The best questions for your one-on-one conversations

As a manager, 1-on-1 contact with each employee is one of your most crucial tasks .

To help you with this, please find an updated selection of “The best questions for 1-on-1’s”. Get inspired and make it your own sincere questions. 

The best questions for a 1-to-1 

Good questions come from different perspectives: What does someone individually need to feel  good and function optimally?  How could things be better on the  team? What does it take in the  context? And what is expected of you as a manager?

1. Personal well-being

Make sure your team members feel like you care about them and that they can come to you. These questions can help show your commitment and interest:

1. How are you?
2. What are you most worried about?
3. How do you manage your work/life balance?
4. If there’s one thing I can do now to make that balance easier, what would that be?
5. How is your……. child / father/mother / partner…?
6. How do you take care of yourself, how do you recharge?
7. How do you keep in touch with your colleagues when you work at home?

2. Giving direction, achieving goals and development

Make sure to look forward by asking questions like these:

1. If you look at the current situation and look at what you’re good at, how do you think you can contribute best?
2. What do you need to achieve your goals?
3. What are the two things in your work environment that are now wasting the most time and where I might be able to do something about?
4. What’s the most important thing you’ve done last week/day, what’s the most important thing you’re going to be doing for the next week/day/month?
5. What can I do as a manager to make your job easier?
6. What other skill would you like to develop or deploy?

3. Improving team and organization

People who do the work know best what it takes to improve. Ask for their valuable insights:

1. Do you have everything you need to be able to do your job right now?
2. What do you think we should do better as a company?
3. What do you think about the way we are treating our employees?
4. How can we make our team meetings more effective?
5. How do you see your colleagues? Friends, acquaintances, strangers?
6. Do you feel like we’re still on the same page within the team? If not, what is needed now?
7. Are there (online) meetings that you think you should be there, or where you shouldn’t (be) there anymore?
8. Who in the company would you like to work with more?
9. Do you think the spread of workload within the team is good?

4. Give and receive feedback

Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback. Keep asking what you could do differently to support your employee even better.

1. What do you like and what do you like less about our contact ?
2. What parts of your work do you want more or less guidance from me?
3. What would you like to know about me?
4. Would you like to get help or coaching from anyone but me at the moment?
5. How can I better support you?
6. Name something I could do better right now?

Organizations only function optimally when the people who work there feel that they really matter. As a manager, you have a crucial role to play in this.

With the questions above you have a whole arsenal of questions in your toolbox. Use them as inspiration and make them your own sincere questions.

Get started

Do you want to dive into this a but further or get started right away?

Feel free to immediately plan a half hour sparring with Sandra Geelink directly in the agenda.