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Brian Chesky doesn’t do one-on-ones. As CEO of a company with more than 6,000 employees, he told Fortune last year that he thinks the format is fundamentally flawed – and he’s not alone. A handful of high-profile CEOs, including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, have said the same thing.
That’s a strange thing to hear if you’re an HR leader who’s spent years telling managers to protect their weekly 1:1s. So which is it – are one-on-one meetings with employees a management best practice, or a habit that’s overdue for a rethink?
The honest answer is: it depends on what you’re using them for, and how well you’re running them. Here’s what the data actually shows, what Chesky’s argument gets right, and how to decide what fits your organization.
What Brian Chesky Actually Said
In a Fortune interview, Chesky said “the one-on-one model is flawed” because it’s a recurring, hour-long meeting where the employee sets the agenda – and that agenda often drifts away from the things that actually need to get resolved. His concern is that this format can turn a manager into a sounding board for individual complaints instead of a venue for solving problems the whole team could learn from.
He didn’t say he’s unreachable. He still calls or messages his direct reports for quick updates. What he’s really rejecting is the recurring, employee-owned meeting slot, not communication with his team.
It’s a fair critique of a specific, common failure mode – the 1:1 that’s been on the calendar so long nobody remembers why, that runs on autopilot, that both people quietly dread. Most HR leaders have seen that meeting. The question is whether the fix is dropping one-on-ones altogether or running better ones.
The Case for Keeping One-on-One Meetings With Employees
The data leans pretty heavily toward keeping them, at least in some form.
Managers drive most of the variance in engagement: Gallup’s research has repeatedly found that managers account for roughly 70% of the difference in how engaged one team is compared to another. That’s not a small effect – it means the manager relationship, more than almost anything else, decides whether someone actually wants to be at work. And for most managers, the one-on-one is still the main structured touchpoint where that relationship gets built.
They’re often the only safe channel for private concerns: Even Chesky admits this – he says one-on-ones are appropriate when someone has a personal issue or something they’re not comfortable raising with the group. Take that channel away entirely, and you lose an early-warning system for burnout, conflict, and people who are quietly job hunting.
New hires and junior employees tend to need more structure: Someone six weeks into a job doesn’t yet have the confidence to interrupt a group meeting or message a manager unprompted. A predictable, scheduled check-in permits them to ask questions they’d otherwise sit on.
Where the Traditional Model Actually Breaks
Chesky’s criticism isn’t wrong, though – it’s just aimed at a specific failure, not the format itself.
The meeting becomes a ritual instead of a conversation: Once a 1:1 has been recurring for two years, it can turn into a status update nobody needs, held mostly because canceling it would feel like a signal. If neither person prepares for it, it stops doing anything useful.
It doesn’t scale cleanly to large or distributed teams: A manager with 12 direct reports doing weekly hour-long 1:1s is spending nearly a third of their week in one-on-one meetings alone. At that point, something else – coaching skill development, project reviews, actual output – is getting squeezed out.
Issues get solved one person at a time instead of together: If three people on a team have the same concern but only ever raise it privately, the manager ends up having the same conversation three times instead of fixing the root cause once, in front of everyone it affects.
Alternatives and Hybrid Approaches Worth Trying
Few organizations need to choose between “weekly 1:1 for everyone, forever” and “no 1:1s at all.” Most of the companies getting this right land somewhere in between:
- Async check-ins for routine updates: A short written status update (what’s done, what’s blocked, what’s next) can replace a chunk of what used to be a status-heavy 1:1, freeing the actual meeting time for coaching and career conversations.
- Group forums for shared issues: Team stand-ups or open office hours surface problems that affect more than one person, so they get solved once, visibly, instead of relayed privately by each employee.
- Skip-level meetings: A regular, less frequent conversation with a manager’s manager gives employees a second channel without requiring a weekly slot on every calendar.
- Flexible cadence based on tenure and need: New hires or employees navigating a hard stretch might get weekly 1:1s; a tenured, high-performing employee might be fine with a biweekly or as-needed check-in.
- Reserving true one-on-ones for what they’re actually good for: Coaching, career growth, and anything the employee wouldn’t say in front of the team.
How to Decide What’s Right for Your Organization
Before changing (or defending) your one-on-one policy, it’s worth asking a few honest questions:
- What are these meetings actually for, right now, in practice? Not what they were designed for – what they’ve become.
- Are managers prepared for them, or just showing up? An unprepared 1:1 is close to worthless regardless of how often it happens.
- Do employees have any other channel to raise a private concern? If the answer is no, cutting 1:1s entirely creates a real gap.
- Is the format serving the team, or serving the calendar? If people would rather cancel than attend, that’s information.
There’s no single right cadence or format here. What matters is whether your managers are having real conversations with their people – on whatever schedule actually makes that possible – instead of running meetings out of habit.
The Bigger Point for HR Leaders
The debate Chesky sparked isn’t really about meeting formats. It’s about whether an organization is willing to question inherited habits instead of running on autopilot – which, not coincidentally, is also a decent description of workplace culture in general. The companies with genuinely strong cultures tend to be the ones that keep asking “does this still work?” instead of assuming a practice is right just because it’s always been done that way.
If you’re trying to figure out where your organization’s manager-employee relationships actually stand – not just how your 1:1 calendar looks, but how people really feel about the support they’re getting – that’s exactly what a structured employee engagement survey is built to uncover.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are one-on-one meetings with employees necessary?
Not always in the same fixed format for every employee, but most teams benefit from having some regular, private channel between a manager and each direct report – especially for new hires and for raising sensitive issues.
How often should managers meet one-on-one with employees?
There’s no universal answer. Weekly works for new hires or employees going through a rough patch; biweekly or monthly can be enough for experienced, high-performing employees who don’t need heavy structure.
What are good alternatives to one-on-one meetings?
Async written check-ins, team stand-ups for shared issues, and skip-level meetings can absorb a lot of what a status-heavy 1:1 used to cover, leaving actual one-on-one time for coaching and career conversations.
Why did Brian Chesky stop doing one-on-one meetings?
He argues the recurring, employee-agenda format tends to drift away from what actually needs solving and can turn managers into informal counselors rather than decision-makers. He still communicates directly with his team through calls and messages, just not on a fixed 1:1 schedule.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. While efforts are made to ensure accuracy, readers should verify information and seek professional advice as needed.
