Workflows
Walk Into Your 1:1 Already Prepared
You shouldn't be opening Slack and Jira five minutes before a 1:1. One prompt and Claude pulls together a one-page brief: recent context, open items, three questions you should ask, two things you should be ready to answer.
On this page (9 sections)
How it works
Step 1 of 6
Your 1:1 is in thirty minutes.
You see it on your calendar. You haven't thought about the person all week.
Step 2 of 6
You drop the prompt into Claude.
One paste. Two minutes of your time.
Step 3 of 6
Claude pulls from email, calendar, and project notes.
Anything you've connected. Anything where this person shows up.
Step 4 of 6
Claude writes you a one-page brief.
Recent context, open items, three questions to ask, two answers to have ready.
Step 5 of 6
You skim it on the walk over.
Phone or laptop. Whatever's open.
Step 6 of 6
You walk in already knowing.
Honest, calm, prepared. Like you'd been thinking about it all week.
The prompt
Drop this into Claude with the person's name in the placeholder. Run it the morning of the meeting, not the day before.
Prep me for my 1:1 with [name]. Pull recent emails between us, the last 4 meeting notes I have on them, and any open project items where they're a stakeholder. Write a one-page brief with: Recent context (what's been happening with them), Open items (anything I owe them or they owe me), 3 questions I should ask them today, and 2 things I should be ready to answer. Keep it skimmable. I'm walking to the meeting in 5 minutes.
What you get back
1:1 brief: Sarah Chen · Friday 9:00 AM
Recent context
- Sarah took over the dashboard project from Marcus three weeks ago.
- Last sync (April 22): she flagged a Q3 headcount question for the Search team.
- Two stakeholder threads since then mention scope creep on the data platform.
Open items
- You owe her: a one-pager on the Match Maker roadmap (mentioned April 22)
- She owes you: clarity on whether the dashboard handover scope is final
- Both: the six-month roadmap Sarah asked for "early May"
Questions to ask
- Is the Q3 headcount conversation moving with leadership yet?
- What's the ceiling on what I can commit to in the dashboard handover before checking with you?
- Are you OK with me front-loading discovery work in the new scope, or should delivery commitments come first?
Be ready to answer
- "What does the new scope mean for the Match Maker roadmap?"
- "How are you thinking about Q3 OKRs given the recent reorg?"
Variations
Same shape, different relationships.
Prep me for my first 1:1 with [name]. I don't have any meeting history with them. Pull what you can find: any emails, any Slack or Teams threads, any documents they've authored or commented on. Help me build a profile: what they care about based on what they've written, who they collaborate with, where they sit in the org. Then suggest 5 open-ended questions I can use to get to know them.
Prep me for my quarterly check-in with [name]. It's been about 12 weeks since we last spoke. Pull our last 3 conversations and surface: what was outstanding then, what's changed in their org since, and what I committed to that I haven't followed up on. Don't sugarcoat the followups I missed. I'd rather walk in honest than blindsided.
Prep me for a skip-level with [name] (my manager's manager). Pull what you can on their priorities right now: recent emails or comms they've sent broadly, any docs they own, the projects they've been mentioned on. Then help me figure out: what does this person care about that's different from what my direct manager cares about, and what's worth raising with them that I haven't gotten traction on at the level below.
Tips and gotchas
Run it the morning of, not the day before. State changes overnight. That email Sarah sent at 11pm or that PR Marcus merged at 7am won't be in yesterday's snapshot.
Don't paste secrets into the prompt. Names, project names, meeting dates are fine. API keys, customer data, compensation numbers stay out.
If the person doesn't show up in the brief, give Claude a hint. "Sarah Chen, my manager since the reorg in March." One sentence of context fixes most cases where Claude couldn't find them.
Ready to try?
Prep me for my 1:1 with [name]. Pull recent emails between us, the last 4 meeting notes I have on them, and any open project items where they're a stakeholder. Write a one-page brief with: Recent context (what's been happening with them), Open items (anything I owe them or they owe me), 3 questions I should ask them today, and 2 things I should be ready to answer. Keep it skimmable. I'm walking to the meeting in 5 minutes.
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