The key insight:
A one-on-one is the only recurring meeting in your week where the agenda belongs to someone else. If you do most of the talking, it has become a status update.
Search for one-on-one meeting questions and you will find lists of fifty. They are not wrong, but a list is not a plan. A director who reads fifty questions and uses five at random has a better-sounding meeting and the same relationship. What makes a one-on-one work is knowing what each conversation is for, and choosing the question that serves that purpose.
This guide organises the questions by purpose, shows how they change when your direct reports are managers themselves, and ends with a cadence and a short template. It is about the regular meeting with your own direct reports. It is not about meeting the level below them, which our guide to skip-level meetings covers, and it is not a set of feedback scripts, for which see feedback examples for managers.
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What a one-on-one is for
The University of York's HR guidance on one-to-one meetings describes them as "the art of the continuous conversation", used to review progress, identify development needs and take pressure off the annual review. It suggests agenda themes that cover wellbeing, progress on objectives, workload and learning and development, and describes a simple 10 to 15 minute pulse check as an option, with frequency tailored to the individual.
Research points the same way on what matters. A doctoral study at UNC Charlotte, summarised on the university's graduate school site, surveyed 303 people at two points in time and found that the quality of the meeting, and relationship-oriented behaviour in particular, mattered more than how often it happened, as long as it took place at least monthly. The implication is practical. You do not need a longer or more frequent meeting. You need a better one, and a better one starts with the person you are meeting doing most of the talking.
Five purposes, and the questions that serve them
Rotate through these over a month rather than trying to cover all five every time.
Priorities
The purpose is to make sure effort is pointed at the right things and that you both mean the same thing by "important".
- What is the most important thing you are working on this fortnight, and why that one?
- If you could only finish one thing before we next meet, what would it be?
- Is there anything on your list you think we should stop doing?
- Where do you think my priorities and yours are not quite lining up?
Blockers
The purpose is to find what is slowing the person down, especially what only you can remove.
- What is the thing slowing you down that I could take off you?
- Where are you waiting on a decision, and from whom?
- Which stakeholder is making your job harder, and what have you already tried?
- What would you do about this if you did not need my permission?
Development
The purpose is to keep growth on the agenda between reviews. This is where a development plan lives or dies: written once and forgotten, it does nothing, while a plan checked in every other conversation changes behaviour. Our guide to individual development plan examples covers how to write one.
- What did you do in the last month that you would not have been able to do a year ago?
- Which part of your role stretches you at the moment, and which has become comfortable?
- What do you want to be doing in two years, and what is the biggest gap between that and today?
- What piece of my work would you like to take on, and what would I need to hand over?
Wellbeing and energy
The purpose is to notice trouble early. Keep it about workload and energy, which you can act on, and let the person decide how much more to share.
- How is your workload, honestly, compared with a month ago?
- What is giving you energy at the moment, and what is draining it?
- Is there anything about how we are working that is not sustainable?
Feedback upward
The purpose is to learn how you land. It is the question leaders skip most often and gain from most.
- What is one thing I could do differently that would make your job easier?
- Where have I been unclear about what I want?
- When did you last feel I got in the way of a decision you should have made?
Ask for one answer and then stop talking. If the first reply is polite, wait. People take their cue about candour from how you react the first time they give you some.
When your direct reports are managers
At director level and above, most of your reports run teams of their own. The questions change because you are no longer only managing delivery. You are developing a leader, and what happens in their team is a leading indicator of what will happen in yours.
- How are your own one-on-ones going, and which of your people are you most worried about?
- Where are you stepping in to rescue something you should have delegated? Our guide to delegation skills covers the pattern.
- Which of your people is ready for more, and what is stopping you giving it to them?
- Who on your team do you think should not be in their role, and what are you doing about it?
- What do you need from me to lead this team better?
These questions test judgement and leadership habits, not only output. A manager who cannot name the person on their team they are worried about is either not close enough to them or not willing to tell you.
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For most senior direct reports, weekly or fortnightly at 30 minutes works. For a manager with a large team, 45 minutes fortnightly is a sensible default. Whatever you choose, protect it. A cancelled one-on-one tells the other person where they rank.
A simple structure keeps it honest:
| Segment | Minutes | Whose agenda |
|---|---|---|
| Open: how are you, and what do you want to cover? | 3 | Theirs |
| Their topics: priorities and blockers | 12 | Theirs |
| Your topics: anything you need to raise | 5 | Yours |
| Development: one question from the plan | 5 | Shared |
| Agree actions and write them down | 5 | Shared |
The University of York's guidance recommends agreeing actions in the final minutes and capturing a couple of summary sentences in a shared document, which keeps administration light and makes the annual review easier. Do it in the meeting, not afterwards.
Your own pattern shows up in the meeting
How you run a one-on-one reflects how you lead. A leader with high drive tends to turn it into a status update and leave with a list of tasks. A leader strong on relationships can spend the whole slot on the person's week and never reach a decision. Neither is a flaw to be ashamed of, but both are patterns you can correct once you can see them.
That is what the free 50-question Leadership Psychometric is for. It scores five dimensions: Vision Thinking, Execution Drive, Influencing Power, People Intelligence and Composure. If you want to see what it covers first, there is a public overview of the Leadership Psychometric; when you are ready, take the free Leadership Psychometric, which takes 10 to 15 minutes. Read the result as a prompt for the next meeting: which of the five questions above would a leader with your profile be least likely to ask?
Boards face the same problem at a different scale. JOH Partners' view of why a board needs its own line of sight into capability and retention risk starts from the fact that people topics usually reach directors filtered into pay and succession. A regular, well-run one-on-one is the smallest working version of the same remedy: a direct read, not a filtered one. For more on this theme, see our Leadership coverage.
Key Takeaways
- A list of questions is not a plan. Decide what each conversation is for: priorities, blockers, development, wellbeing or feedback upward.
- Research suggests meeting quality, especially relationship-oriented behaviour, matters more than frequency, as long as you meet at least monthly.
- A short, protected meeting is better than a long one that gets cancelled. A short 10 to 15 minute pulse check can be enough for a stable relationship.
- When your reports are managers, ask about their team and their own one-on-ones. You are developing a leader.
- Agree actions before the meeting ends and write them down, in the room.
- Your leadership pattern shows up in how you run the meeting. The free Leadership Psychometric makes it visible.
Frequently asked questions
- What are good one-on-one meeting questions?
- Good questions are open, specific to the person and tied to one of five purposes: priorities, blockers, development, wellbeing and feedback upward. Examples are what is the most important thing you are working on this fortnight, what is slowing you down that I could remove, and what is one thing I could do differently that would help you. The aim is for the other person to do most of the talking.
- How often should you have one-on-ones with direct reports?
- Weekly or fortnightly suits most senior leaders, with the frequency set by the person's experience and the pace of the work. The University of York's guidance describes a simple 10 to 15 minute pulse check as an option, so the meeting need not be a long formal session. A doctoral study at UNC Charlotte found that the quality of the meeting mattered more than frequency, provided it happened at least monthly.
- How do one-on-one questions differ when your reports are managers?
- Shift from the work to the team they run. Ask how their own one-on-ones are going, which of their people worries them, where they are rescuing instead of delegating, and what they need from you to lead better. You are developing a leader, so the questions should test judgement and leadership habits, not only delivery.
- How long should a one-on-one meeting be?
- Thirty minutes is a sensible default for a senior direct report, and forty-five for a manager who runs a large team. Shorter is fine for a stable relationship. What matters is that the time is protected and that you do not cancel it when the week gets busy, because a cancelled one-on-one tells the other person where they rank.
- How do I know if my own leadership style is getting in the way of my one-on-ones?
- Look at who talks, who sets the agenda and what happens to the actions. If you talk more than half the time, or the meeting ends without a written action, your pattern is showing. The free 50-question Leadership Psychometric scores five dimensions of how you lead, including Execution Drive and People Intelligence, which makes the tendency visible so you can correct for it.
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