Many businesses thrive on 1-on-1 meetings to build trust within the organization.
There is a massive expectation of that, which is what NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang’s anti-1-on-1 Leadership style is.
Indeed, in multiple interviews, Huang revealed that he “really discourages 1-on-1s” while managing 60 direct reports, he challenged one of management’s most sacred practices.
His reasoning cuts to the heart of what separates high-performing organizations from the rest: the fundamental choice between information hoarding and radical transparency.
The Trust Foundation Prerequisite
Huang’s framework only works because NVIDIA operates as a high-trust organization, a critical distinction that explains why copying this approach superficially would fail in most companies.
High-trust organizations share several characteristics that make transparent leadership viable:
