One to ones that are not status updates
If your weekly conversation could be an email, it currently is one.
Status belongs in writing. If the one to one is a verbal version of the project tracker, both people are getting a poor return on thirty minutes a week.
The agenda belongs to the report
Their topics first, always. Managers who bring their own list convert the meeting into a check up, and reports learn to arrive with nothing.
A shared running document works well. They add items during the week, the manager adds theirs at the bottom, and the notes accumulate into a record that makes review season trivial.
The three things worth the time
Obstacles the person cannot remove alone. This is the main event and it is where a manager earns their salary.
Feedback in both directions, small and frequent, so that nothing has to be saved up.
Direction and context. What is changing above them that they cannot see, and how their work connects to it.
Rotate in the bigger questions
Once a month, spend the whole session on something other than the current week. Career direction, energy levels, what they want to be doing in two years, what part of the job they would drop if they could.
These conversations are how you find out someone is unhappy while you can still do something about it. Nearly every regretted resignation is preceded by months of signals that nobody had the conversation to hear.
Write down what you agreed
Two lines at the end. What each of you will do, by when. Otherwise the same obstacle reappears at four consecutive meetings and the report stops raising it.
Thirty minutes, weekly, protected, owned by the report, with a written trail. That is the whole practice, and it is worth more than any engagement survey you will run.