Questions to ask in a 1-on-1 as a manager
The right questions uncover what your report is working on, where they're stuck, and what they need from you — context that's easy to lose. Good questions only help if you remember the answers next time.
As a manager, the right 1-on-1 questions uncover what your report is actually working on, where they're stuck, and what they need from you — context that's easy to lose between people and weeks. Good questions only help if you remember the answers next time.
Questions worth asking
- "What did you ship since we last talked, and what changed because of it?"
- "What's blocking you that I can clear?"
- "What growth do you want this quarter?"
- "What feedback do you have for me?"
- Interrogations that feel like status policing
- Questions you ask but never follow up on
- Advice before you've actually listened
- Anything that treats the 1:1 as your meeting, not theirs
The memory problem
With several reports, the details blur fast — what each person promised, what they were worried about, what you said you'd follow up on. Notes you can trust are the difference between coaching and guessing. Forgetting a reportee's blocker from last week quietly erodes the trust a 1:1 is supposed to build.
A private memory — never surveillance
To be unambiguous: this is your memory as a manager, for your benefit and your team's — not a system for monitoring people. Workfied holds only what you choose to note, nothing is pulled from company systems, and nothing is visible to your reports. The same principle that protects an individual's career memory protects yours.
How Workfied helps here
Workfied is your private memory for what each person told you and promised, so you walk in informed, not improvising. Built for you, never visible to your reports or your company. Encrypted in transit and at rest.
Evidence
The principle
This is your private record as a manager — never a tool to monitor your team or pull from their systems.
Workfied house view
Ask about
Four questions that surface real context — what shipped, what's stuck, what they want, how you're doing.
Manager practice
The problem
Across several reports, who-said-what fades fast. Trusted notes turn guessing into coaching.
Workfied house view