Clearly it's not a universal truth because at least from what you say, it sounds like you don't like them.
On the other hand, I'll have to say you're definitely wrong to say people don't look forward to them. I have yet to find a company where we have had too many 1:1s, and I usually have them weekly.
It's true that sometimes I don't have anything I really need to communicate, and what ends up happening is that the meeting takes 5 minutes and that's it. That might seem like a waste, but I like it because it makes me feel like my manager actually cares enough to hear the feedback from us underlings. If we didn't have scheduled 1:1s, I would have a really hard time bringing up anything because my manager is very often elsewhere.
I also feel like it should be beneficial from the manager's perspective because assuming people actually are comfortable talking about issues, there are usually problems which arise that the manager doesn't have to deal with and thus know about. Then, we can make sure these things get addressed.
Of course, all this is moot if you don't feel like you can trust your manager, which is unfortunately sometimes the case.
On the other hand, I'll have to say you're definitely wrong to say people don't look forward to them. I have yet to find a company where we have had too many 1:1s, and I usually have them weekly.
It's true that sometimes I don't have anything I really need to communicate, and what ends up happening is that the meeting takes 5 minutes and that's it. That might seem like a waste, but I like it because it makes me feel like my manager actually cares enough to hear the feedback from us underlings. If we didn't have scheduled 1:1s, I would have a really hard time bringing up anything because my manager is very often elsewhere.
I also feel like it should be beneficial from the manager's perspective because assuming people actually are comfortable talking about issues, there are usually problems which arise that the manager doesn't have to deal with and thus know about. Then, we can make sure these things get addressed.
Of course, all this is moot if you don't feel like you can trust your manager, which is unfortunately sometimes the case.