One-on-one meetings are underrated, whereas group meetings waste time

A few points:

1. The conflict in meetings is not a negative. It is actually a positive. At the intersection of conflict between perspectives is where you get unique insights, innovative ways of doing things.

2. The problem is where conflict is seen as negative.

3. A manager who is running the meeting should be able to integrate different perspectives and find a better path forward. If you can only do this in a 1on1 this is a skill that needs to be honed. You are leaving quite a bit of insight and innovation on the table.

I ran an innovation skunk works project for a CEO. Saw him do this multiple times in meetings. In almost every single case where we had multiple opposing views he was able to integrate and actually propmpt us to come up with something better. I have been honing this skill ever since and it really is an eye opener.

4. Agree on the points on managers being lazy and inviting people that should not be in the room. You need to make sure you get the right people in the room. I would actually encourage conflict.

5. Depending on what needs to be communicated but face to face works best

6. This post seems to assume it is the managers responsibility to make decisions? I would argue unless the manager has more context then his staff decisions should be made by them with the manager providing context and making sense of what needs to be done.

The way I see management in today’s environment is more akin to facilitation rather than manage. If people are smart and self motivated management may actually do more harm then good.

7. When conflict is viewed as negative it can be counter productive as it seems to be for the author. The question is how do you manage it so you actually leverage it for better output? One way we do this is with our values

“We value diversity of ideas, thought”

8. What we have seen work is categories of meetings, brain storming, problem solving, deep dive learning session, quick updates (timeboxed) I suspect author is not managing my the conversation correctly hence he has this issue.

This resonates with me. I much prefer conversations over group meetings, and I would very much like to have more of those conversations instead of daily meetings.

However, I've suggested this to managers before and received forceful feedback that they "did not have time for that".

It was confusing - if you're a pure manager, what more valuable allocation of your time could there be than in talking directly to people?

I think it's more important to count clarify, brevity and value than number of attendees. I have a fast growing team where 12 people reporting to three different departments have to work closely together to align instruction, coaching and curriculum. We have a 12 person daily standup. It runs 15 minutes (20 tops) and as well as creating a social situation to engage enjoyably with our peers (we're a remote first team so if we don't meet we don't interact) it also allows us to learn of the various initiatives people are working on, problem students they're dealing with, etc. Even though it's a 12 person meeting, it's probably the most valuable 15 minutes of the day as our biggest challenge is alignment, not production/creation.

I generally hate meetings, but as long as they have a clear agenda, the shortest possible duration, the smallest number of required attendees to achieve the clearly defined outcomes (and allow for optional attendees if people are interested), I find they are a great way of moving forward discussions that bogged down after trying to manage them via an email chain.

I suspect that half the function of meetings is not to get things done, but soft things like being visible, signaling to others, and confirming and evolving the implicit hierarchy.

Well it sounds nice but I feel there are some parts left in the dark. Working this way seems to be over reliant on a single manager. The world is now smart enough to know that we are continually misled by biases, focusing on a single person will emphasize and neither that topic nor a strategy for correction has been discussed by the author. I want my manager to be smart, but this is expecting the manager to be very smart at various levels and leaves very little room for mistakes.

One on one meetings are underrated, especially with tech people and even among them. It is important that managers and tech people build acceptance and try to align their mindsets and share knowledge. But one on ones also leave room for manipulation and favoritism which can tear teams apart.

I agree that many group meetings are boring and badly executed, but a team needs sit at the same table once in a while, even if it is just there to detect conflicts and resolve them one on one. Group meetings suffer greatly from groupthink and dominance of invidiuals. Which is usually badly compensated, if at all. But the failure usually starts with a sloppy agenda and inviting the wrong people. There has been quite some work on that but I usually only see scrum masters randomly doing some of them without serious reflection.

Managers should take care of decisions and tasks that teams or invidials cannot make. Most importantly bring the right people together, get out of the way and cash in the results later. Being the single point of failure is not the solution.

Pardon my UI / CSS ignorance but these days I find that I have to zoom in every single article on the web to read it comfortably. I had to zoom this article at 200%. The default text is just too small and I am just using a standard HD display. It would be even smaller on higher resolutions. Do people not view their own website? Does everybody else also find themselves zooming in most of the web pages. What am I missing?

The only meeting style I ever actually liked was the daily (!) 10 o'clock in the morning 5 minute meeting. It had two (unstated) goals:

  got everyone in by 10AM
  made sure everyone saw each once a day

This isn't something you can do, month in month out, forever. But it works for projects under pressure. Otherwise I largely agree with the FA. Meetings suck up everyone's time and puts them in a room with a depleting oxygen supply.

The worst meetings are exercises and displays of power. Perhaps these are necessary but never at the project level. Some middling managers need to remind themselves they are in charge of something. Seriously, if as a manager you can't write down what your group accomplished over that hour then you just wasted an hour of your group's time.

I worked for a company once where my boss had one of those sorts of meetings. One time, knowing that I was in for an hour of yammering, I told him right before the meeting I had to take care of something. I went out, hopped in my car, drove to a gym, played an hour of pickup basketball, drove back and when I saw my boss I told him I'd taken care of that thing. I also got a lot done that day.

I’m a big fan of 1-1 meetings. I like a lot of what he says, especially about the near futility of bigger meetings.

But my manager was just instructed to schedule biweekly 1-1 meetings with all 17 of his direct reports. I think it’s the dumbest thing ever. If i have something to say to him, i can usually schedule time that day. I may need to bother him 3 times a week, or not for three weeks. When he wants to talk to me, he drops by my desk and we meet right then.

When my regularly scheduled 1-1 time arrives, i’m busy, don’t bother me.

1-1s good. Forcible 1-1s bad.

This entirely depends on the discussion.

As a manager, I use 1:1 to discuss matters related to or pertinent to the individual. I use group discussions to discuss group-level matters -- this is usually something related to project work, i.e. scope, design decisions, etc.

I don't compare the two because they are both "meetings". Each serve a purpose, and ideally both are executed well.

One problem with group meeting is going on tangent. There should be a clear agenda established prior to the meeting.

Having so much frustration with unproductive meetings, I have been thinking about these, and they work in my case.

1. Attach agenda prior to meetig, along with a link to a Google Doc (or whatever live tool you use)

2. Reiterate agenda at the beginning of the meeting, and if this was a continuation of the previous meeting, go over the outcome of the last meeting. They should be reflect in your agenda.

3. Invite someone to be a moderator. Creator/caller of the meeting may be the moderator — only if the moderator thinks he/she is capable of keeping the meeting on track.

4. Ask attendees to use the doc to add questions/summary/views/new items.

5. Summarize before going to the next part of the agenda and at the end of the meeting. “To do, to be discussed” should be announced. Don’t end meeting by just saying “okay thanks for coming, let’s get to work.” Make sure people know what the outcomes are.

I learned #4 when I interned at Mozilla a long time ago. Not sure if everyone team does, but etherpad was very widely used afair. It was helpful for everyone in the team running the meeting in real time and after the meeting, especially because every user gets a different color assigned when the user enters the pad, so we could trace who wrote/made the changd.

The first thing I want to say when I go into a group meeting is “how did we fail”.

If people are communicating well, slack, grabbing coffee, email then group meeting seem unimportant. When you need to setup a meeting, in particular to discuss a specific issue, it feels like something has gone wrong that we’re all not well aligned already.

The sight of a bunch of passive engineers shuffling off to a meeting they aren't needed at still makes me seethe. You have a professional obligation to say "no" sometimes.

Engineer and executive hours are not cheap. Every unnecessary person in a conference room is a gigantic waste of resources. Beyond three or four people, the marginal utility of adding another person to a meeting is almost certainly steeply negative. Exceptions are situations that require consensus, or where someone is observing to learn.

The last team I worked on had regular 10+ person meetings that entire teams would shuffle off to. I started refusing to go to meetings with more than four other people in them (unless there was a very specific reason to be there). I felt it reduced distractions and waste.

What bothers me even more than the meetings though are engineers who attend them repeatedly, then grumble quietly about how useless they are afterwards. Articulate a thoughtful "no." Get good at it, because you'll need to do it often if you want to be a good engineer.

I worked with a project manager who loved large long status meetings and requirements meetings. It was getting to the point nothing was getting done. Most of the people in the meeting were contractors. 8 people at $100 bill rate was $800 each meeting. I had to put a stop to it. I started a virtual status meeting. I opened a slack channel at 10:00 and everyone posted their updates. If the PM wanted to know anything else they would have to go to the individual dev.

Anyone was free to leave the slack channel after they posted their update.

I told them unless the meeting request was coming from me or someone higher up in my management change, that all meeting requests were just that "requests" that they were free to decline if necessary.

One-on-one meetings have minimum possible number of people required for information exchange (2 participants).

1) Discussions are very valuable for team coordination, so having meetings is very important for efficient teamworks.

2) In order to contribute, every person, participating in the meeting, must understand the discussion.

3) The more people are in the meeting - the more dumbed down the discussion must be in order to allow everyone to follow the discussion. That makes meetings with larger number of people - less efficient. Which makes meetings with 2 people (one-on-one) - the most efficient.

This feels like an especially relevant conversation to have during the holidays, when many folks will be out of the office, so the number of meetings happening will be way down.

I've consistently observed over the past few years that whenever a bunch of frequent-meeting-schedulers are simultaneously out of the office... everything is fine. Nothing bad happens. Team members coordinate with each other fine. Cross-team coordination happens fine. There are still meetings, but the ones that happen tend to be the ones that are actually important and needed. The fluff meetings that have way too many participants get cancelled because too many folks are out, and it becomes more obvious than ever that those meetings were never valuable in the first place.

My productivity (as half-manager-half-programmer) goes way up. My stress and frustration go down because I'm not giving the same status report to the same set of people three times.

I'm not against meetings in general, whether they be 1-1s or large group meetings. I think meetings are fundamental to many organizations. But I do think that almost every workplace has too many meetings that last too long on average and have too many participants on average.

"Meeting culture" tends to act like a virus that infects various parts of the organization. Pure managers get addicted to scheduling and running meetings, because it's the most concrete way they can exercise their authority and appear productive, even if it's not actually productive or helpful to the organization.

I’ve barely been in a group meeting that felt productive. The problem is: no body has the responsibility.

Even with friends, one-to-one or maximum 3 friends together is the most efficient way to know the people.

Darwinism and Neuroscience needs to get further into society.

I'm sure when we evolved - we weren't designed to ever have productive meetings with groups larger than four or five.

That's why associations follow the Robert's rules of order.

By recognizing human limitations we can come up with appropriate workarounds.

I've worked for a manager who insisted on weekly one-on-one meetings, and it was terrible. I wasted so much time in those meetings, that could have been better served in group meetings, a specific one-time meeting, or email. We all hated it because of that.

The best thing to do is have weekly group meetings, setup meetings as needed otherwise, and have 3 or 6 month one-on-one meeting just to check in.

This article is so wrong. It sounds like he had bad employees, and instead of firing them, did a terrible job and micromanaged them instead.

I'm on the fence about this. In our org, we have all kinds of meetings. From the perfect highly efficient and successful meetings, to ones where either the results were hard to disseminate and transport because certain viewpoints were missing or ones where half of the participants were there needlessly.

It's a tough task to keep the quality level of meetings high, regardless of scenario. I've been in too many one on ones where we just enjoyed each others company a bit too much and it veered off from relevant stuff to just chat and the goals of the one-on-one besides establishing rapport were not achieved.

It's also trying in a interdisciplinary scrum team. We "sacrifice" a full day of our 6-8 person teams every two weeks and it's a mixed bag if review, retro and planning will be efficient and successful or boring and feeling wasteful. Sometimes planning has lots of time spent where backend devs discuss difficulties that are irrelevant to Frontend, sometimes sometimes a Frontend Dev offers a more elegant solution and vice versa.

Personally I've accepted that it's something where one always has to walk the line. There's no easy fix or guideline that always works and it's best to become comfortable with that and try to do best without following a dogma.

There is much wisdom in this essay.

Complementary to 1-1s are short, daily stand-ups that: (a) dispatch with unforeseen challenging items that involve multiple players and necessary coordination, (b) identification of redundant work or cross-team delegation where a more knowledgeable team member offers to do something that they would be more efficient at, (c) public prise and building a sense of momentum and respect among team members.

Instead of big meetings, especially with other groups, asking for a working document is sometimes the best way to collaborate with cross-functional teams. Concrete artifacts focus attention. It can be asynchronous. If the materials are reviewed by managers before the meeting, you can avoid pontification and poor use of your staff's time. Recorded presentations of these documents can also be productive for broader audience, provided the materials are reviewed before they are presented. Even within one's team, written communication is essential to building shared knowledge. Calling for trouble shooting or brainstorming meetings can work well if the meetings are promptly rescheduled if team members have failed to read the prerequisite materials.

The site/podcast 'Manager Tools' has an interesting series on the importance of one-on-ones which is definitely worth checking out if the article piqued anyone's interest in this tool. Don't let the date scare you, scroll down to the bottom to find them they're some of the earliest on the feed.

https://www.manager-tools.com/all-podcasts?field_content_dom...

Some of the big takeaways are:

1. Normalise one-on-ones so people understand that a one-on-one is a meeting to build the relationship and actually sort things out, not the precursor to a punishment or other serious issue.

2. Make an agenda, communicate it and then actually stick to it.

3. That agenda should be based one what do you want to talk about, what do they want to talk about, and then discussion of the future. They leave it intentionally open ended and yet fairly strictly time bounded.

4. One-on-ones are regular and important. Do not prioritise things over them unless absolutely necessary as they're the way to build lasting relationships of trust and accord with individuals and teams.

They have some points of minor disagreement with the author of this piece. For instance their one-on-one's are egalitarian, and a fixed time every time, with no prioritisation of particular personal for extra meetings of these kinds (though I assume they're open to one-on-one conversations as necessary).

The podcasts go into a lot of exposition and example scenarios, common pit falls and the like. I actually really enjoy them for the people skills, not being a manager myself. Like I said, they have points of agreement and disagreement with the author over the precise purpose and format of the one-on-one, but I think this piece was good and complementary to the advice I've absorbed from them.

Efficiency versus effectiveness. Good words in this essay, but it sort of throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Do what works and makes sense. Catering to everyone's whim is not always in the best interest of the company. Adjust to your employees' preferences, but from time to time they should adjust to the company too.

From the article.

A final word about one-on-one meetings. Food is important. Getting away from the office is important.

Nope not going to do it. I hate to have the "Mike Pence Rule" but my reasoning is more practical. Why take the risk of something being said? I don't go to lunch one on one with anyone who reports to me.

If you have a meeting with 15 people and its dominated by 3 people your chairing skills suck

One-on-one meetings are the single most under-rated (because they are the single most useful) tool for any modern professional.

There is a clear technique on how to make these meetings successful that I don’t see being discussed or shared.

How you react to this discussion is the difference between business-minded people and everyone else.

This guy sounds like a horrible manager. The screed about too many people in the wrong meetings is good, but there are large meetings that have a reason to be. Also, the emphasis on email over meetings is misplaced — it’s not either or, of course you do both. The worst part is the tone described in his one on ones, which apparently are blame games and witch hunts. It’s spectacularly unproductive to encourage team members to throw each under the bus as a normal rule.

One on ones are hugely valuable, but in my experience managers who emphasize those over team meetings are usually practitioners of differential communication — telling everyone a message customized to make them happy — otherwise known as spin. This is usually associated with new managers who practice a weak form of management, focused on being liked over results. That isn’t this guy’s problem, though!

One on ones should be focused on specific discussions the employee is thinking about. Topics include career development, performance management, company issues, and most importantly concerns they have that need to be addressed before they become truly serious. In that way they serve as an early warning system for issues that are affecting the team.

Think about it, the one on one is probably the only time you are guaranteed to have a direct, personal interaction with your manager that is likely to be more than a brief interaction. It’s definitely the only time you’re not meeting to talk about specific projects. Anything other than mostly listening by a manager during this time is a bad plan.

This is micromanagement 101. (Sorry this turned into a bit of a wall of text.)

If you find one-on-one meetings more productive than group meetings, then you are terrible at running group meetings. Full stop, I don't even need to know how good this guy is at running meetings.

Let's walk through some of the benefits the author lists first...

1) Participates can speak without boring others. This is an indicator of two possibilities. One, you have the wrong people at this meeting - that's your fault as a manager (and probably as the meeting leader/facilitator). Or two, you are running the wrong kind of meeting - again, that's your fault as a manager. Meetings should be purposeful, and every participant should have a purpose in being there. You as a manager (and hopefully your team) should consider this before every meeting (trust me, it's easier to do that than hold several times more meetings).

2) People can speak without being interrupted. If you're letting people interrupt each other, you're bad at leading meetings. If you're leading a meeting, you're there to serve the purpose of the meeting, not to be everyone's friend. Again, that's your fault as a manager.

3) They can offer negative opinions about their coworkers. Whoa. Now we're in really bad management territory. How are you going to go about conflict resolution once this person has confided in you? How are you going to be a neutral party? Not only that but giving you that negative opinion didn't solve anything.

4) They can offer positive opinions about their coworkers. Haha. What. "The too obvious incentive of their co-worker hearing their praise." Jesus. Where do you work? This isn't even bad management, this just sounds like a horribly unhealthy organization.

5) "If a person is running late on a project, the best way to find out the reason is to have a one-on-one meeting with them." I mean did you have to have a one-on-one meeting to find this out? If you have people that are unwilling to take responsibility for their (yes, their, not your) projects, then you need to check your hiring practices.

"They are free to incriminate themselves, in ways that I find useful." Jesus Christ. Again, where the hell do you work? In ways that you find useful? "For instance, they might put all the blame on someone else. After the meeting I will investigate their accusations and discover the truth." Or, if you had done this in a group setting, they wouldn't have had that option and you wouldn't have to had to go play Sherlock Holmes with your employees. But, I guess you have the free time? "If I’d called a group meeting, and that other person was in the room, it’s unlikely that anyone would have told me the truth." Or you could hire people that take responsibility for their actions.

6) "What if someone finishes a project much faster than I expected, or with much higher quality than I was expecting?" "It would be awkward to try to have these conversations while other people are in the room." I mean, maybe. They might have questions too, or be interested in the answers. Again, if you take the time to actually think about the purpose of the meeting you want to have you won't run into this problem. There is a time and a place for one-on-one meetings.

Now, let's look at some of the things he dislikes about group meetings now...

"As it was, during the typical meeting we had 15 people in the room, most of whom were bored." Whoa. What. 15 people!? That's twice as many people as you should probably ever have in a meeting.

"So who is right, and who is wrong?" Didn't see a whole lot of managing in that conversation. Do your meetings even have leads/facilitators? Who is holding the participates accountable for the purpose of the meeting?

"You’ll need to figure this out, but you don’t need to do so while 12 other people are in the room. If you are the manager who is overseeing this, it is up to you to get people back to work." Then do that, get the meeting back on track.

"A great manager doesn’t allow such debates to exist, because they don’t hold the kinds of meetings where this behavior is possible." WHOA. Nope. This is about as bad as management can get. Debates are healthy, conflict isn't bad. How else are you (and your organization) going to learn and grow?

There's a lot in there about "client" meetings, but not so much about internal meetings. Why is that? Sounds like the author is shifting the blame... I like to have managers that take responsibility for their actions...

So, what's the real conclusion of this article? Aside from there clearly being some "client" issues. One-on-one meetings are easy. Here's why:

1) They are easy to lead. Leading one is easier than leading five.

2) They avoid, more or less, all conflict. Even the productive kind. You can be everyone's friend.

3) They mean you (as a manager) don't have to think about who should attend.

4) Everything on your team has to go through you (I believe this is also called micromanagement).

They also are far less efficient and effective, if you know how to lead a group meeting.

>one-on-one meetings

good luck defending against the sexual harassment allegations after that one. i'll stick to group meetings where i won't be risking my career and reputation.