The Case for the 1x1: Why These Meetings Still Matter (Even in the Age of AI)
The case for the 1x1 comes down to this: a well-run 1x1 is one of the most effective tools a leader has for building trust, developing people and getting better work done — and no dashboard or AI summary replicates what happens in that conversation.
I'll say it up front: I get why people hate meetings.
Meetings are a hot topic inside organizations right now — and not in a good way. I don't hear many firms arguing for the need for more meetings. I don't hear many employees saying "man, I can't wait for that meeting." And I talk to a lot of people. A lot of meetings are mismanaged — no structure, no agenda, no clear measure of what success even looks like. I've heard meetings called "productivity taxes," and honestly, plenty of them earn the label.
None of that means the 1x1 deserves to die with them. It means most of us have never seen one run well.
The Case for the 1x1
Here's the case for the 1x1, stated plainly: it's the single best tool a leader has for developing people, catching problems early and building the trust that makes a team actually move faster together. Not a status update. Not a scheduling ritual. A real conversation, run with intention, on a regular cadence.
That's the case. The rest of this post is the argument for it — and the program for actually running one well.
Why AI Hasn't Made the 1x1 Obsolete
I've seen the argument that AI is making the traditional 1x1 obsolete. Fast Company recently ran a piece by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic making exactly that case — that real-time performance data, pulse surveys, and AI tools that can summarize conversations and flag coaching moments are replacing the need for a synchronous, calendarized check-in, and that the format itself may be heading toward retirement even if the underlying goal (feedback, coaching, connection) still matters. (Read it here)
I'd agree with half of that. Bad 1x1s — the status-update kind, the scheduling-and-coordination kind — deserve to die and AI can absolutely kill them. But a good 1x1 was never that format to begin with. It was never a status update in disguise. It's something else entirely.
What Is a Good 1x1, Really?
A good 1x1 is an opportunity to engage. To "see" someone. To connect on an emotional level — to attune every sense you've got to another person and make them the center of the universe for a few minutes. No dashboard, pulse survey, or AI summary replicates that.
And it's not just a soft, feel-good exercise. A well-run 1x1 is also one of the most effective tools available for getting work done better, reinforcing trust, and building the psychological safety a team needs to actually perform. I facilitate meetings for a living. I feel the "productivity tax" frustration as much as anyone. But I still believe a well-run 1x1 is one of the most powerful weapons in a leader's arsenal — and one of the most underused.
What's clear to me, after years of watching leaders get this right and wrong, is this: the value isn't in whether you hold 1x1s. It's in how you run them.
What a Poorly-Run 1x1 Costs You
This past April, I ran the Athens Marathon — the oldest marathon in Ohio. Trained hard for months. Nailed the intensity, frequency, and duration of every long run leading into it. Then race day came, adrenaline kicked in, and I blew past my own pacing plan in the first half. Felt great doing it. Paid for it the second half, grinding through the last six miles on fumes I didn't need to burn early.
I finished. But it was a lesson in the exact thing I'd trained for: intensity, frequency, and duration only work if you respect all three, together, the whole way through. Get greedy on one — even for a mile — and the other two can't bail you out.
Many leaders run their 1x1s the same way I ran that first half. They go all-in when it's convenient and skip them entirely when it's not. Or they run every session at maximum intensity, which burns everyone out. Or they hold them so infrequently that no real thread of trust or development ever forms. There's no program. Just whatever fits between the actual fires.
If any of that sounds familiar, you're not a bad leader — you're just missing a program.
The Business Case for 1x1 Meetings
The business case is real and it shows up whether or not you've traced it back to its source yet.
Engagement. Gallup has found employees are roughly three times more likely to be engaged when they have regular 1x1s with their manager, and about four times more likely if they got meaningful feedback in the past week.
Manager impact. Gallup also attributes something like 70% of the variation in team engagement to the manager alone — not the company, not the mission statement, the manager.
Retention and speed. Skipped or sporadic 1x1s show up later as turnover you didn't need and as decisions that move slower because feedback never made it upstream in time.
Your people notice the absence of this program more than they'll ever tell you directly.
How to Run Effective 1x1 Meetings: Intensity, Frequency, Duration
Almost nobody skipping 1x1s is actually out of minutes. They're out of a system for using the minutes they have. That's fixable:
Set a fixed cadence and defend it like a customer call — weekly or biweekly, same day, same time.
Right-size the intensity. Not every 1x1 needs to be a deep, career-defining conversation. Some weeks it's a lighter conversation — working through a blocker, thinking out loud about a decision — and some weeks it's real coaching. Either way, it's a two-way conversation, not someone reciting a status report. Read the moment.
Protect the duration, both ways. Thirty focused minutes beats sixty distracted ones — and thirty cut to eight still beats zero.
Bring one real question, not a request for a status update. "What's in your way?" does more work than "what did you get done this week?"
Follow through between sessions. The 1x1 that actually matters is the one where last week's commitment got addressed.
None of that requires charisma. It requires running the program.
What to Do If You Keep Skipping Your 1x1s
Two moves. Run them in order.
First, get honest with yourself about your current program. Pull up your own calendar for the last quarter, not your intentions for the next one. How often did the 1x1 actually happen versus get pushed? How long did it run? What got covered? That gap is where you start.
Second, commit to the programming, not just the intent. Pick a cadence, a minimum duration, one standing question — and run it for eight weeks without exception. No new framework needed. Just the reps, on schedule.
Life is still going to happen — someone travels, someone's sick, a customer emergency eats your afternoon. You're going to miss a workout. You're going to miss a 1x1. That's not a program failure; that's a normal week. The failure is treating the miss as permission to quit.
A skipped leg day doesn't mean you abandon training for the quarter — it means you show up to the next one. Reschedule, don't cancel into the void.
The Bottom Line
Nobody gets fit off one great workout. You won't develop your people off one great 1x1, either. What compounds is showing up on the calendar, calibrated right, week after week — until the 1x1 stops being an event you dread and starts being how you actually lead.
AI can help you prep for the race. It can pull the data, flag the trend, draft the talking points, even tell you who on your team looks disengaged before you've noticed yourself. What it can't do is run the race for you — it can't sit across from someone, read the pause before they answer and make them feel like the only person in the room for twenty minutes. That's still on you.
In a stretch where the pace of change keeps accelerating and half the workplace runs on tools nobody's fully figured out yet, I'd bet on the leaders who double down on their humanity, not the ones who outsource it. The 1x1 is one of the last places left where that humanity actually shows up on the calendar. Don't let it get automated away.
Wondering whether your 1x1s are actually working, or just happening? That's the case for the 1:1 — now go make it true on your own calendar
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