I think skipping occasionally is fine, and in fact it's not terribly unusual to say "Hey, we don't have anything to talk about this week" and just cancel this week's meeting. But skipping every week or canceling them outright is not really acceptable. Part of the job on both sides is enabling a feedback loop, and a 1:1 is the single best way to do it.

My team are welcome to come up with other ways to do it besides a 30 minute chat in a sterile room or over Zoom, but we need to keep a regular cadence of feedback, or our working relationships will deteriorate.

I have one guy who just wants to go for walks, so instead of getting in a room, we'll both walk 15 minutes to a Starbucks, grab some coffee, and walk back, and that gives us 30 minutes to chat. Only occasionally will I insist on doing it with a whiteboard or a laptop, but those are usually when there's something more "formal" about it. I'd say we only do it in an office room about once a quarter.

For some of my team, it's a 15 minute chat, for at least two of them, they turn into 60+ minutes of discussion. There's no one-size-fits-all here, but there has to be _something_, IMO.