Most one-on-one meetings are a waste of time. Yours might be telling you something worse.
When a direct report gives you one-word answers, shows up unprepared, or seems checked out—that's not an attitude problem. That's a signal. And most managers miss it entirely.
The Missed Meeting reveals what your one-on-ones are really communicating about your team's engagement, trust, and performance—and delivers a science-backed framework to fix it.
Drawing on four decades of research in Self-Determination Theory by Deci & Ryan—the same framework cited by Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review—organizational psychologist Pete Ketchum gives you:
— The real reason your best people eventually go quiet (and the 5-minute diagnostic to catch it early)
— The Sustain-Improve Framework for transforming status updates into conversations that drive performance
— The single question that changes the dynamic in any 1:1—immediately
— The ARC Self-Assessment to identify exactly where your leadership is creating friction
Ketchum didn't learn this in a classroom. Before becoming an organizational psychologist, he was an Army-trained interrogator, a state corrections officer, and a state trooper—environments where reading people wasn't optional. He brings that same precision to a meeting most leaders slepwalk through.
If your one-on-ones feel like calendar obligations, this book will show you what you're missing—and what it's costing you.
