As someone who has led (mostly) remote teams for years, 1:1s are essential, but can't be made cookie cutter. I use a fairly spartan template for the structure o

As someone who has led (mostly) remote teams for years, 1:1s are essential, but can't be made cookie cutter. I use a fairly spartan template for the structure of them to start, and let them evolve as different people have different needs. I of course want to make sure that I'm getting what I need out of them (e.g. clarity about what is being done, what has run into an obstacle, the general state of mind of the report, et al) but I also want them to feel engaged in whatever way that builds rapport and makes them feel comfortable discussing sometimes uncomfortable things (I do lean towards 'exception based' meetings rather than rote repetitive agendas). What this means is that my last team got very good at asserting what worked best: one senior person used up almost all of his default allotted hour a week, because they dealt with a lot of escalation/thorny stuff and wanted to soundboard/problem solve in tandem, which I was more than ok with, one was completely "fire and forget" and for weeks at a time 1:1s would rarely last longer than 10-15 minutes as they hammered through various client tasks in volume and I didn't need to bird-dog any of it. It improved comms overall, and I never felt like I was in the dark on major concerns, and they feel/felt heard. Too often 1:1s become time sinks of reflexive behaviors and telegraphed responses, and you should avoid that.