How I Use Monthly 1:1s to Notice Burnout, Blockers and Growth
During a recent OfferZen Leadership Lessons AMA, I was asked how leaders can create enough psychological safety for people to talk honestly during their 1:1s.
I spoke about trust, listening, and remembering that a 1:1 belongs to the team member, not the manager. I also mentioned the template I use to guide these conversations, particularly when someone is still finding their feet, is naturally quiet, or does not yet feel comfortable arriving with a list of things they want to discuss.
The host asked whether I could share it with the audience.
“I’ll write a blog post about it,” I said.
So, this is me keeping that promise.
You can download the template for free here:
The document itself is fairly simple. The more important part is understanding why each section exists, how I use it, and why I am perfectly happy to ignore most of it when the conversation needs to go somewhere else.
Why I created a new 1:1 template
Before creating this template, I used one I had found online. I worked with it for about a year, and there was nothing particularly wrong with it. It helped me hold regular conversations and gave those conversations some structure.
Over time, though, I realised I was not getting all the information I needed.
I would hear something in another meeting and think, “I should have known about this sooner.” A frustration on a project had been building quietly. Someone wanted to learn something but had never mentioned it. A team process was creating friction, yet nobody had found a natural place to raise it.
The original template was helping me have 1:1s, but it was not always helping me understand the person’s full experience at work. I needed something that would reveal more than a list of current tasks.
The idea for a different structure developed gradually through conversations with team members and things I noticed in other meetings. Eventually, I sat down and designed a template around the gaps. I wanted to understand how people were feeling, what was happening on their projects, where the company or team was frustrating them, what they wanted to learn, and what support they needed from me.
That information helped me do more than respond to the present moment. It helped me build a growth roadmap with each person and notice problems while there was still time to do something useful about them.
A guide, not a script
The most important page in the template might be the overview.
It establishes that the conversation is confidential and that, if something needs to be escalated, the team member should have a say in how that happens. If possible, I raise the concern without identifying them. If their identity cannot reasonably be separated from the issue, we discuss that before I take it further.
I have worked in places where details from 1:1s were casually repeated or people were called out because of something they had shared privately. That never sat right with me. People cannot speak openly when they are wondering where their words will travel after the meeting.
I keep my notes in my personal Notion space, where they are not generally available to the rest of the company. The team member can have access if they want it. During the conversation, I complete the template while sharing my screen so they can see exactly what I am recording. There is no mysterious second version containing “weird stuff,” which is not a phrase you will find in many formal leadership manuals, but it matters.
Confidentiality is only one part of making the conversation safe. The other is not treating the template like a form that must be completed.
Some 1:1s move through several sections. In others, I do not type anything into the template because the person needs to talk about one thing. That is completely fine. The goal is to understand them, not to reach the bottom of the document and feel pleased with my administrative efficiency.
The questions are there to open doors. The team member gets to decide which door we walk through.
Role and direction
The first working section covers current responsibilities, growth direction, the possible timeline towards a future role, and active projects.
Current responsibilities may seem obvious, but silent misalignment happens easily. A manager may think someone owns a particular area while that person sees themselves as temporarily helping with it. Someone may be carrying more responsibility than their title reflects, or they may be unclear about what is actually expected of them.
Writing down what they currently own gives both people a chance to check that they are working from the same understanding.
Growth direction shifts the conversation from “What are you doing?” to “Where do you want to go?” Not everyone has a perfectly formed answer, and I do not expect them to. The purpose is to begin learning what interests them, what they want to practise, and what kind of work they may want more of.
Once there is a clearer direction, the timeline towards a possible next role creates something shared to work towards. It is not meant to turn career development into a false promise or an arbitrary deadline. It gives us a destination that can inform the learning opportunities, projects, and feedback we prioritise.
The active-projects section then gives me a high-level view of where their attention is going. Together, these parts connect the work someone is doing now with the work they hope to do later.
Personal and project health checks
The health checks changed the most as I developed and used the template. They have also created some of its most useful conversations.
The personal health check asks the team member to give themselves a score out of ten and then explain what is contributing to it. The number alone is not particularly useful. The reason behind it is where the real conversation begins.
I am not using the score to diagnose anyone or to turn a human being into a dashboard. I use it to notice changes over time.
If someone usually gives themselves an eight or nine and suddenly drops to a five or six, I start asking what has changed. Sometimes they have simply had a bad week. In that case, I do not swoop in with a dramatic intervention. I listen, keep an eye on how they seem in meetings and on Slack, and check in again.
If the score is still low the following month, it is probably not just one bad week anymore. That is when I may suggest that they take some leave or we look more closely at what is draining them. The value is not in a single score. It is in the pattern, the explanation, and the conversation that follows.
Project health works in a similar way. For each project, we record a health score, a simple status, and some notes about what is influencing it. This helps me understand whether the work is moving along normally, whether risk is beginning to grow, or whether the person needs support.
It also stops me from intervening simply because I feel nervous from a distance. Sometimes a project is complicated but under control. Sometimes it looks fine in a status report while someone close to the work can see trouble approaching. The health check helps us distinguish between the two.
The hardware check-in
The hardware section is small because the conversation is usually straightforward: Is anything wrong with your device or tools, and is something making your work unnecessarily difficult?
This can feel mundane compared with a conversation about career direction, but small friction accumulates quickly. A slow laptop, unreliable connection, missing licence, or awkward development setup can quietly waste hours and make ordinary work more tiring than it needs to be.
People also do not always raise these problems on their own. They work around them because they assume a replacement will be too expensive, the issue is not important enough, or everybody’s machine is probably just as temperamental.
Asking directly gives them permission to say, “Actually, this is slowing me down.”
Personal growth
The personal-growth section covers technical development, areas to improve, achievements, blockers, and distractions.
When we discuss technical growth, I try to balance what excites the person with what will be valuable for the team. Growth is much easier to sustain when it connects genuine curiosity with opportunities to use the skill in real work.
Areas to improve broadens the conversation beyond technical ability. It might include communication, pull-request reviews, collaboration, estimation, or another skill that affects how someone works with the people around them. This is not supposed to become a monthly inventory of faults. It gives us a place to talk honestly about a skill they want to strengthen and the support or practice that might help.
Wins and achievements are recorded deliberately. In fast-moving teams, it is very easy to solve one difficult problem and move immediately to the next. Keeping track of progress gives both of us a more accurate view of the person’s development, and it means achievements are less likely to disappear when performance conversations or promotion discussions come around.
Blockers and distractions bring the manager’s responsibility back into view. My job is not only to ask why someone has not finished something. It is to help create an environment in which they can do their best work. If a process, dependency, recurring interruption, or unclear decision is getting in the way, I need to know whether I can help remove it.
Team and company feedback
This section asks what is and is not working well at both company and team level.
It exists because frustration does not always arrive labelled as feedback. It appears in side comments, changes in energy, repeated workarounds, or things people have quietly accepted because they do not believe anything will change.
When someone raises a problem here, my first job is to listen. It is not to defend the company, explain why the decision made sense, or immediately produce a solution before they have finished speaking.
Sometimes I can improve the situation directly. Sometimes I need to pass the concern to the person who can. Either way, these conversations help me see where frustration is gathering instead of discovering it much later, once it has hardened into disengagement.
This section depends heavily on trust. People generally do not offer honest company feedback in their first conversation with a new manager. Trust is built over months through what happens after they speak. If I listen without punishing honesty, protect their confidence, and follow through where I can, the conversations gradually become more open.
The template can invite honesty, but it cannot manufacture trust. My behaviour between the meetings has to do that.
Recognition
The recognition section is not about recognising the person in the 1:1. It gives them space to mention someone else who helped them, supported a project, solved a difficult problem, or did something they appreciated.
These contributions are easy to miss, especially when the work happens quietly between team members. Asking about special mentions helps surface the people who make someone else’s work easier but may not receive much visibility for it.
We used to have a Slack channel where people could publicly give colleagues a shout-out for the things they had done. The template therefore asks whether the person has acknowledged their colleague publicly. It is not intended to force public praise, but to provide a small reminder that appreciation does not always have to remain inside a private 1:1.
Sometimes a quick message in a shared channel helps the wider team see the effort, generosity, and collaboration that sit behind the work.
Support and the things that do not fit neatly anywhere
The final section asks where the team member needs support and whether there is anything else they want to discuss.
By this point, we may already have uncovered several things I can help with. Asking directly still matters. The person may need a decision, an introduction, protection from interruptions, help navigating a difficult conversation, or simply someone to listen while they work out what they think.
“Anything else” is intentionally broad. People do not experience work in tidy categories, and the most important part of a conversation may not belong under role direction, health, growth, or feedback.
Sometimes that final question is the one that changes the meeting.
How I use the template over time
Before each 1:1, I review the previous notes so I remember what was discussed and can follow up properly. People should not have to re-explain an important concern every month because their manager arrived with no memory of the last conversation.
During the meeting, I share my screen and complete the notes openly. We revisit role direction and project health each month because the repetition creates a useful baseline. Other sections can receive more or less attention depending on what is happening.
Afterwards, I deal with any action assigned to me as soon as I reasonably can. I do not wait until the next month to give feedback if I already have an answer. Follow-through is one of the clearest ways to show that the conversation mattered.
The document provides continuity, but it does not replace paying attention between meetings. If someone tells me they have had a difficult week, I notice how they seem afterwards. If a project is beginning to wobble, I do not wait for the next formal check-in before offering support.
The template is the beginning, not the relationship
A structured 1:1 can become mechanical very easily. A manager asks every question, records every answer, and leaves with the comforting evidence that the meeting happened.
That is not what I wanted to create.
I wanted a starting point for understanding what makes each person tick. The structure is especially helpful when someone is introverted, when trust is still developing, or when neither person quite knows how to begin. As the relationship grows, the conversation may need the template less. That is not a failure of the system. It may be a sign that the system has done its job.
Some of the most valuable 1:1s I have had were not about code at all. They were about someone feeling stuck, trying to work out their next career step, feeling tired, or simply needing another person to listen.
A template cannot create those conversations by itself. It can only make a little more room for them to begin.
Download the free template here:
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