The weekly 1:1 meeting is thought to be the staple of modern management, with managers and employees meeting once a week to discuss issues and progress, but a prominent voice in tech doesn’t believe in their efficacy.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky says that he rarely does 1:1 meetings with his reports. “I don’t do one on one meetings. I don’t believe in one-on-ones and almost no great CEO in history has ever done them,” he said in an interview.
“Almost every CEO did one-on-ones, and they realized that the one-on-one model is flawed. It’s a recurring one hour one on one meeting where the employee owns the agenda. And what happens is like they often don’t talk about the things you want to talk about,” he added.
“You become like their therapist. And there are very few times an employee should come to you one-on-one without their people if they’re concerned about something, if they’re having a difficult time in their personal life, if they want to confide in something, they don’t feel safe talking to like telling a group, but that should be like infrequent,” Chesky said.
“If that’s happening frequently, that is a very ominous sign for your organization. So Jensen Huang says, I don’t do one on ones because I want everyone to be part of the solution and get the wisdom. When you make lots of one on one decisions, then people feel like they (haven’t been part) of the decision made. They don’t feel like they had a voice. They didn’t have buy in,” he added.
Chesky seemed to be implying that it was much better for CEOs to meet their teams in groups, so that everyone could hear common concerns and be around when important decisions were made. “(We) generally do group meetings. All of us choose to do group meetings. Everyone hears (what’s being discussed) and there’s notes taken. It’s like very transparent. What the topic was, what the decision made, who was in the room, who had input. So if the process was unfair or inadequate in some way there’s at least a record of the process that people can weigh in,” Chesky explained.
Chesky said that group meetings didn’t mean that he never spoke to his reports directly. “I do a lot of one on one calls and emails. I’ll call someone and ask for a status update. But it’s not a recurring meeting with them owning the agenda,” he said.
The idea of CEOs not doing regular 1:1 meetings with staff seems to be gaining currency in Silicon Valley. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has said that he tries to not have regular 1:1 meetings with his staff, and instead attends large meetings where employees brainstorm or important decisions are taken. And with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky too saying that he doesn’t do 1:1 meetings either, it appears that 1:1 meetings — especially at the CEO level — might not necessarily be as useful as is widely believed.