Looking to make one-on-one meetings more productive? Nine questions to ask your employees

One-on-one meetings can be great opportunities for employees and managers to connect on goals, reassess tasks, and brainstorm ideas, but they can also turn into wasted time if not properly exploited. If there is no agenda to follow or if neither party knows what to discuss, the meeting may end early and with no real progress.

However, by asking the right questions, managers can better understand their team members, discover what truly motivates them and what prevents them from achieving their goals. To help, nine members of the Young Entrepreneur Council share some of the questions they like to ask in one-on-one meetings and why they think those questions help improve the quality of their conversations.

1. 'What are your personal, financial and professional goals?'

I always ask my employees about their professional, financial and personal goals. This way, we can align their career with the outcome they dream of. The question itself shows them that you care and positions you as a team member alongside them, supporting their own individual success, which naturally goes hand in hand with more loyalty and support for your company. I think many business owners are afraid to ask open-ended questions like this because their employees might expect too much from the company, but we've had the opposite effect. Our employees are better able to understand where our business is and where it is heading. They strive to make the business a success. All of our goals are aligned. - Jonathan Sparks, Sparks Law

2. 'What's the hardest job you've done this week?'

This question helps me as a leader to understand how my employees feel about their work, if they feel overwhelmed and if they need additional support. It also helps them identify what is going well for them, which helps gauge their happiness at work. - Kristin Kimberly Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC

3. 'What have you done in the last week to improve the business?'

One of the questions I ask in my one-on-one interviews with my employees is: what have you done in the last week to improve the business? I think this question helps make our conversation more productive because it encourages employees to learn, be creative, and think long term. Plus, it's a great habit to learn something new every day. -Vikas Agrawal, Infobrandz

4. 'What do you expect from me?'

This is a simple question that makes it easy for an employee to ask for help. This allows their guard to drop so that the employee can now ask for help in an area that they would otherwise have wanted to ask for help but could not. It always shows them that you are on their side and that you are both working towards a common goal. -