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?
Not at all. I feel exactly the same way. I'm also introverted, and to me "relationship building" in a corporate context often feels really contrived.
I want to bring as much value as possible to my employer, and I don't feel like I generate value by having 1:1s for the sake of having 1:1s. I jump through the hoop though, because I want a promotion and I'm concerned that I won't get one if I don't fit the norm.
When we were peers we were the only two person from our team in our country, so we had a friendly relation as peers that we some how managed to keep when he became my manager..
We never had 1:1s before because we always speak to each other as we need.. We could go whole months with not talking much to each other, often only an occasional checking from him to jokingly ask if i was still alive, on the other hands there were times we would speak several times every day if there was need for it.. We both work fully remote since before he became a manager..
This year our company SVPs are mandating 1:1 for the whole team, so we are doing it every two weeks but our meeting are mostly chit chats with some work stuff here or there when there is something to discuss..
But as someone said above.. if i need something work related from him i will likely reach out and talk to him at the time.. We also have a whole team meeting once a month and most important stuff is discussed in that meeting, we also have a lot of non work chit chat in those, but there is not much left to discuss at 1:1s..
Also the stuff that i would discuss at 1:1 are not usually stuff i need to discuss every two weeks, it is career or pay stuff that i usually need to discuss two or three times per year.
I kind of agree with Jensen Huang on his take, most stuff can be discussed with the whole team, even coaching, the only thing you should only discuss in particular with your manager from you are your personal career and from him is any criticism he has to make (i believe in the saying, praise in public and criticize in private), but you should not need a regular 1:1 for those, you or your manager should schedule a meeting and discuss those when the need arise..
Now.. like i said, i work remote full time, so for me those 1:1, and even the team meetings, are some nice opportunity we have for some social interactions, this is why both are mostly chit chat.. so they are good for the team mental health so in some way they are good for our personal advancement as well.. so even if my manager is gone tomorrow i don't see as it being all for nothing..
Also having a close relation with one manager can be good for ones career, my manager know my career goals and he has being doing what he can to help me achieve my objectives.. if he is gone tomorrow the work he has already done to help will still have value..
Think this, we all had several friends trough life that we eventually lost contact with or very rarely speak with.. those friendships were important and had value at the time in some way or another but then they ended, just because they ended the value did not disappeared, it was valuable at the time and in some ways we carry this value with us, i see 1:1s with my manager the same way.. they are nice to have and have some value at the time but if he is gone tomorrow so be it..
in those cases it is valuable to have a schedule 1:1 even if it is mostly chit chat..
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.
I let them know I don't have anything else, ask an open-ended anything on your mind type question, then we call it and get back to work.
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
A non-integral number like e is obviously of limited utility in physical systems because having e adders in your ALU doesn't make much sense.
3 is closer then 2 to e, which also why ternary arithmetic was attempted for a while, but the massive advantage of binary in terms of implementation (it is much easier and far lower power to use transistors to slam a voltage high or low than keep it somewhere in the middle, and easier to arrange gates to have only on and off as inputs) won in the end.
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.
I guess I should have elaborated more about the ICs. With experienced employees they should know how to provide feedback to a larger group, but you don't necessarily have that with junior or intermediate ICs who don't always have the confidence to say anything if you didn't provide them with a space to provide feedback or just have a complaining session.
It can also be just the possibility that feedback could be taken as personally attacking someone in a group setting. How does someone differentiate between general feedback and passive aggressive feedback singling them out? For someone that may not "fit in" with the group they are part of it is a real concern they have to consider. I can think of many examples where this is the case where the suitable action is to either give or receive feedback in a more private environment.
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.
