Ask engineers about one-on-ones with their manager and you'll hear two complaints more than any others: they're status updates in disguise, or they get cancelled whenever something more important comes up. Both are fixable. This post covers how to set up one-on-ones that people actually find useful, with a template you can copy and questions for the weeks when nobody has anything to say.
Whose meeting is it?
Andy Grove's advice in High Output Management still holds up: the one-on-one is the report's meeting, and its agenda and tone should be set by them. Your role is to create the space, ask good questions and follow through. If you arrive with a list of things you need and spend 25 of 30 minutes on it, you've held a status meeting.
That doesn't mean you bring nothing. It means the report's topics go first, yours go second, and anything that is purely status goes somewhere else: a stand-up, a ticket, a written update.
Cadence and length
There's no single right answer, but these defaults work for most teams:
| Situation | Cadence | Length |
|---|---|---|
| New to the team, or new to the role | Weekly | 30–45 minutes |
| Established, working independently | Weekly or every two weeks | 30 minutes |
| Going through something hard (performance, conflict, personal) | Weekly, plus ad hoc | As needed |
| Skip-level (your reports' reports) | Every 4–8 weeks | 30 minutes |
Grove tied frequency to what he called task-relevant maturity: the less experience someone has with their current work, the more often you meet. A senior engineer on a new kind of project may need weekly time again for a while.
Reschedule, don't cancel. Moving a one-on-one is normal. Cancelling it repeatedly sends a clear message about priorities, and the people most likely to have something important to raise are often the least likely to chase you for the time.
Keep a shared running document
A single shared document per person, newest meeting at the top, does more for one-on-ones than any technique. Both of you add topics during the week as they come up. Nothing gets forgotten, you can see patterns over months, and review season becomes much easier.
A template:
## 2026-09-25
Their topics
-
My topics
-
Decisions and follow-ups
- [ ] (who) what, by when
Notes
Two rules make it work. First, check the follow-ups from last time at the start of every meeting; nothing builds trust faster than a manager who does what they said they would. Second, keep private notes (anything about other people, anything sensitive) in your own notes, not the shared document.
Your first one-on-one with someone new
The first meeting sets expectations for all the others. Spend it learning how the person likes to work rather than on current tasks. Useful questions:
- What's gone well in one-on-ones you've had before? What hasn't?
- How do you like to receive feedback: in the moment, in writing, saved for our one-on-ones?
- How will I know when you're stressed or stuck? What should I do when I notice?
- What are you hoping to get better at in the next year?
- Is there anything about how you work that I should know? (Hours, focus time, communication preferences.)
- What would make you want to leave?
Write down the answers. Revisit them in six months; they change.
A question bank for quiet weeks
Some weeks the report arrives with nothing on the list. "Nothing to talk about" often means "nothing I've decided is worth raising", so have a few questions ready and rotate through them rather than asking the same ones every time.
Work and workload
- What's taking more of your energy than it should?
- If you could drop one thing you're working on, what would it be?
- Where are you waiting on someone else right now?
Team and collaboration
- Is there a decision the team made recently that you disagreed with?
- Who on the team or outside it has been especially helpful lately?
- What's one thing we do as a team that feels like a waste of time?
Growth
- What have you learned in the last month?
- What kind of work would you like more of? Less of?
- Is there anything you'd like to try that you haven't had a chance to?
About you, the manager
- What's something I could do differently that would help you?
- Is there anything I've said or done recently that didn't land well?
- What should I stop doing?
Questions about yourself work best when you ask them regularly and react well to the answers. The first few times, you'll mostly get "Nothing, it's fine." Thank people for any real answer, however small, and act on it visibly. That's how the answers improve.
Giving feedback in one-on-ones
One-on-ones are the natural place for feedback that needs a conversation, but don't save everything for them: positive feedback in particular is worth more when it's immediate.
For constructive feedback, a simple structure keeps it specific. The Center for Creative Leadership's Situation–Behavior–Impact model is a good default:
- Situation: when and where. "In Tuesday's design review..."
- Behavior: what they did, observably. "...you cut Priya off twice while she was explaining the caching approach..."
- Impact: the effect. "...and she didn't contribute for the rest of the meeting. We lost her input on the part she knows best."
Then stop and listen. Ask how they saw it. You may be missing context, and the conversation that follows is where the change actually happens.
Habits that ruin one-on-ones
- Turning them into status updates. If you need status, build a better way to get it.
- Doing all the talking. A rough guide: they talk at least two-thirds of the time.
- Looking at your laptop or phone. Especially on video, people notice.
- No follow-through. Promising to "look into" the promotion question and never mentioning it again is worse than saying no.
- Only meeting when there's a problem. Then every calendar invite feels like a warning.
- Surprises at review time. If something in a performance review is news to the person, it should have come up in a one-on-one months earlier.
Remote and hybrid teams
On distributed teams, one-on-ones carry even more weight because they replace the corridor conversations that never happen. Keep cameras optional but encouraged, start with a minute of non-work conversation (it isn't wasted time, it's how you notice when something's off), and put everything actionable in the shared document so it survives the call.
Try this next week
Pick one change rather than all of them:
- Create a shared running document for each report and add the template.
- At the start of each one-on-one, ask "What's on your list?" before saying anything else.
- End each one with "What should I stop doing?" and write down the answer.
If you're in your first year of leading a team, the PTMP study guide covers one-on-ones alongside the other team leadership fundamentals: delegation, planning, communication and feedback.