One-on-One Meetings
Overview
One-on-One (O3) meetings are invaluable. Meeting for a half-hour every two weeks seems about right to me.
Andrew Grove helped popularize 1-on-1 meetings as CEO at Intel. In High Output Management, he writes:
One of the fundamental tenets of Intel’s managerial philosophy is the one-on-one meeting between a supervisor and a subordinate. Its main purposes are mutual education and the exchange of information. By talking about specific problems and situations, the supervisor teaches the subordinate skills and know-how, and suggests ways to approach things. At the same time, the subordinate provides the supervisor with detailed information about what he is doing and what he is concerned about. For a more timely and detailed explanation for the value of 1-on-1’s, I highly recommend this answer posted to the Workplace Stack Exchange site: What is the purpose of 1-on-1 meetings with your direct leader/boss?
I share a Google document with each member of my team as a running agenda for these meetings. It gives me and the team member I'm meeting with somewhere to drop notes before we meet. Here's an example:
