Your One-to-One Toolkit Is Ready

Transform Your One-on-One Meetings: Essential Tools for Busy, Ambitious Managers and Leaders
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Practical tools to help you run clearer, more useful one-to-ones with your team

Your one-to-ones should be more than a quick progress update.
Done well, they give you the space to understand what is happening, coach your team, address problems early and build the trust that good leadership depends on.
This toolkit gives you practical templates, questions and guidance to help you prepare well and make each conversation count.

Bookmark this page so you can return to the resources whenever you need them.

Quick-start instructions 

You do not need to use everything at once.
  Download the templates to your shared drive 
 Choose 1 tool to use this week
  Block 10-15 minutes to prep before each 1:1
 After the meeting, make a quick note of what worked and what you want to improve next time.
  Repeat weekly and notice the difference

The more consistently you use these tools, the easier good one-to-ones will become.
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The Toolkit introduction

Your One-to-One tools and templates

Each resource is designed to help you prepare more quickly, have better conversations and follow through on what matters.

1:1 Meeting Template

Use this as a shared working document with each team member.
It gives you one place to capture the important points, decisions and actions from your conversations. It also makes it easier to follow up, notice patterns and prepare for future development or performance reviews.

Feedback Cheat Sheet

Feedback is easier when it is part of your regular conversations, rather than something saved up for a formal review.

This guide gives you a simple structure and useful prompts for raising feedback clearly, fairly and constructively.

50 Questions to Spark your 1:1s

A good question can change the direction of a conversation.
Use this guide to move beyond status updates and encourage reflection, problem-solving and ownership. Choose the questions that fit the person and the conversation.

Performance Review Guide

Performance reviews should not contain surprises.

This guide will help you use your regular one-to-ones to keep expectations clear, discuss progress and development throughout the year, and make formal reviews more useful for everyone involved.

Meet your guide...

Hi, I’m Helen Bryant

I help mid and senior managers escape the busyness trap and become more strategic, confident leaders.

Before becoming a leadership coach, I spent more than 15 years in senior leadership roles at PepsiCo, Cadbury Schweppes and Britvic, leading teams of up to 150 people.

When I was in corporate life, a mentor gave me a piece of advice that has stayed with me ever since:“You need to create time in your diary, not just to be in the work, but to lead it.”

That is particularly true of one-to-ones.

When your week is busy, it is easy for them to become another update meeting. You work through a list, solve a few problems and move on to the next thing.

But your one-to-ones are some of the most important leadership conversations you have.

They are where you build trust, clarify expectations, understand what is really happening and help people think through challenges for themselves. They are also where you notice the things that dashboards, project plans and AI summaries cannot tell you.

I now help leaders build practical ways of working that create more time for this important human work. That means using systems and AI to reduce unnecessary preparation and admin, while strengthening the judgement, coaching and conversations that only you can provide.

Because leading through AI does not mean removing the human element from leadership. It means using AI well, so you have more capacity for what I call the Human Zone: judgement, trust, coaching, accountability and the conversations that move people forward.

I hope these resources help you prepare more easily and make your one-to-ones some of the most valuable time in your week.

Helen Bryant
Leadership coach and former corporate leader
 Founder, Growthinc
AI section

Use AI to prepare for your next one-to-one

AI can help you review your notes, spot themes and prepare useful questions. It cannot replace the judgement, care and trust you bring to the conversation.
Remove any sensitive or confidential information before adding meeting notes to an AI tool, and follow your organisation’s AI and data policies.
You can use the following prompts with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot or another approved AI assistant.
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Watch this video to find out how.

The Prompts

Prompt 1: Review the context
I'm preparing for a one-to-one with a member of my team. Below are my notes from our previous meetings. Please summarise:
- the main themes or challenges they are working through
- any commitments or goals they've mentioned
- topics that have not yet been resolved or revisited
- patterns in what appears to matter to them or what they may be finding difficult
Keep the summary concise. I need a quick refresher before the meeting.

Previous meeting notes: [Paste your notes here.] 

Prompt 2: Prepare Coaching Questions
Based on this summary, suggest four or five open coaching questions I could use in the next one-to-one. Questions should:
- Help the person think through the challenges rather than simply report progress.
- Build on topics discussed previously.
- Encourage reflexion and ownership.
- Support a useful developmental conversation.
- Avoid leading questions and generic management language.
- Focus on questions that will help the person think and decide what to do next.
Video Section

Watch the one-to-one lessons

The templates will help you get organised. The video lessons will help you use them well.
Watch the full tutorial for a practical guide to preparing, structuring and leading useful one-to-ones. You can then return to the shorter lessons whenever you want to strengthen a particular part of the conversation.

Put the toolkit into practice

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Your next one-to-one is the best place to begin.

Download the resources, choose the one that would be most useful and give yourself a few minutes to prepare before the meeting.

Do not worry about running a perfect conversation. Listen carefully, ask one more question before offering an answer, and agree on the important next steps before you finish.

It is in the practice that you will find what works for you and your team.

Keep building your leadership practice

Over the next few emails, I’ll share more practical ideas to help you use these resources, improve your leadership conversations and find more time to lead the work, rather than being pulled into all of it yourself.
For now, choose one resource and use it in your next one-to-one.
That is enough to get started.

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