A 1:1 is the most versatile meeting on your calendar. It's where you build trust with your manager, align on priorities with a peer, jam on a hard problem with a colleague, get career advice from a mentor, or check in with someone new on your team. At its best, a 1:1 is the meeting where the real work of working together happens.

So why do so many of them feel like a waste of time?

1:1s aren't one thing. They serve different purposes depending on who you're meeting with and what you need:

Building trust and relationships. The foundation everything else rests on. Whether it's your manager, a peer, or someone you just started working with, 1:1s are where you build the kind of trust that makes hard conversations possible and collaboration natural.

Creating alignment and clarity. Are we working on the right things? Do we agree on priorities? What does success look like? 1:1s are where you get clear on expectations, align on strategy, and make sure you're pulling in the same direction — especially across teams.

Coaching and development. Your growth doesn't happen in annual reviews. It happens in the conversations where someone gives you honest feedback, helps you think through a challenge, or pushes you to stretch. Great 1:1s make room for this consistently, not just when performance reviews are due.

Collaborating and problem-solving. Sometimes you need to get unstuck, make a decision together, or think through an approach. 1:1s are often the fastest way to unblock real work — especially across teams where dependencies live.

Exchanging feedback. Feedback works best when it flows both ways and happens regularly — not saved up for formal reviews. 1:1s create a rhythm for sharing what's working, what isn't, and what you need from each other.

Staying connected as a human. How are you actually doing? Not the Slack-friendly version — the real answer. Check-ins that go beyond project status are what keep working relationships healthy and help you notice when someone needs support.

Nearly half of people rate their 1:1 experience as suboptimal. The common failure modes:

No one's prepared. The meeting starts in five minutes. Neither of you has looked at last week's notes (if there were any). You can't remember what you agreed to follow up on. So the conversation stays shallow and defaults to status updates.

They turn into status updates. When there's no agenda or shared context, 1:1s drift to the safest topic: what's everyone working on. The important stuff — feedback, alignment, development, real problems — gets squeezed out.

Everything's forgotten. You had a great conversation. Clear next steps, honest feedback, good ideas. But you were focused on listening, not typing. A week later, neither of you can remember the specifics. Action items drop. The next meeting starts from scratch.

They're one-directional. The manager drives the agenda, does most of the talking, and the employee nods along. Research shows the best 1:1s flip this: the employee leads, and the manager listens, asks questions, and supports.

They don't build on each other. Each meeting is treated as an isolated event. There's no continuity — no thread connecting this conversation to the last one and the next one. Without that thread, 1:1s feel repetitive instead of building momentum.

These aren't signs of bad managers or disengaged teams. They're the natural result of relying on memory and manual notes for something as important as your working relationships.

Great 1:1s share a few things in common, regardless of who's in the room:

Both people come prepared — even with no prep time. You know what happened last time, what your meeting partner's been working on, how they've been feeling, and what's worth discussing. Not because you spent 20 minutes reviewing notes, but because the context is just there.

The right topics get attention. There's enough structure to keep the conversation on things that matter — alignment, feedback, development, real blockers — without it feeling like a rigid agenda. Both people contribute to what gets discussed.

You stay present. You're not splitting your attention between listening and typing. You're fully in the conversation. That's when the real stuff comes out — the concerns, the ideas, the honest feedback that doesn't surface in a group setting.

Feedback flows both ways. The best 1:1s aren't lectures. They're conversations where both people share what's working, what isn't, and what they need. That takes trust, and trust takes consistency.

Everything carries forward. Action items don't disappear. Topics that need revisiting come back. Each 1:1 builds on the last one. Over time, you're not just having meetings — you're building a working relationship with real continuity.

Most tools force you to choose: be present in the conversation, or capture what matters. Shared docs pull your attention away from the person in front of you. And tools that capture individual meetings treat each one as isolated — missing the relationship context that builds over time.

Bonusly takes a different approach. You don't have to change how you meet — keep using Zoom, Meet, Teams, Slack, or meeting in person. Bonusly isn't a video conferencing tool. Your calendar and video software already work great, and we're not trying to replace them.

What Bonusly replaces is the manual work around your meetings — the prep, the note-taking, and the follow-up. Instead of scrambling to take notes in Google Docs or Notion while trying to listen, just open your Bonusly 1:1 when the meeting starts, click Start transcribing, and focus on the conversation. Bonusly takes care of the rest. (Note: both participants must be logged in to their Bonusly 1:1 page in order to transcribe both sides of the conversation.)

Before the meeting: Bonusly connects to your calendar and knows when your 1:1s are coming up. When you open the meeting, you'll see your shared notes, your last meeting's summary, and your partner's recent check-ins and recognition. Bizy, Bonusly's AI assistant, can pull together talking points in seconds — so you're prepared even when you had no time to prepare.

During the meeting: Have your conversation as normal — on Zoom, Meet, Teams, or in person. With Bonusly open and transcribing, you don't need to split your attention between listening and typing. Collaborative notes are there if you want to jot something down, and check-ins let both people share how they're really doing before diving in.

After the meeting: Bonusly's AI generates a summary — key topics, discussion points, action items, sentiment — so nothing falls through the cracks. When your next 1:1 comes around, all of that context is right there.

The result: every meeting builds on the last one. You show up prepared, stay present, and walk away confident that you had a good conversation and know what's next.

That's what a great 1:1 looks like — and Bonusly makes it the easy path, not the hard one.