I've sat through (and embarrassingly, probably led) hundreds of useless 1:1 meetings. You know that sinking feeling when your calendar shows three back-to-back and you think "What are we even going to talk about?" Or when you leave feeling like you just gave a status report to a very expensive notepad?

It took me years to figure out why these meetings felt so draining. After 20+ years in product leadership and coaching 100+ leaders through similar challenges, I finally recognized the patterns. 1:1s fail in predictable ways, typically falling into three specific dysfunctions.

Whether you're managing up to your boss, managing down to your team, or managing across to peers and stakeholders, you'll learn to identify what's actually broken so you can fix it.