Why Everyone Hates Their 1:1 Check-ins (+5 Ways to Fix Them)

Read Time: 4 minutes.

I don't do politics on social media. I barely do them in real life.

My hot takes mostly dare managers to be leaders. To be clear, have courage and help their teams creatively put a dent in the world. I might even occasionally encourage people to find work that has purpose for them and do what it takes to become truly excellent.

Not exactly rage bait.

So imagine my surprise when I started getting death threats for my controversial and highly divisive Easter Sunday X post about...running useful 1:1 check-ins?!?

I'm not kidding. Read the comments:

I normally shake off these comments, but these surprised me. The entire reason I wrote the post—the entire reason we're hosting a free workshop this Thursday—is that I know most people hate their 1:1 check-ins.

The managers hate doing them.
The employees hate attending them.
But everyone involved feels obligated to have them.

Most times, they're the worst form of corporate theatre. Meetings that look like work but don't accomplish any actual work. They come in two forms:

1. The employee offers a live status update, filled with details to fill the time, but absent the real problems that would benefit from attention.

2. The employee tells the manager, "We don't need to meet, nothing has changed," and the manager accepts that, so they can steal their time back.

I know these happen all the time because they used to happen to me.

• My schedule got crunched, and I canceled on my top performers.

• My team showed up unprepared, and we just riffed.

• My reports asked to skip a week, and I signed off.

Now, popular CEOs are bragging about not having them, and every manager takes that as sufficient evidence that they don't need them either.

99% of us aren't Jensen Huang.
99% of us aren't Brian Chesky.

Let's be honest, 99% of us aren't even CEOs.

I'm not precious about the vehicle. You can accomplish the goals that a 1:1 meeting backstops in other ways. And if that's honestly working for you and your team, don't change a thing.

But those comments would suggest most of us aren’t hitting the mark.

Let's look at some of the small lies we tell ourselves about our 1:1 check-ins, and the small changes that can make them the most unmissable meeting of the week.

The 5 Small Lies

"They know they can come to me if there's an issue."
Will they? And will they come at the right time? The extroverts come too early and too often. The introverts come too late or not at all. And nobody comes when they don't know they need help. An open door invitation is not a reliable system.

"No agenda means it's more natural."
Natural is code for unprepared. Without structure, the meeting defaults to whoever has the most to say, which is rarely the person with the most important things to say. Comfort is occasionally the enemy of candor.

"A status update is the same as a check-in."
Knowing what someone is working on is not the same as knowing how they're doing, what's blocking them, or where they want to go. One is a report. The other is a relationship. Most managers are running reports and calling them check-ins.

"Skipping one week is fine."
It's never one week. Canceling is a habit that compounds. Every cancellation sends a message: other things matter more than you do. The people who need the consistency most are the ones who will ask for it.

"I already know how they're doing."
You know their outputs. You don't know their doubts, their ambitions, their frustrations, or the ceiling they've quietly accepted for themselves. Proximity is not the same as insight.

The 5 Small Changes

Make it their meeting.
Send them 6 questions in advance. Expect them to come prepared with a shared dashboard that shows the current state of their work. If they show up empty-handed, that's worth addressing directly. We wrote a full edition on building that dashboard.

Ask the question nobody asks.
"What's the problem behind he problem? The one no one wants to admit is there, but is causing this issue and others like it?" Most managers never ask it. Most employees are waiting to be asked. The answer is almost always worth the discomfort.

Move it, don't cancel it.
If your calendar gets crunched, protect this meeting. Move it if you have to. Canceling is a broken commitment, and your team is keeping score whether they tell you or not.

Coach through questions, not answers.
The instinct is to solve. Resist it. "What do you think you should do?" develops judgment. "Here's what I'd do" creates dependency. The best 1:1s leave the person feeling clearer about their own thinking, not just yours.

End with the future, not just the present.
Most 1:1s live entirely in the current week. The best ones spend a few minutes on where the person is headed. What are they learning? What do they want to be doing in a year? What's one thing you could do to help them get there? That's the difference between managing someone and developing them.

Done right, a 1:1 isn't a status meeting. It's the place where you coach people to level up, challenge them to aim higher than they thought possible, and remind them that someone in their corner actually gives a damn.

That's not corporate theatre.

That's leadership.

Lead on,
Dave & Mar

PS: We hope you’ll join us this Thursday at 11 am ET for next free Lightning Lesson, “How AI Can 10x The Effectiveness of Your One-on-One Meeting.” More than 500 leaders have already enrolled.

We’re planning to offer a few more workshops in the coming weeks. What topic would you make 30 minutes for? Please take 5 seconds to vote below.