Make high-impact one-on-one meetings for your team | Managers at Work

“In the interest of helping everyone manage their time, our senior leaders want us to limit the number of one-on-one meetings we are having with our teams. I understand the time issue, but several of my team members are telling me how helpful these meetings are. And I hate to limit them in any way. Any advice?”

Do they really want to limit one-on-one meetings? They might not seem worthwhile all the time, but when they are done well, they can provide some insights, help solve problems and unlock some good information. At least that’s been my experience.

Your team members wouldn’t be balking at the idea of limiting them if they weren’t useful in some way. For managers, though, is the problem really about spending too much time talking one-on-one with team members or is it a larger problem about clogged calendars and managing time in general?

So maybe the question, then, is not about the merits of having one-on-one meetings, but about how to maximize the value of the one-on-ones you have.

“The challenge isn’t that managers are in too many one-on-one meetings,” says Jim Kestenbaum, president and corporate psychologist at The Solutions Group, a leadership coaching firm in Pittsford.

“The problem is that for the amount of resources one-on-ones consume, they are often being used for less valuable activities and having less impact, like information sharing — an activity with relatively lower value that can be accomplished more quickly and less expensively with other forms of communication.”

Indeed, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding and miscommunication around one-on-on meetings. In a 2022 article published by the Association for Training and Development, author Jeff Smith called one-on-one meetings a “blind spot.”  Results of a survey showed that while 94 percent of managers schedule one-on-one meetings with their team members, fewer than half of employees say they have monthly one-on-ones and only about 20 percent of those meetings are considered “effective.”  The key message, ATD researchers said, is that no more than 10 percent of employees are pleased with their one-on-one meetings.“While 94 percent of managers think they are doing something, only 10 percent of employees agree,” writes Smith, who is founder and chief executive officer of the SupportingLines Institute, a consulting firm in British Columbia.  “These completely opposite perspectives create a leadership blind spot. It turns out that both these contrasting views may be true.”

The disparity is centered on the “difference between management and leadership.” Management is about “humans doing” and leadership is about human beings,” Smith writes. “A key point in my own leadership journey was realizing that I was a better manager than a leader. I was good at the ‘human doing’ part of management: getting people on the same page and achieving critical roles.

“After I was subjected to poor leadership myself, I realized that I needed to support the human experience of work. Management is about ‘humans doing;’ leadership is about human beings.”

Leaders today need to think about both achieving critical goals and the “human experience” of work, he says. Of the 94 percent of managers who think they are having effective one-on-ones, most are focused on tactical agendas, including action plans and tactics, he says.

And while they’re important, the tactical meetings miss a major part of what makes a leader effective.  So Smith suggests pairing tactical advice in one-on-ones with strategic conversations that focus on a team member’s growth and development and their experience at work. Research has shown consistently that successful one-on-one meetings play a “critical role” in developing a high-performance culture, he says.

Effective one-on-one meetings can encourage deeper boss-employee relationships and can be used to give and receive feedback, set goals and help troubleshoot problems, says Jen Dary, a Virginia-based leadership coach, in her 2024 piece in Harvard Business Review.

But they are not easy to navigate. “As a leadership coach, I’ve seen people – in every career stage – struggle to balance the conflicting priorities of supporting their direct reports while simultaneously meeting company goals and delivering on other responsibilities that come with their role,” she writes.

So are one-on-ones really worth the effort. “Yes, if you use the time productively,” she says. “But if you have to ask the question, there’s room for improvement.”

So often, one-on-ones meetings are “lower impact meetings” that are consumed with information sharing and check-ins, Kestenbaum says. And that activity could be done more effectively in a group setting.

“With a team of any decent size, there actually isn’t enough time in the week to do these plus the other things bosses need to be doing, such as strategy, increasing cross-functional collaboration, looking for outside opportunities for the company and more,” he says.

That’s where effective, impactful coaching comes in, Kestenbaum says. “Frame (or reframe) the boss-direct report relationship as consultative, meaning it’s up to the team member to use the boss’ expertise, insights and perspective to better understand a challenging situation, learn alternative ways to meet challenges and/or become better coaches for their own people.”

It’s important to see these meetings (except with those who have severe issues) not as an enforcement vehicle to improve accountability, but to help the employee be accountable for their own work.

“Bosses who coach this way are much more effective helping their direct reports work more effectively. And as the employee become better holding themselves and their own people accountable, it tees-up the employee for more challenging positions in the organization.”

In her piece, Dary suggests that managers do a little preparation before one-on-one meetings, advising them, for example, to dedicate the first one-on-one meeting of the month to their employee’s career development goals.

“It’s a good time to check in on people’s short and long-term ambitions – gauging the progress of their recent work. By designating one meeting per month to career level topics, it guarantees that every week won’t be the same old, same old and reminds your employee that you’re a manager who is committed to moving both of your longer-term goals forward.”

Another idea: create a shared document where you and your direct report collaborate on an agenda for each meeting. “Add topics to discuss in preparation, and encourage your direct report to do the same. This will motivate you both to show up with intention, and also help you keep track of any action items you’re accountable for.”

Dar also recalled working with a distraught manager who said she had to put her head on her desk after every one-on-one with a certain team member because he complained and complained. The manager eventually set up a few minutes for “venting” as part of the one-on-one meeting to put limits around it. If the complaining lingered, the manager would reframe the issue, saying something like, “I understand this is a frustration, but what do you have control over? What can you change?”

And with that kind of questioning, the manager helps ensure that the employee is accountable. “Bosses who follow this approach find themselves actually scheduling more face-to-face meetings,” Kestenbaum says. “Because by using this approach, much more gets done. And in some instances, this tees up the next tier in the organization for succession.”

Managers at Work is a monthly column exploring the issues and challenges facing managers. Contact Kathleen Driscoll with questions or comments by email at [email protected]