What should be on a one-on-one meeting agenda?

The report’s items first, then the manager’s, then one bigger question about growth, feedback or how things are going, and finally a read-back of follow-ups with one owner each. Carried-over items from the last meeting go at the end.

How often should managers hold one-on-ones?

Weekly or every other week, for about 30 minutes, at a fixed time. New reports and remote teams usually benefit from weekly meetings. Moving or canceling them often signals that they do not matter.

What questions should I ask in a one-on-one?

Open questions about workload, blockers, how the team works, feedback in both directions and growth. For example: what is taking more time than it should, what could I do differently to help, and what would you like to be doing more of six months from now.

Where should one-on-one notes be kept?

In a running document shared only between the manager and the report. Work follow-ups can be filed as tasks on the team board, but anything personal, such as health, pay or feelings about a teammate, stays in the private document.

One-on-One Meeting Template for Managers

A one-on-one belongs to the person who reports to you. A 30-minute agenda that puts their items first, questions for when they bring nothing, a first one-on-one with a new report, where private notes go, and how follow-ups become tasks without anything sensitive landing on the team board.

September 30, 20267 min read

A good one-on-one meeting template has four parts in this order: the report’s items first, then the manager’s, then one question about growth or how things are going, and finally a two-minute read-back of follow-ups, each with one owner. Hold it for 30 minutes, weekly or every other week, in a document only the two of you can open, and add items to it during the week rather than five minutes before. Status updates stay out; the board carries those. The template, questions for a quiet week, a version for the first meeting with a new report, and how follow-ups turn into tasks are below.

This page covers the meeting and its private notes. How to write the resulting actions so they get done, with a verb, one owner and a done-when line, is in meeting action items, and is not repeated here.

What a one-on-one is for

A one-on-one is the report’s meeting. GitLab’s guide to 1-1s (opens in a new tab) says both people add items, “Preferably, the majority added by the team member,” and that if the manager puts more than half the items on the agenda, something is wrong. It also suggests the manager aim for about 20% of the talking. That is a useful check at the end of each meeting: who did most of the talking?

For: workload and blockers only the manager can clear, friction with people or process, feedback in both directions, career goals, and anything the report is worried about.
Not for: reading out task status. If the team board is current, status is already known. Ask about the one stuck item, not all of them.
Not a performance review. Feedback should be given as it happens, not saved up. The one-on-one is where it gets discussed, not where it first appears.

The one-on-one meeting template

One-on-one template (one running document, newest meeting on top)

# [Report] / [Manager] 1:1, [Month day, year]

## Their items (added during the week)
- [topic] ...
- [topic] ...

## My items
- [topic] ...

## One bigger question (rotate, see list)
- Q: ...
  Notes: ...

## Follow-ups (read back before we finish)
- [ ] [Verb] [what]. Owner: [one name]. Check: next 1:1
- [ ] ...

## Carried over from last time
- [ ] [item] | Owner: [name] | done / in progress / blocked: why

One running document, newest meeting at the top. Scrolling down shows six months of conversations, which is invaluable before a review and when either of you changes roles.
Their items first, even if yours feel more urgent. If time runs out, it should run out on your items.
Timebox: about 15 minutes for their items, 5 for yours, 5 for the bigger question, and a few minutes for follow-ups.
Keep the carried-over block. It is how promises made in a one-on-one, especially the manager’s, get kept.

Questions for when they bring nothing

An empty agenda does not mean everything is fine. Keep a short list and rotate one or two in; asking all of them turns the meeting into a survey. Open questions work better than yes-or-no ones: “How has this week gone?” leaves room, where “All good?” invites “Yep.”

Work and workload

What is taking more time than it should?
Is there anything you are waiting on that I could unblock?
If you could drop one thing from your plate, what would it be?

Team and process

Which part of how we work together is slowing you down?
Is anyone you work with making things harder, or easier, than you expected?
What do you know about the work that you think I do not?

Feedback, both directions

What is one thing I could do differently that would help you?
Is there feedback you have been meaning to give me?
Here is one thing I noticed this week that went well, and one I would change. What is your read?

Growth

What would you like to be doing more of six months from now?
What skill would make your work easier if you had it?
Which recent piece of work are you proudest of, and why?

The first one-on-one with a new report

The first meeting sets how the rest will go, so spend it on how you will work together rather than on work. Leave it longer, 45 minutes, and write the answers down: they are the reference you will come back to.

First one-on-one agenda

# First 1:1, [Report] / [Manager], [Month day, year]

1. How you like to work
   - Best time of day for focused work? For meetings?
   - How do you prefer feedback: written, live, right away?
   - What should I do if I think something is off?
2. How I work (manager goes)
   - When and how to reach me; what counts as urgent
   - What I will ask you about, and what I will not
3. This role
   - What does a good first 90 days look like to you?
   - What worries you about it?
4. How we will run these
   - Weekly or every other week? Same slot?
   - This doc: add items any time during the week
5. Follow-ups

Keep the notes private

One-on-one notes hold things that should not be on a shared board: how someone feels about a teammate, health or family matters, pay, career plans. Keep them in a document shared with exactly two people. In Google Docs, sharing settings (opens in a new tab) let you give a named person Editor access so both of you can add items, without opening the file to anyone else.

Write notes both of you would be comfortable reading back. The report can open the document too, and that is the point.
Record facts and agreements, not diagnoses or guesses about motives.
If something comes up that HR or legal needs to know about, handle it through the proper channel, not in the running notes.

Follow-ups become tasks, carefully

Most follow-ups are ordinary work: fix the flaky deploy step, get Priya access to the billing dashboard, write up the refund process. Those belong on the team board with everything else, the same day, so they get prioritized instead of waiting for the next meeting. Write each one so the owner is obvious. Digital.gov’s plain language guide (opens in a new tab) makes the point that “Active voice makes it clear who should do what,” and a follow-up in the passive voice (“access will be sorted out”) belongs to nobody.

Everything personal stays in the private document. The test before filing: would you be comfortable with the whole team reading this task? If not, it is a note, not a task.

On a fenbs board

Each work follow-up becomes a task with its kind, feature, enhancement or bug, and a priority from 1 to 10, where 1 is the most urgent. fenbs has no assignee field you can set and no due dates, so write the owner and the check-in on the first line of the note. Flag the task for yourself and it is easy to find again before the next one-on-one; a flag can also be set for everyone on a team board, so keep one-on-one flags personal. When the follow-up is a decision rather than work, such as “we agreed Priya owns the release checklist from now on,” record it on the Decisions and rules page with the person who decided it.

If an AI assistant is connected to the board over MCP, it can file the work items from your notes, but show it only the follow-ups, never the whole private document, and have it list them for you before it files anything. The MCP specification (opens in a new tab) says there should always be a human in the loop with the ability to deny tool invocations.

Prompt, with fenbs connected over MCP

Here are the work follow-ups from today's 1:1 (only these, not the notes):
[paste the follow-ups]

1. Rewrite each as a task title starting with a verb.
2. Show me the list and wait.
3. When I say go: fenbs_search for each first and comment on any
   match. File the rest with fenbs_create_item, note first line
   "Owner: [name] · Check: next 1:1". Do not add anything personal.

Remote and async one-on-ones

Remote teams need one-on-ones more, not less, because nothing gets noticed in passing. Keep video on for the ones that matter, and consider alternating a live meeting with a written check-in in the shared document when schedules are tight. The wider habits for a small distributed team are in managing a remote team, and the rules for what goes in writing are in async communication.

Common one-on-one mistakes

Canceling when busy. It tells the report their meeting is the first thing to go. Move it, and move it rarely.
Turning it into a status meeting. Ask about the stuck item, not the whole list.
The manager talking most of the time.
No written follow-ups, so the same topic comes back each week unchanged.
Personal notes filed where the whole team can read them.

Writing the actions so they get done: meeting action items template. Handing work to someone clearly: how to delegate tasks. Goals to discuss: SMART goal examples. A small team working apart: managing a remote team.