Why Senior Leaders Should Stop Having So Many One-on-Ones

A client of mine, Melissa, the CEO of a tech company in the healthcare sector, vented to me about a conversation she’d had with her CHRO, Ben. He came to her and said, “I’m hearing frustrations on the team about how decisions are getting made.” Having prided herself on being a transparent, inclusive leader (which she is), she was perplexed. Ben went on to share several stories of team members who’d learned about critical decisions that affected them from their peers, not from Melissa. For example, the VP of engineering learned about a deprioritized product feature from the VP of marketing. The VP of quality learned about a new project to accelerate product delivery from the VP of operations. The VP of sales learned about a new budget shift from the CFO.