I like to make one-on-ones hyper minimal.
A friend asked for the questions or agenda I used. The whole thing fit into a short email.
The first half of the meeting was five questions. What did you do since the last one-on-one? What was challenging, and what went better than expected? Did anyone go beyond their normal work to help? Was anybody or anything an impediment? Did you understand the next ninety days and where your work fit?
The last question was for the manager: what could your manager do to help you be more successful?
There was an optional harder question too. Was last week positive or negative compared with the week before, and why?
That section should take fifteen minutes at most. The second fifteen minutes belonged to the employee. They could drive the discussion wherever it needed to go.
I asked for the written answers before the meeting. Not days before, just early enough that I could read them and arrive prepared. The point was not to create homework. It was to avoid spending the whole conversation reconstructing the week.
The important part was repetition. Use the same questions for four to six meetings before changing them. Themes only appear when the frame stays still long enough to notice them.
I had already admitted that my own management system had slipped. This was the small version of the system I still believed in.
There are plenty of good ways to run a one-on-one. This was one style I really liked.
Five questions. Fifteen minutes. Then shut up and let the other person talk.