This article originally appeared on Business Insider.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jade Bonacolta, a 31-year-old in Miami who began her career at LinkedIn and is now the head of North American marketing at Google. Her employment and promotion history have been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
After graduating from Columbia University in 2015, I landed a job at LinkedIn in San Francisco.
During the six-and-a-half years I was at LinkedIn before joining Google in 2022, I was promoted five times, beginning as an associate in the Business Leadership Program and leaving as the head of marketing for enterprise technology.
A lot of my promotions came from the way I handled my one-on-one meetings with my manager.
Preparing pre-reads for my one-on-ones
Most people go into one-on-ones taking a more passive approach, expecting their manager to present to them and tell them what to do. But managers often have teams of five or more people, so having weekly meetings with each of them can be a lot to juggle.
I noticed that my first manager would generally ask me the same things in every call — “How did this week go? What are you working on next week and where do you need help?” I knew I wanted to be more proactive and make those meetings more efficient.
I began spending an hour beforehand writing up what I called a “pre-read.” I would draft a simple email with three sections: what went well for me this week, what I’m focusing on next week, and one new idea or interesting innovation to suggest for our team.
I would send it to my manager before we met and bring my copy to the meeting to help guide our conversation.
My manager told me he found the pre-reads incredibly helpful; they made our conversations far more productive and helped him feel completely aware of my work. He found the format so useful that he asked the rest of my team members to follow the strategy for their one-on-ones as well.
3 things that make an effective pre-read before a 1:1 meeting
1. What went well
First, I created a “wins” folder, and every time I had a win throughout my week, I would add it to the folder.
For example, if, when working with the sales team, I received an email from one of the leaders saying, “I am so impressed with the questions you asked my team and the way you provided value,” that email would go straight into the wins folder. I would then pull from that folder when making my pre-read email to my manager.
I understood that I could be doing the best work in the world, but it didn’t matter if the right people didn’t know about it; if I wanted to be promoted, I needed to be visible.
I’d also save all of my wins in a document and share it with my manager to make it easier to write my performance review and build a case for my promotion.
2. What I’m working on
Managers are often expected to tell their employees what they should be working on. However, it can also be helpful and beneficial if the employees show proactiveness.
After sharing what I did the week before, I would then say, “Here’s what I think I should work on next week.” Some of these were ongoing projects, while others were new initiatives I was introducing.
When it came to projects, I had a pretty strong instinct on the direction I wanted to take my career, and I made the promotion I wanted clear to my manager. I asked them, “Are there any projects I could work on that allow me to start building those skills?”
I also tried to anticipate where I might need my manager’s help. I’d ask myself: “What could possibly go wrong next week?” and “Which person do I need to connect with next week that I might need an introduction to from my manager?”
This way, I could ask my questions all at once in the meeting rather than throughout the week.
I also tried to proactively come up with solutions, rather than just present problems.
For example, I might say to my manager, “It seems like we have to get our budget in by this date, so is there a way that I can submit this earlier this week in order to make sure that that deadline doesn’t sneak up on us?”
3. One new idea
In my pre-read, I’d also share one new idea.
Throughout the week, I would pay attention to things that my manager found frustrating or inefficiencies that came up over the past week — things that had simple fixes.
Then, in my one-on-one meetings, I’d offer an idea or solution to solve those issues. I realized that the ideas didn’t have to be big. In fact, when presenting a new idea, the key is to make it small, as you don’t want to take on an unhealthy amount of work and burn out, or neglect the main parts of your job.
Once, my team and I were doing really great work, but no one in our broader organization knew much about it. As I wanted to lean more into the marketing world, I asked my manager, “What if we started a very quick, regular newsletter?”
My manager agreed.
I took on ownership of that newsletter. Every month, I consolidated and sent out the newsletter to the entire organization, sharing updates on what our team was doing. It was simple, and other teams weren’t doing it, and I was reaching the leaders of other teams.
When those leaders would reach back out to my manager about how the newsletter was great, my manager would respond: “It was actually her idea. I didn’t even ask her to do that; she just volunteered to take this on.”
Spending an hour to prepare was worth it to give my manager visibility
I’ve repeated this process in every new role I’ve taken and every new manager I’ve had at Google. My managers have loved it, and I’ve received incredible feedback whenever I’ve done it.
Even in my now senior-level role, my leadership team deeply appreciates my weekly status updates and new ideas for the team. They treat me as a thought partner rather than just a direct report.
Making the most of one-on-one meetings gives your leaders more visibility into all the work you’re doing.
