I'm not a people person. For me doing 1-on-1's when I have teams reporting to me are helpful because it's very easy for me to just forget to ask questions about how people are doing. At times I've varied sets of questions to prevent people who'd otherwise not speak up from letting me know what was really happening. Sometimes that has been the difference between losing valuable people and keeping them happy.

I don't think anyone should turn it into some sort of lengthy interrogation, but turning it into something that people can't just give the same non-answers to every week or month unless there genuinely is nothing that can be improved on can be useful.

I'd see this as a list you can pick from if you're the kind of person who find it hard to just organically elicit genuine feedback from people. A lot of technical managers in particular get very little support in how to grow into management roles; even worse in startups where there often aren't anyone to turn to for support at early stages. Add on some social awkwardness for some of us, and it can be tough. The irony is that for me at least, having a few prepared questions makes me feel less need for them - they're a useful fallback option if I run out of things to talk about, but knowing I have them makes it easier to just talk.