Many leaders, both novice and experienced, do not hold meetings with their subordinates. Of course, they do meet, in the corridor or at team meetings, but not regularly one-on-one.
Unfortunately, the role of individual meetings is often greatly underestimated in classical companies of the 20th century. This is true not only for the CIS countries, where a planned-command economy was previously built, but practically for all countries, including traditional competitive, democratic economies, becoming an unwritten norm in many “old”, well-known, international corporations.
I believe that regular one-on-one meetings (often mentioned as “1-1”) are a very important aspect not only of leadership but of everyday operational management. An employee knows that his leader always has a slot in their calendar, once a week or two, when he can discuss specifically their tasks and problems, propose changes in processes, ask for additional resources and help, or simply seek advice. The leader, in turn, receives information about operational processes, gauges the mood in the team, and adjusts current goals.
Meanwhile, I believe that the role of meetings in management is greatly overestimated. Look at the calendar of any middle manager in an average company. Typically, their working time is filled with various regular and irregular meetings, briefings, and “syncs”. In several companies, in positions of novice leaders, I began to keep statistics of my time spent in meetings at certain points in the development of these organisations. It turned out to be up to 35 hours a week spent for various internal (!) meetings. If you work within the usual working day, then approximately one hour a day is left for directly performing duties related to business development or operations building. This seems absurd, but such absurdity occurs in every second company, everywhere in the world.
Such imbalances regarding the role of meetings in management speak of the contradictory nature of the tool itself. As with almost everything in management and motivation, it is necessary to feel, and thus carefully consider, where and when to apply it, as well as how to balance it with other regular management tools. One-on-one meetings of the leader with each direct subordinate (ideally, there should be no more than seven) must be regular, and if the project is new or the team is being formed, or the team member has just joined, then such meetings can be even more frequent than once a week. When the company has been operating for a long time, processes are set up, teams have worked together, and there is no staff turnover, then 1-1 meetings can be once a month or even quarterly.
Regarding the number of meetings – of course, everything is relative to a specific situation. Different businesses, industries have different process dynamics. Also, no two companies have the same corporate culture. It is well known that all leaders and teams are unique, and the approach to organising meetings and filling the team calendar – all this needs to be adjusted individually. In any case, I believe there should not be more meetings than actual work, and each meeting participant should only be there if they are truly necessary.