I've been at my current position since November and starting to feel somewhat settled into the company. My manager was hired the week before I was, and has never managed people before so she's being a little too hands-off. I'm planning to ask her for regular 1 on 1 meetings with me, maybe every other week. Would love feedback from you all here on some questions I have:

Here is the basic (generalized) agenda:

• Asking for feedback on how I’m doing

• Let her know what do I need to finish my work, if anything

• Ask her what do I need to succeed at this role/company overall

• What are the opportunities for growth

• Are there any tasks I can help her with/take off her plate

• Any recent news/info from the management team

Is this a useful agenda? Anything I should add to it, or remove? As I mentioned, she's too hands-off and the company overall is really terrible about communicating, so my goal here is to stay informed so I can be more productive.

Also, how do I prevent it from turning into a bitch session? From the start she's had conflicts with one of our difficult coworkers, and complained about the coworker several times to the other managers, so her EQ isn't quite what it should be. While I'm doing fine with the coworker, brutal honesty forces me to admit that I can get sucked into complaining about all manner of things, when my actual goal it just to try to build rapport with the person I'm talking to.