Weekly one-to-ones are wasting your time

One-to-ones.

Nearly every manager I meet has a weekly or fortnightly rhythm of one-to-ones with their reports.

When I ask them what they're for, the answer (nine times out of ten): “to check in on the work, see how the projects are going, catch anything that's slipping”

Sounds sensible.

But you guessed it… it's the wrong answer.

One-to-ones are for checking in on the person.

I’m talking about their progress, what they're struggling with, what's getting in their way and behavioural patterns that are either serving them or holding them back.

If you want to check in on the work, you do that in a status meeting or a project review or a Slack - you don't need a dedicated recurring one-to-one to review deliverables. It’s a huge waste of everybody's time.

The point of the one-to-one is to amend behaviour, inside the meeting. Not to audit output.

With that re-frame comes a couple of changes 👇

One is frequency.

Most of you probably run one-to-ones on a fixed cadence - weekly with everyone, or every two weeks with everyone, in the name of fairness or rhythm. That's also, in my experience, wrong.

The correct frequency depends on what the person is currently going through. If someone is struggling (new to a role, missing targets, working through a rough patch) they're going to meet with me weekly, because the behavioural work needs a tight loop. If someone isn't struggling and it's kind of business as usual, they're going to be monthly, and those meetings are going to be primarily focused on their personal development and career. That's it. The frequency itself is a signal, and treating everyone identically defeats the purpose.

Second is time-to-value ratio (for both parties).

If the one-to-one is behavioural rather than operational, then most of the meeting is you asking questions rather than reviewing outputs. What's the hardest thing you're working on right now, and why is it hard? What's the mental model you're using to approach it? Where do you feel unclear on what "good" looks like? What have you been procrastinating? Those questions produce completely different meetings than "give me the status update on project X" produces.

Honestly, reviewing work is lower-stakes than coaching a team members behavior, and it fills the meeting without requiring management to lead anything.

Which is why weeks turn into months turn into quarters, and the report is technically getting their weekly meeting, and their manager still can't tell you what the person is struggling with.

If this email has helped you recognize that you or your managers are running one-to-ones sub-optimally, and you suspect you’re not fully developing your people then I see that as a job well done.

If it’s something you know you want to act on, but need a bit more advice on the execution, you can reach out and book in with me anytime using this link.

Nick