Business is noisy.
Business is full of people worrying loudly about projects, process, and other people. These people have opinions and they share them all over the place, all the time. This collective chatter is part of the daily regimen of a healthy business, but this chatter will bury the individual voice unless someone pays attention. And paying attention is best done in a one-on-one with the people you manage.
Your job in a one-on-one is to give the smallest voice a chance to be heard, and I start with a question: ...