The best Template for Quarterly One-on-One Meetings

Every successful team needs regular pit stops – not for changing tires, but for feedback, personal development and goal adjustments. One-on-one meetings between managers and employees are exactly that: the short but extremely relevant stops that ensure no one is left behind.

At best, of course, it’s about more than just “not falling by the wayside”: Good one-on-one meetings can give your team a boost.

Which brings us to the topic: A template for quarterly 1-to-1 meetings between managers and employees.

By the way, it can play a major role whether they take place exactly quarterly or have a different frequency - we’ll get to that in a moment.

Whether in a digital or virtual one-on-one meeting, 1-to-1 meetings offer space for feedback and thus for personal development, which is essential in today’s working world.

First of all: If you’re still unsure about what good one-on-one meetings look like, take a look at our guide: The guide with 6 tips for successful one-on-one meetings.

Also, if you prefer videos, you can find the template for the quarterly 1:1 also explained in my video. It even contains 7 bonus tips 🙂

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Good question… The frequency of 1-on-1 meetings depends on the size of the team and the individual requirements. For example, if you have a team of ten direct reports, a monthly one-on-one meeting is a good rhythm. Smaller teams or more intensive projects may also require weekly or bi-weekly meetings.

At the same time, I have also spoken to some managers who have 20 to 30, sometimes even more, direct reports. In this case, it is quite common to only speak to employees in person once a quarter.

It also obviously depends on how well you already know your team. During the familiarization phase, weekly one-on-one meetings are appropriate.

In Agile or Scrum teams, in which regular communication plays a central role anyway, the meetings should be adapted to the existing exchange. Some reflections at an individual level may not be necessary if you discuss how certain bugs arose during the retrospective.

Regular, for example quarterly, one-on-one meetings are only necessary for the individual development of employees. Of course, this can also be useful digitally or virtually if the team is working remotely.

Incidentally, the picture below underlines an important point: more frequent reflection on the status quo also tends to mean a faster rate of change and improvement. 🙂

The fact that you clicked on this article tells me that you are looking for a doc template for quarterly one-on-one meetings. Corresponding templates can of course have different focuses. 

That’s why I’ve saved a doc template for you here, which should be a good accompaniment to the classic quarterly performance review. Further down, I’ll give you some ideas on how you can enrich the meeting routine with other questions. 

Let’s start with the template for quarterly 1-on-1 meetings. By the way, you can save it as a Doc under the actual template, but alternatively also as a PDF, Google Sheets or Word document. Simply click on the “Plus” toggle.

As you can see, the main aim of a quarterly one-on-one meeting is to zoom out. This is often very difficult in everyday life, which is why a dedicated block of time is necessary.

By the way, don’t be fooled by the agenda: Basically, your goal should be for your intrinsically motivated employees to bring the majority of the topics to the table themselves.

Now let’s move on to a template that takes a slightly more creative approach to the quarterly one-to-one meeting.

Having spoken to around 100 managers over the last few months, I have noticed a pattern. 

Many supervisors incorporate small surveys into their one-on-one meetings from time to time. This means that they simply go through a few questions in a relaxed manner and ask the employee a) whether he or she agrees with a statement (for example from 1 to 7) and then b) why he or she answered in this way.

They expect the following from these micro-surveys in 1:1s:

• More variety and engagement in 1-to-1 conversations
• Taking on new perspectives
• Measurability of (soft) KPIs such as satisfaction over time

And of course you can also use this idea for your quarterly one-to-one meeting. I have put together five statements for you here that focus on reflecting on important preconditions for a successful employee.

You can also download this template as a Doc, but even better is the following: In our one-on-one meeting software, we have an integrated tool that makes the results visible as a metric over time and gives you tips with an AI assistant - feel free to take a look without logging in via the button below.

As you can see, the statements address key preconditions of staff that feels happy. 

Another prerequisite for healthy, productive employees is, of course, a good manager. Yes, I’m talking about you here. 

And of course there are also statements that you can take with you into your one-to-one meeting. Specifically, here are 4 behavioral anchors that you can reflect on in a quarterly one-on-one meeting with your employee.

Now you should have a good foundation for your quarterly one-on-one meeting.

And yet, I still have more tips for you. Because one thing is your agenda - another thing is creative questions that you ask in the middle of a verbal battle. Especially in quarterly one-on-one meetings, it’s worth taking a bird’s eye view - and the following list of questions will help you do that.

And, can you hardly wait to ask these questions in your one-on-one meeting? Very good, I’m glad. 

If you would like more creative input, I can recommend our corresponding article: 129 Good One-on-One Meeting Questions (by a Psychologist) .

You’ve probably already guessed it. Of course, there are many more templates for one-on-one meetings that you will need sooner or later. 

For example, I talk about templates for your one-on-one meeting about salary, your conversation with a difficult employee or with a completely new employee.

We have additional templates for all of these use cases, which you can find in this article: 15 Free Proven One-on-one Meeting Templates to Edit & Print

First of all, congratulations: if you conscientiously conduct quarterly one-on-one meetings with your employees, you are taking your leadership role more seriously than average.

However, the text presented here should not let you forget one piece of wisdom: There are countless questions you can ask - but the most important thing is that you tailor the conversation individually to your employee. 

Our AI meeting assistant for one-on-one meetings can also help you in your conversation. If you’d like to find out more, take a look at our website: The best 1-on-1 meeting software .