Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wants to completely do away with 1:1 meetings. “They (1:1s) are really not necessary. If there is a strategic direction, why do you tell one person? You tell everybody,” he said.  Most 1:1s meetings are ineffective, inconsistent, and often futile. In companies that mandate it, it is simply a check in the box. Employees use it to lobby for promotion, crib about annoying co-workers, or overshare personal details. So, managers hijack these meetings and turn them into monologues.  But 1:1 can be a gamechanger, if used well. It makes the workplace more democratic, especially if the organization is hierarchical, and gives employees a dedicated space to express themselves fully and make themselves heard. Research suggests that employees who do 1:1s well, and regularly, are more engaged at work and productive. Host Akshaya Chandrasekaran talks to the world’s leading expert on meetings, Steven Rogelberg, and Kamal Karanth, the founder of specialist staffing firm Xpheno to find out ways to make it work and get what you want in these 1:1 meetings.  Introducing surveys. Want to do more than listen to the podcast? You can suggest new topics, contribute to the narrative, and even be on it by taking our weekly surveys. Have you ever felt like an imposter at work? Undeserving of the opportunities you get? And overall feeling not good enough? Then, you can take the survey and let us know: Are you good enough at your job? FREE READ: TCS offers quirky titles and little else in recruiting revamp to attract 40K hires If you have a career question you want us to cover? Tell us.  This episode was written and hosted by Akshaya Chandrasekaran, and produced by Anushka Mukherjee, with audio engineering by Rajiv CN.  The First Two Years is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform.  Subscribe for more exclusive business stories, deeply-reported newsletters, and a whole lot of stuff.