Free printable · for managers
Free One-on-One Questions Card Sheet
You already hold the meeting. What goes wrong is smaller than "we don't do 1:1s well" — you arrive without a question, so you ask the only one that's always available, how's it going, and you get the only answer that question can produce. Then you fill the gap with status. These are twelve questions, one from each of the twelve situations in the full deck, printed on cards you cut out and keep wherever you take your notes. Every card carries its follow-up, because the follow-up is the part that does the work.
Take it with you — free, no signup
Direct download. No email, no account — just the files.
What it does
- Gives you twelve one-on-one questions, one from each of the twelve situations the full deck covers.
- Spans the range those situations cover: the standing check-in, the blocker nobody volunteers, career and growth, feedback about you, the report who says everything's fine, the one who's overloaded, the post-project debrief, the run-up to a review, a new report's first month, a remote report, skip-levels, and cross-team friction.
- Prints the follow-up on every card, not just the question. "What took most of your time since we last talked?" is a fine opener; "what would you have spent that time on instead?" is the reason it earns its place.
- Comes as three imposed US Letter sheets — four cards each — with corner cut guides at index-card size, so all you need is a home printer, some cardstock and a paper trimmer — there is nothing to assemble.
- Carries the set number, the set name and a colored edge on every card, so the twelve sort into order at a glance, by number as much as by color.
- Opens with the method in six steps: pick one, ask it and stop talking, listen for the specific, ask the follow-up printed on the card, close on who does what by when, and write down the commitment rather than the transcript.
- Names the four questions worth retiring today — how's everything, any blockers, any feedback for me, and are you happy here — and what to ask instead.
- Six pages, US Letter, already written. There is nothing to fill in and no blank template waiting for you.
Own it, don't rent it
Want the other ninety-six?
Twelve questions is a sample of a hundred and eight. The full deck adds two more fields to every card — the moment to use it, and the specific move for when you get a non-answer — and then adds the parts that decide whether any of this survives a busy month. The Router turns twenty-two things you might genuinely have noticed this week into three named cards, in order, with the reading behind that order: messages arriving late at night routes to the honest-hours card, then the cut-list card, then the one about the last real time off, because a person who is underwater cannot prioritize their own rescue. Twelve Pick-Three cards give you a pre-sequenced trio for each meeting you already run. A printable rotation log tracks which sets you've drawn from per report, because the workload questions are easy and urgent and the growth ones are neither. Plus three trim sizes for the question cards, imposed at-home sheets, a 22-page desk reference with a cross-index by what each question surfaces, printable session sheets, an editable Word file and a twelve-page Start Here playbook.
A one-time purchase, 135 print-and-cut cards you keep — the 108 questions plus the Router, Pick-Three, method and blank cards. No login, no seat, no renewal: print more when you need them, and print a second copy for the person you promote.
Notes you take in a 1:1 are candid, personal notes about a named person — treat them as an employee record wherever you keep them, paper included: keep them factual, keep them where only you and HR can open them, and follow your organization's rules on records and on compensation conversations. These are conversation prompts, not legal, HR, or employment-law advice, and not a substitute for your employer's policies or your HR team. Where a conversation touches conduct, a protected characteristic, an accommodation, or a grievance, that is an HR conversation before it is a management one. Free to use and to print for your own team; please don't resell or redistribute.