That said, I’ve managed people that absolutely needed regularly-scheduled one-on-ones, because they needed the dedicated time and space to bring things up that they otherwise wouldn’t in the normal course of business.
It really depends on the employee in question. I don’t think a one-size-fits-all approach works here.
Sometimes private conversations are necessary, but as a once in a while sort of thing, not on a biweekly cadence.
I’ve always scheduled 1 on 1’s with my team and I know it’s appreciated by some and I suspect dreaded by others. Are you not comfortable messaging your manager in advance to say you don’t have anything?
I’m being selfish here… how do I make people comfortable saying they don’t need to meet?
Would you care to elaborate? I‘d really love to understand your POV better. Maybe I have a blind spot somewhere.
Background: I’ve always done them weekly (as biweekly seems to be worse than monthly — which in turn is arguably much worse than weekly). And they seemed to work quite well.. Basically 10-30min of chit-chat and catchup for relationship building.
I am curious what “relationship building” looks like to you in a business context.
I somewhat enjoyed 1:1s with a previous manager of mine. I did feel we built a good relationship, even if we didn’t have important business to discuss all the time. Eventually the manager left the company and now I’m left wondering what the point of all of it was… It was never a real relationship, it was a business transaction all along.
And if it’s a business transaction, then I just don’t care. I’d rather spend the time doing something that advances myself or the business. I just don’t get much value from meeting with my manager. The 30 minutes spent doesn’t feel like it has good ROI.
Am I too cynical?
B. discuss your work, your projects, progress, possible threats
.... why? My 1-on-1's very rarely go beyond 10 minutes or so specifically because there usually isn't much to discuss, and even then we mostly just jump over some answers to simple questions, then end up bullshitting about whatever else is going on with life at the moment.
My 1:1s never end early and it feels like we keep on bullshitting for longer than either of us want or need.
For normals ICs 1:1s are crucial for career development. You absolutely need a space to talk candidly with your manager.
Grabbing coffee is of course an informal 1:1 anyway, but you don't need to formalise it unless your manager struggles to make time for you.
It's not so easy when you feel like you can't trust the people to whom you report. I'm in this situation after attempting to be candid about what I felt were missteps on the part of my manager and a director of engineering. After a scolding from one of them, and a veiled threat about my employment ending, I now feel like I just shouldn't rock the boat. I mostly dread my 1:1s with them, and I don't feel like those meetings are time well spent.
I could maybe understand if I had offered unsolicited feedback, but they asked for my opinion and I gave it honestly.
Right now i have a really good relation with my manager to the point were i can him out to him if i need to and were i trust him to help me advance my career if he can and that he will not screw me over..
In the past i have being in a position were i was at odds with my manager and definitely could not trust him, as soon as i realized that i started looking for my way out.. The period between that manager being hired and i leaving that job was the most stressful period in my life.. never been so happy to be fired in my life..
Now, that was another life, i was young and single.. now i have a few mouths to feed so if i got in that same situation today i would not get myself fired like i did back then, but i for sure would look for another job..
Yeah sure, and HR is your friend. /s
This is a great insight since so much gets lost in the management layer which causes frustration for devs while the CEO doesn't have a clue what's actually going on in the trenches.
Mathematics teaches us that the distance in a tree, from root to leaf, where each node is a linked list, is minimized when the branching factor is e, the base of the natural logarithm. For example, e is the most efficient base for writing integers.
Management isn't quite the same, but branch size is are relevant.
Management isn't
so i hardly thing he is discussing personal mistakes in those meetings, he is more likely discussing policies that affect entire departments or even the whole company..
Other then that i believe that any person in any position and at any level, should praise in public and criticize in private, always..
But note that he never said he does not have private meetings with his subordinates when needed, he only said he does not think he should have a scheduled time every week to have this kind of discussions..
and honestly i agree with him.. 90% of what i discuss with my manager in our 1:1s could be discussed in front of the whole team.. the other 10% is not something i need to discuss ever other week it is usually stuff about my personal career that i need to discuss just a few times per year.. so for those when the need arise i just reach out to my manager and discuss with him..
also a managers is not always the best person to be coaching someone.. where i work we have managers and we have mentors and those are separated roles that may be taken by different people..
In the recently released book Rassie: Stories of Life and Rugby by Rassie Erasmus (two time World Cup winning South African rugby coach), Rassie mentions that he doesn’t do one-on-ones. To quote from the book:
"Everything was done in front of everybody. I’ve never had a one-on-one with a player, except when he came to me with a deeply personal issue. I told them not to come to me individually with questions about why they were not in the team, or why they thought they deserved an opportunity…
Some of the newer players weren’t used to me not having one-on-one discussions. I told them I preferred to talk to everyone together so everyone understood what was going on, and no rumours started about what might have happened between me and a player behind closed doors."
Given how often sports team analogies are used in leadership speak, perhaps this fits.
This is the equivalent of I discourage weekly meetings. (hint: they should be done as required)
Sure, when you are directly reporting into the CEO you are probably in a position where you are expected to lead it out yourself unless it affects the entire company strategy, so it is less useful, but if you are working with ICs then they are still very useful.
In real life though, my severe congenital hearing impairment means communication ability is stunted for all but one-on-one meetings. Cursed...
An AI that learned the state if things and could point out contradictions would also be very useful.
gossip etc
I think part of his motivation is to expose it all and avoid all that
I also don't see the point of managers for that matter.
I will work to eliminate all managers from my organization until it's just me, the clients, and the revenues going in my pocket. That's fair and square business.
Managers are excess to any requirement other than someone rich pocketing the revenue who did not do the work.
