Here’s a quick test of how your one-to-ones are actually going.
If you cancelled next week’s one-to-one with each person on your team, how would they feel?
- Disappointed, because they were counting on that time?
- Neutral, because nothing important happens in them anyway?
- Quietly relieved, because it’s 30 minutes back in their diary?
If you’re honest with yourself, you probably know the answer for each person. And if the answer is “neutral” or “relieved” for most of your team, your one-to-ones have stopped doing their job. This may not have always been the case, but this can develop over time.
Most managers don’t realise that a one-to-one that’s become a status update isn’t just a wasted meeting. It’s actively working against you. It’s teaching your team that the time you set aside for them is really time set aside for you to check on the work.
I’ve made this mistake in the past and it’s easy for it to happen, especially in a busy environment where you feel like you need to get a status update from someone as opposed to slowing down and talking about them.
Sidenote – the same can happen with team meetings, especially recurring ones that easily become stale very quickly.
Today, I want to talk about how one-to-ones quietly turn into status updates, why that’s worse than not having them at all and the specific changes you can make to turn them back into the most valuable half hour of your week.
How one-to-ones drift into status updates (without anyone deciding they should)
Of course, nobody sets out to run bad one-to-ones. The drift happens gradually and it happens because status updates are *easier* for both of you – again, especially when you’re both busy.
For you as the manager, project talk is comfortable. There’s always something to discuss. You get information you genuinely need. The meeting fills itself and you leave feeling productive.
For your team member, project talk is *safe*. Reporting on work is low-risk. Talking about how they’re really doing, where they’re struggling, what they want from their career? That’s a little more uncomfortable. Given the choice, most people will happily let the conversation stay on the surface – especially if things aren’t going well at the moment.
So you both collude, without ever agreeing to. You open with “So, how’s it going?”, they answer with a project update because that’s the easiest way to answer a vague question, and 30 minutes later you’ve covered the work and nothing else. It’s funny how the time fills when you do this!
Here’s the compounding problem – every status-update that you run during a one-to-one makes the next one more likely to be a status update too. The pattern sets. And once it’s set, raising something personal or difficult feels like breaking an unwritten rule. Your team member would have to interrupt the format to tell you they’re struggling.
Which connects to something I wrote about recently. If asking for help already feels like a test they’re afraid to fail, a one-to-one that’s really a progress report gives them the perfect place to hide. They can attend every week, give polished updates and never once have to admit they’re stuck.
This also defeats one of the most important points of regular one-to-ones – catching issues early and preventing them from developing into bigger problems.
The signs your one-to-ones have become status updates
The first sign: you could swap the meeting for an email
At the end of a one-to-one, ask yourself: did anything happen in that conversation that couldn’t have been a written update? If the answer is regularly no, you’re not having one-to-ones. You’re having inefficient emails.
The second sign: you’re doing most of the talking
A status update is manager-led. You ask about projects, they answer, you respond with direction. A real one-to-one should be their meeting. If you looked at the transcript, they should own most of the airtime and most of the agenda.
Tip – if you get meetings automatically transcribed, you can run an AI tool over them and ask it to estimate who is talking most during a typical meeting.
The third sign: nothing ever surprises you
Good one-on-one meetings surface things you didn’t know. A frustration that’s been building. An ambition you hadn’t heard about. A worry about a colleague. If it’s been months since a one-on-one told you something you didn’t already know from the work itself, the real conversations are happening somewhere else. Or worse, nowhere.
The fourth sign: they get cancelled easily (by either of you)
When one-to-ones are valuable, people protect them. When they’re status updates, they’re the first thing to go in a busy week, because the information will flow through other channels anyway. Track how often yours actually happens. The cancellation rate is telling you something about how you both feel about them.
Five ways to turn status updates back into one-to-ones
1. Change the opening question
“How’s it going?” invites a project update. It’s vague, so people reach for the easiest answer and the easiest answer is always the work.
Try opening with something that can’t be answered with a status report:
- “What’s on your mind this week?”
- “What’s been the most frustrating part of your week?”
- “If you could change one thing about how we’re working right now, what would it be?”
If you know that someone may be struggling a bit and feeling a bit down, you could start with:
- “What’s one thing that went well this week?”
The first few times, expect a pause. They’re recalibrating what this meeting is for. That pause is the sound of the format changing.
2. Move the status update somewhere else
You do genuinely need project updates. The fix isn’t to pretend otherwise. It’s to give that information a different home so it stops taking up all of the one-to-one time.
A short written update the day before works well: three bullet points on progress, blockers and what’s next. Then open the one-to-one with: “I’ve read your update. Anything on there we need to dig into? If not, this time is yours.”
Ten minutes of project talk might still happen, and that’s fine. The difference is that it’s no longer the default content of the meeting.
3. Hand them the agenda (but give them scaffolding)
“It’s your meeting, bring whatever you want” sounds empowering, but it often produces blank looks, especially from junior team members and then the silence gets filled with project talk again.
Instead, give them a light structure to choose from. Something like: each one-on-one, pick one or two of these to bring…
- Something you’re stuck on or unsure about.
- Something about your development or career.
- Something about the team or how we work.
- Feedback for me.
That last one matters more than you think. If feedback for you is a standing menu option, raising it stops being a confrontation and starts being part of the format.
4. Ask the question behind the question
When something small surfaces, resist the urge to solve it in ten seconds and move on. Small comments in one-to-ones are often sometimes a test of you. Your team member floats something minor to see how you react before deciding whether to tell you the real thing.
“The handover from the design team was a bit messy” might mean exactly that. Or it might be the safe version of “I’m finding working with that team really difficult and it’s wearing me down.”
So follow up: “Say more about that.” Or: “How much is that bothering you, honestly?” You’ll be surprised how often the second answer is different from the first.
Sometimes, they’re just venting and it’s actually not a big deal. Other times, there is a simmering problem that you need to help solve.
5. Do a one-to-one audit every quarter
Once a quarter, check in on how the meetings are going and whether they’d like to switch things up.
- “Are these meetings useful to you? Honestly.”
- “What should we talk about more? What should we drop?”
- “What’s something you’ve never brought to this meeting but probably should have?”
You won’t always get full honesty the first time you ask. But asking at all signals that the meeting is theirs, and that you expect it to earn its place in their diary.
So, this week, try this with just one person. Before your next one-to-one with them, send a short message: “Small change to our one-to-one this week. Send me your project update in writing beforehand. The 30 minutes is for everything else: how things are really going, your development, anything on your mind. Come with whatever you like.”
Then in the meeting, ask your new opening question and let the silence sit until they fill it.
The first conversation might be awkward. The second will be better. And somewhere around the third or fourth, you’ll hear something you’d never have heard in a status update. That’s the moment the meeting starts doing its job again.
Because the point of a one-to-one was never to find out how the work is going. It’s to find out how the person is going, before the answer shows up in the work.
