Why do one-on-ones feel like a waste of time?

If that feels familiar, you’re in good company. The meeting isn’t the problem. What has gone into it is.

Are one-on-ones a waste of time?

Not when they’re done well, but many of them are. The usual cause is that a one-on-one has quietly become a status meeting with one attendee.

The evidence suggests this is common. Writing in Psychology Today, Laurence Stybel reports that in a survey of 4,000 people by the organisational psychologist Steven Rogelberg, nearly half said these meetings have little value. Gallup’s research points the same way: among nearly 15,000 employees, “only 16% said the last conversation with their manager was extremely meaningful.”

So the feeling is real. But the same research also shows what a good conversation does. Gallup reports that 80% of employees who say they received meaningful feedback in the past week are fully engaged. The meeting can be worth a lot. Most of them just aren’t built to deliver it.

Why do one-on-ones turn into status updates?

Because status is the easiest thing to talk about, and the manager usually sets the tone. Updates feel productive, they need no preparation and nobody has to say anything awkward.

There are a few reasons this happens, especially to new managers:

• It’s what you know how to do. As an individual contributor you were judged on getting work done. Asking “where is it up to?” feels like managing. It’s really just checking.
• The manager fills the silence. If the other person is quiet, you talk. Soon you’re doing most of the talking and the meeting is about your priorities.
• Nobody prepared. With no agenda, the conversation defaults to whatever is on the project board.
• It keeps moving. A slot that is moved three times in a month signals that it’s the first thing to go when you’re busy. People stop saving the real topics for it.

Each of these is small. Together they turn a meeting that should belong to the other person into one more line of your Meeting Tax: time paid every week whether or not it’s useful.

What is a one-on-one actually for?

It’s the other person’s time with you, to get unblocked, think out loud and talk about things that don’t fit anywhere else. Updates belong in a message.

Rogelberg describes two jobs in his own summary of his book, Glad We Met. One-on-ones handle the practical needs of getting work done, and they also shape how someone experiences their job. He suggests weaving in longer-horizon topics such as career planning and development from time to time, rather than leaving them for an annual review.

Gallup’s list of what makes a manager conversation meaningful is useful here. Its top features, in order, were recognition or appreciation for recent work, collaboration and relationships, and current goals and priorities. Notice that “a full list of what everyone did this week” isn’t on it.

A simple test: if the other person could have sent most of what they said as a written note, the meeting didn’t do its job.

What makes a good one-on-one?

Four things, and you can check each of them honestly in a few minutes. Most weak one-on-ones fail on one or two, not all four.

1. It happens. The meeting is held, at the time it was booked, most weeks. If something truly urgent comes up, you rebook it straight away rather than skipping it. Reliability is what tells people they can save the hard topics for it.

2. They own the agenda. Rogelberg’s studies found managers and direct reports alike rated meetings highest when the direct report “created the agenda.” He also writes that the manager should actively avoid talking more than the other person. A shared document where they add topics during the week is enough.

3. It goes deeper than status. Over a month, some of the time goes on growth, workload and wellbeing, not just this week’s tasks. That is where you hear the awkward thing early instead of at review time.

4. Something happens afterwards. You write down what each of you agreed to do and open the next meeting with it. Rogelberg notes these meetings work best when each one builds on the last. If you promised to raise their name for a project and didn’t, they will remember, even if you don’t.

These four areas are what the free 1:1 Health Check scores.

What should you ask instead of “any updates?”

Ask questions that only this meeting can answer. If the reply could have come in a message, it’s a status question.

Start with their list. When they’ve finished, a few open questions help you get past the surface. You don’t need all of them every week. Pick one or two and rotate:

• Blockers: “What’s slowing you down that I could help with?”
• Workload: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how stretched are you this week? What would bring it down a point?”
• Recognition: “What are you proud of from the last couple of weeks?” Then say what you noticed, specifically.
• You: “What should I do more of, or less of, to make your job easier?”
• Growth: “What would you like to be doing in a year that you’re not doing now?”

Then stay quiet for longer than feels comfortable. The first answer is often the polite one. The second is usually the real one, and it arrives only if you leave room for it.

If you’re worried this turns the meeting into therapy, it won’t. Most weeks will still be practical. The point is that the practical part is theirs, and there is space for more when they need it.

How often should you hold one-on-ones?

Often enough that nothing important waits too long, and short enough that each one has a point. Weekly or every other week is a sensible default.

Rogelberg writes that the science is most aligned with a weekly or every-other-week rhythm. Gallup adds a useful detail about length: 15 to 30 minutes is enough for a meaningful conversation, “but only if it happens frequently.” If the gaps get long, the conversations need to get longer to catch up.

A few practical rules:

• Pick a rhythm and keep it. A predictable weekly 30 minutes beats an occasional hour.
• Shorten rather than cancel. If there’s genuinely little to cover, make it 15 minutes. The slot still says this time is theirs.
• Match the person. Someone new, stretched or going through a hard patch may need more. An experienced person in a steady role may prefer every other week. Ask them.
• Avoid “we’ll meet when we need to.” In practice that means you meet when something has already gone wrong.

What does a one-on-one fix look like in practice?

Here is a hypothetical example. A new manager has five people reporting to them and a weekly 30-minute one-on-one with each. On paper, that’s two and a half hours a week. Here is what four weeks actually looked like.

• Reliability: of 20 booked meetings, 6 were moved and 2 were dropped. Most of the moves were for meetings with senior people.
• Agenda: the manager opened every meeting with their own list. Nobody on the team had ever added a topic.
• Depth: almost all of the time went on project status. Career came up once, when someone asked about a vacancy in another team.
• Follow-through: the manager made 9 promises across the month and could only remember 4 of them.

Nothing here is dramatic. Nobody would call this person a bad manager. But from the team’s side, the message is clear: this meeting is about the manager’s list, it moves when anything more important turns up, and what gets said doesn’t always lead anywhere.

The manager tried three changes, one per area:

1. Agenda: they created a shared note for each person, asked them to add topics before each meeting, and started every one-on-one with “What’s on your list?”
2. Reliability: they marked the slots as fixed and set a rule: if one has to move, it’s rebooked within two working days, not dropped.
3. Follow-through: they ended each meeting by reading back what each of them had agreed to do, and opened the next one by checking it.

They left depth for later, which is fine. Three fixes at once is plenty. After a month of shared agendas, the team started raising things the manager had never heard about, including a workload problem that had been building for weeks. That is the point of the meeting.

How do you find out if your team finds them useful?

Ask, but make it easy to answer honestly. Most people won’t tell their manager to their face that the one-on-ones are pointless.

A few ways in:

• Ask a specific question, not a general one. “What would make our one-on-ones more useful to you?” gets more than “Are these working?”
• Ask about one change. “I’d like you to set the agenda from now on. What would you put on it next week?”
• Use a scale. Asking people to rate the last meeting from 1 to 10, and what would make it one point higher, is easier to answer than an open question.
• Make it anonymous where you can. For more ways to get an honest read, see how to find out what your team really thinks of you.

If you find you’re solving every problem people bring to the meeting, that is worth a look too. Why new managers give answers too fast covers that habit.

Where are your one-on-ones losing their value?

You probably have a hunch about which of the four areas is weakest. A short, structured check turns that hunch into a starting point.

The free 1:1 Health Check asks 12 questions about your own one-on-ones and takes about 4 minutes, with no sign-up. Your answers stay in your browser. You get a 1:1 score out of 100 across the four areas in this post: whether the meeting is held, who owns the agenda, how deep it goes and whether you follow through. Your three fixes come ranked, each with one thing to try in your next one-on-one. It’s built to be rated by your team anonymously. Team mode is coming, so for now you rate yourself, which tells you how you see it, not how they do. Treat the score as a prompt for a conversation, not a diagnosis.

For a wider read on your habits as a manager, including how much you listen and how quickly you say the hard thing, try the free 42 Test. You’ll find more for this stage of your career in New managers.

A one-on-one isn’t a waste of time because of the format. It becomes one when the manager runs it. Hand it back, keep the slot, go a little deeper and do what you said you’d do.