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Meetings are the main way Airbnb's Brian Chesky gets work done. Yet he says the one-on-one format with a direct report is fundamentally flawed.
"Almost no great CEO in history has ever done them," the Airbnb chief said in a recent interview.
That's because when an employee "owns the agenda," they bring up subjects managers don't want to discuss — and "you become like their therapist," Chesky said. Topics can also arise that would benefit other people at the company to hear, but instead, they're sequestered in a one-on-one.
Of course, there are certain times when a one-on-one makes sense, Chesky told Fortune in the interview — such as when an employee is having a difficult time personally and needs to confide to a boss privately.
But generally, he said, they're just not productive on a regular basis.
Chesky isn't alone. Although he has many direct reports, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also prefers to skip one-on-one meetings.
"I don't really believe there's any information that I operate on that somehow only one or two people should hear about," Huang said at Stripe Sessions earlier this year.
While some leaders are cracking down, one expert previously told Business Insider that, when conducted correctly, one-on-ones can boost employee engagement, productivity, and overall happiness.
"The outcomes associated with effective one-on-ones are amazing," said Steven G. Rogelberg, an organizational psychologist who's also a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the author of "Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings."
Rogelberg previously told BI that one-on-ones are more successful when the worker leads the conversation. He said managers should dedicate roughly 25 minutes a week and focus on the personal needs of employees as well as the practical aspects of the job.
Many managers avoid that first component, Rogelberg said, because it takes more effort.
But at the same time, workers need to do their due diligence, he said — showing up prepared to talk more than half the time. Some fruitful topics include: challenges, how a manager can better support a worker, and what's going well and what could be improved.
Chesky isn't the only boss who's over the one-on-one. In May, Aditya Agarwal, a former Facebook director, wrote in a post on X that after more than a decade of conducting such meetings with those who report to him, he determined they did more harm than good.
"They condition people to do spot checks on happiness and constantly be critical about things that aren't ideal. In practice, 1:1s descend into nitpicking sessions," Agarwal wrote as part of a thread.
Agarwal added that bosses should give feedback every three to six months rather than weekly. That approach, he said, could drive managers to pick up on patterns and give "holistic" guidance rather than weekly spot checks.
