How Often to Meet With Your Boss

How often should you actually meet with your boss? In the new era of hybrid work, when face time is scarce and inboxes are overflowing, figuring out the right cadence for one-on-one meetings can be a crucial strategy in staying aligned, focused, and on-track.

Meeting too often wastes time. Meeting too little risks miscommunication, stalled progress, and missed opportunities. So how do you find the sweet spot? It depends on these 4 key factors — and chances are, you’re not meeting as often as you should.

Be mindful of special occasions

If things are going well with your ongoing work and you feel adequately supported by your manager, it can be easy for both of you to go on autopilot. At the same time, you don’t want to make poor use of either of your time by meeting more often than is necessary.

If you find yourself in one of these special occasions, it’s worth considering meeting with your boss more often:

• You are working with a boss for the first time.
• You are working with a boss on a new project.
• You are working with a boss on a high-stakes project.
• You are working with a boss on a project for which there is a lot of uncertainty or one that requires fast-paced decision-making.

If your performance is plummeting, be more proactive

If things are not going well on a particular assignment, consider meeting with your boss every day for a while. Don’t make the mistake of spending hours on tearful inquisitions, indictments, or confessions. Keep these meetings short and consistent. There’s a strong chance that things are not working out because you are not getting enough guidance, direction, or support. Once you spend more time with your boss talking through the work you are doing, you are likely to work through solutions to most of the problems you’re encountering.

If regular meetings are shorter than 15 minutes, that could be a red flag

If things are going well with your work, spending 15 minutes with your boss every day, or even every week, is likely excessive. Meeting every other week will likely be enough.

But if you don’t spend at least 15 minutes with that boss, then it is difficult to know whether things are going as well as you think they are. All either of you can ascertain in less time than that is whether any problems have come up on either your radar or your boss’.

Spend those 15 minutes verifying that things are indeed going well. The good news is that, if in fact they are, you can use that meeting time to discuss how to make things go even better.

People are often shocked at how much they can get done in a 15-minute meeting. Take any boss you have not spoken with for a while. Spend 15 minutes with that boss asking probing questions about the details of your work. It’s likely you’ll be very glad you did.

Keep conversations focused and straightforward

The last thing you want to do is waste time during one-on-one meetings with your boss, especially if you’re trying to keep them both brief and effective. Keep your conversations straightforward and to the point. If you conduct these one-one-one conversations regularly, there is no reason for them to be long and convoluted. The goal is to make the conversations focused and simple. Prepare in advance so that you can move the conversation along swiftly.

Don’t forget to consider what day and time is best to meet with each boss. With some bosses, you may be able to schedule regular meetings at fixed days and times. But if your boss has an irregular schedule, then the best practice is to finish each one-on-one conversation with that boss by scheduling the next one.

Once you’ve gotten into a routine with each boss, 15 minutes every week or every other week should be all you need. Like everything else, it’s a moving target. Over time, you’ll have to gauge how much time you need to spend with each boss.