees have consistent performance feedback, they become emotionally and psychologically attached to their work and their workplace. As a result, employees are more productive and perform at a higher caliber. One of the factors determined by Gallup is that employees need to fill their personal growth needs. This includes:
In practice, meeting that threshold is more straightforward than it might sound. A brief check-in inside a standing one-on-one (asking what your direct report has been working on, what they feel proud of, and where they feel stuck) satisfies both criteria when done consistently. What matters is regularity. A growth conversation tied only to an annual review carries far less weight than a two-minute progress check woven into every meeting. Direct reports need to feel that their development is an ongoing topic, not a box you tick once a year.
If you feel like you could be discussing growth and development more often with your direct reports, your one-on-ones are the perfect place to do it. According to LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report, 88% of organizations are concerned about keeping pace with employees’ career growth, making it a conversation worth keeping on the agenda every quarter.
To start talking about growth and development more, try adding at least one of these questions to every one-on-one you have for the rest of the quarter. A quarterly career growth meeting template can help you structure that habit. And then do it again for the next quarter and the next.
A simple three-step approach works for most managers who are building this habit:
1. Pick one question per meeting. You don’t need a full growth-focused conversation every session. Start with one question from the lists below and build from there as the habit forms.
2. Write down what you hear. Growth conversations only compound if you can act on them. Keep a running note in your meeting doc covering what your direct report wants to learn, where they want to go, and what’s blocking them from getting there.
3. Follow up next time. If your direct report mentioned wanting to work on a specific project or skill, bring it up at the next one-on-one. This turns a conversation into a commitment, and a commitment into measurable progress.
Spinach is an AI notetaker that joins your one-on-ones and automatically captures growth-related action items and commitments, turning the conversation into structured follow-ups neither of you has to chase down. Get started free.
Dimension | Career growth questions | Personal growth questions |
|---|---|---|
Focus | Role progression, internal opportunities, skills needed to advance | The whole person: motivations, life goals, learning habits outside work |
Best timing | Quarterly check-ins, after a project wraps, or when a promotion cycle is approaching | When trust is in place and the direct report feels comfortable being open |
What to listen for | Which opportunities light them up; where they see blockers to moving forward | What motivates them outside day-to-day tasks; how their career fits their bigger picture |
Example question | “Where do you see yourself within the team in the next year?” | “What professional goals would you like to accomplish in the next 6 to 12 months?” |
What to do next | Note blockers and project interests; revisit at the next session | Use that context to shape project assignments and how you frame growth opportunities |
These questions are designed to open up a conversation about where your direct report wants to go inside the organization. You don’t need to ask all of them in one meeting. Pick one or two that feel relevant to what’s happening for that person right now. When you ask them, listen for what lights the person up and what feels like a stretch goal versus a distant dream. The answers tell you a lot about how to structure their projects and opportunities in the near term.
For example, if a direct report tells you they want to move into a leadership role within two years, that answer should change how you assign work starting at the next sprint. You look for chances to put them in front of cross-functional stakeholders, ask them to lead a project retrospective, or loop them into a decision they would not normally see. The question is a starting point. What you do with the answer is what turns the conversation into real career progress.
Personal growth questions shift the focus from the role to the whole person. These work best when trust is already built and your direct report feels comfortable being open with you. Go in without an agenda and without judgment. You’re not trying to solve anything in the moment. You’re trying to understand what matters to them, what motivates them outside of day-to-day work, and how their career fits into the bigger picture of their life. That context helps you show up as a better manager over the long run.
One way to build toward that kind of openness: start with lighter questions before working up to the bigger ones. “What professional book have you been reading lately?” is easier to answer candidly than “Where do you see yourself in 10 years?” Over time, those smaller exchanges create the conditions that make the deeper questions possible. When you do get a real answer, write it down. That context surfaces months later when you are framing a project assignment, making an introduction, or advocating for a stretch opportunity, and your direct report notices when you remember.
Career growth questions focus on role progression, internal opportunities, and skills needed to advance, best used during quarterly check-ins or after a project wraps. Personal growth questions shift to the whole person: motivations, long-term goals, and how their career fits their bigger life picture. These work best once trust is already established with your direct report.
Gallup research ties consistent performance feedback to higher employee engagement and productivity, so the goal is every quarter at minimum. A practical starting point: add one question from either the career or personal growth list to each one-on-one for the rest of the quarter, then repeat the habit next quarter.
Write down what you hear during the session, specifically what your direct report wants to learn, where they want to go, and what’s blocking them. Then bring it up at the next meeting. Spinach joins your one-on-ones and captures growth-related commitments and action items from each session automatically, so both you and your direct report have a clear record of what was discussed and what comes next.
Pick one question per session rather than running a full growth review each time. Start with something like “What’s one thing you really wanted to do last quarter but didn’t get a chance to?” It takes under two minutes to ask and often surfaces blockers or aspirations you wouldn’t hear otherwise. Build from there as the habit forms.
Use career growth questions during structured checkpoints: quarterly reviews, post-project wrap-ups, or when a promotion cycle is approaching. Save personal growth questions for sessions where trust is already in place, since questions like “Where do you see yourself in 10 years?” require your direct report to feel comfortable being open with you before they’ll give you an honest answer.
Now that you've read this article, here are some things you should do:
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