Gonna have to strongly disagree on this. Just because the author has specific anecdotes for their 1x1s, there's no way this applies broadly and generically. I've had a thousand+ 1x1s with countless people (both as a manager and as a report), and the majority of them are just time sucking status updates, casual meet and greets, or some performance/process related discussion. Literally never have I walked out of a 1x1 and thought "wow that was unreasonably effective".
There’s a common factor to all of your 1:1s, so that may be worth looking into.
Like the author, I have had some ongoing 1:1s be incredibly productive. Like really changing my life. Unlike the author, I wouldn’t broadly recommend them. They’re so easy to do in a way that isn’t productive. I think that’s the default, really. So if I was going to tell people to do them I’d be very explicit that you need to do something different than you probably think. Here are exacts steps and characteristics, if you don’t follow these then it won’t work and don’t come to me about it.
The overall general trend of why they’re not effective is they’re too surface level. You say some updates to your boss in a way that doesn’t get you fired, maybe complain about some stuff. You kinda just talk about things.
It needs to be a time when there is some work really happening. It’s metawork, but it’s still work. Like “what were the things that distracted you last week?” and you write them down, there in the meeting. Not “anything distracting you lately?” “nope I’m fine”. It’s a much more vulnerable, interactive process. This is probably why a 1:1 with your boss isn’t the most effective person. Too much image to maintain.
I think the sports model is better. In baseball, the Manager (coach or head coach in other sports) makes decisions about who is playing. Coaches (aka assistant coaches or trainers) are skill experts who help you get better. You can be more vulnerable with them. I think some industries, especially software, would do well to have more of a manager/coach model.
> , and the majority of them are just time sucking status updates, casual meet and greets, or some performance/process related discussion. Literally never have I walked out of a 1x1 and thought "wow that was unreasonably effective".
You should really listen to the Manager Toolbox podcast on 1:1s (there's 3 segments, all of them very worth the time):
Basically, that "time sucking" activity with trivial conversation is actually what helps people build a [professional] relationship with their bosses/reportees. From my experience, it is an error to use the 1:1 to check every week how work is going. There's a lot of other channels for that (including the dreaded daily standup). As I mentioned to my reportees: "One on Ones are to talk about anything you want, particularly, company/office stuff that is not part of your day to day job. If you want to tell me about someone that smells bad, this is the place, or about the water dispenser that never works, etc". Of course if someone wants to tell talk to you about work, it is also great.
Specially on remote-work scenarios, having weekly "how are you" calls is important to pull the members of a team closer to the team.
I've had both good and bad 1:1s, yet I still find them to be quite effective. Because even when they feel like a waste, they serve a purpose - to maintain the habit of talking to your boss. That way, when something does come up worth talking about, you just do.
I have little to say to my current boss most weeks. I just keep my platform running independently, so he gets to trust me to do so and ignore it. It is a good working relationship. Our weekly calls are 5 minutes long, just a quick check in and move on. Until they are not - and then we raise concerns, talk them through, fix them, and go back to the regularly scheduled program.
Each individual 1:1 is fairly worthless. But the habit makes all the difference in the long run.
The point of 1:1s is largely about building trust. It's very rare that anything seriously consequential gets discussed in a 1:1; arguably, if it gets to that point, you're doing something wrong. Rather, 1:1s are about thousands of little course corrections, pointing out something small that should happen, watching it happen, and then building trust that further communication will be well-received.
It's so you don't get blindsided out of nowhere with "I'm leaving for Facebook now" or "Sorry, your project is canceled" or "We're not happy with how things are going, so you're now on a PIP."
It's the same reason to say "Good morning" and "I love you" to your spouse every day and buy them flowers - by itself, it's inconsequential, but if you don't you'll likely hear "I'm leaving you for your best friend" in a decade or two. Same reason, for that matter, that people are looking at America now and going "What the hell happened?" Trust and emotions are real things too.
If I’m meeting with someone and it’s all status updates and pleasantries, I try to change it, and, if I can’t, to leave. If you find every meeting you’re in to be useless, consider the common factor.
When done properly, 1:1s are powerful. But they require at least one side to be willing to be vulnerable. To talk about problems and weaknesses and needs. That doesn’t come naturally to most of us, and requires practice and intent to become habit.
A 1x1 is really what you make of it. When you are the manager, you have a lot of latitude for how a 1x1 operates. If you find that your 1x1s are rarely useful, change how you run them.
In particular, you mention "time-sucking status updates". In my experience, often someone thinks you want a status report, but from your point of view you are sufficiently aware of the project status already. As the manager, you can just politely suggest that you are already happy with the project status, and move on to other topics.
Some of the most effective 1x1s are either when the manager has a tough problem to solve, or the report has a tough problem to solve, and the 1x1 can be some focused time to detect these problems and resolve them. This can be anywhere from a technical issue that this report has some expertise in, or a social issue like "I feel like it's been taking a while to reach an agreement among the team on topic X, how do you think we can speed that up?" Or perhaps you notice that a report seems frustrated on a project, but you aren't quite sure why, and you can use the 1:1 to draw that out.
I find it helpful to take notes ahead of time, with some ideas for myself for what I might be able to accomplish with a 1:1. Otherwise you run the risk of not really knowing what to say, your report doesn't really have anything urgent in mind either, and you fill up the 1:1 time with chit chat.
I really like this blog post on how to run effective 1:1s:
Running an effective 1:1 is an important managerial skill, it's something you can practice and improve at over time, and it's worth working at it since there is so much you can accomplish through 1:1s and you're likely spending a lot of time as a manager in them.
If its just you reporting then its going to feel like a waste of time and suck. The best 1x1s though are problem solving related where you both are sitting there and coming up with a gameplan. That sort of meeting doesn't go well over email because there's often a lot of things you come up with and address that would take 40 emails or slack messages to do the same.
I've had a lot of great one on ones and a lot of bad ones. They changed towards being great when I started gathering a list of things I wanted to cover or talk about.
One on ones where we make small talk about the weekend are useless to me. One on ones where we can talk through a technical topic I don't understand and I know I have at least a half hour of time to do so with someone who knows the topic well? Very helpful.
Most of the time its only tangentially related to anything I've been working on.
Yes and no. I've had one on ones tied to OKR's that were completely pointless and a waste of time. Corp speak nonsense that kept me and the people I worked with away from our work and was really just shuffling papers in middle management.
I've also had one on ones with small team leaders, who knew their people and knew their jobs and understood their motivations that were SUPER helpful. Even if it meant preparing those people to leave the company. That's the difference between a good manager and a bad manager. That's also why I like working in small teams. We gel faster, work closer together and get to know our manager (even though that manager is me, right now). I've tried to learn from my former managers and bring that to my team of a few people and try to shield them from as much corporate BS that I can. That isn't their job. They look at code (as do I, when I can), and I go to meetings and deal with that. And when members of my team seem interested in other things (and mention it in one on ones), I try to help them with that. That's what they're supposed to be for. Not just poor performance... hopefully. Maybe I've just gotten lucky.
Concur that one-on-ones with my lead are very rarely any use to me. And I actively enjoy getting to know my teammates and leads!
You could ask for suggestions how to do your job. But your job is your job, not your lead's. The best they can do is offer some heuristics. Ultimately, there should be some planning or engineering review process where you work, and a one-on-one with your lead is a crappy substitute.
You could ask your lead to share confidential information about upcoming changes at the company, such as a senior departure or a team reorg. This only happens because senior leadership has asked your lead to share this info one on one, not because you have an intimate relationship of trust.
A one-on-one is sometimes useful to me when I'm the lead, because my direct reports might tell me something they aren't comfortable bringing up in stand-up: a deadline is slipping, they're unhappy with a teammate, etc. It's very useful for me to know this stuff. But the action I take as a result very rarely benefits that employee directly. It's just me collecting intel.
I don't have much I want to bring up to my manager in 1:1s but I still prefer to have them as a manager myself. So 1:1s definitely never felt unreasonably effective. Never thought to optimize it tho.
Anything of value or importance has to be written down, it is a short objective statement, usually a few lines. And then pursuing those over time (1 to several weeks or months) and having accountability check-ins. This would make 1:1s very formal and 1:1s usually seem better as casual conversations.
In this thread, we explore more ways in which almost any practice or system works great when someone competent and well-meaning does it, and almost none do when someone incompetent or malicious is involved, which is most of the time.
See also: all project management methodology discussions.
For some managers they are a weapon they use to gaslight their reports. That is, they tell one person one thing and tell another person another thing.
At least in a team meeting you never are thinking that this is going on.
It might not be the usual situation but it happened to me once and because of that the 1-1 is going to have a bad smell that's going to require a huge amount of trust in the manager to overcome.
Pretty sure this is exactly what happened to me and it's soured me on 1:1s. I thought he was listening empathetically, but really he was using the information I was giving him, in what was supposed to be a private setting, and used it to paint a very negative picture of me to the rest of the bosses.
I read a book a while back called Tribal Leadership that calls out exactly the problems you are referring to.
One is that the manager has to say the same thing to multiple reports, which simply isn’t scalable. Second the person at the other end of the 1:1 feels commoditized, and third, people start to spot inconsistencies (intentional or not) between what the manager is telling different reports, which damages their credibility. Their solution is to form triads (three person meetings).
1:1's are basically a mix of every anti-pattern for CYA in business - they're verbal, they're isolated, they're strongly implied to be considered private, and there's a massive power imbalance in the communication.
It's not good to gaslight people and lie to them. But sometimes you need to have a more direct conversation with someone in a 1x1 than is appropriate to have in a larger group. And sometimes you need to motivate someone in a specific way (performance issue, etc) that may not be right to demonstrate broadly. For instance, in a 1x1 "Jon, I really need you to get the signup flow working as you haven't been meeting your estimates or deadlines at all" ... and then to the team "let's get the new signup flow working, we think it will increase user engagement!"
Here is what I always recommend people: Try to use the 1:1s with your boss productively, ideally engage her/him in a problem solving session for one of your work topics.
I used to managed a large group of people. I always made clear that this is the time of the report. She/he could use the time with me at their will.
I have found the best use of our time was when a report would walk in (back in the day, you know...) and shared what they were struggling with. We would then jointly problem solve. This way, I could get an insight into their daily struggle, get updates on status and help them.
The least effective ones were over after 5 minutes or so, when the report didn't want to share anything. I am aware that this is a trust issue. But you can't build up trust without time to interact.
At the risk of sounding cliche, I think the pattern of frequent 1:1s is a technique for managing people instead of leading them.
I've experienced this in both roles, and honestly, engineers, no matter how junior, should be able to get by a few weeks without constant management intervention.
Maybe weekly 1:1 are so common because there's a glut of nontechnical managers who don't know what else to do with their time? That's not the situation Ben Kuhn describes, but I don't know.
I’ll offer my own anecdote, which was 1 on 1s with a manager who was really just soliciting feedback about the team, how I was going, what I thought we could do better. Now I don’t have them due to a new job, I miss them dearly.
Weekly 1:1s help me catch personnel issues that, left unattended, would lead to disaffection and attrition.
1:1 is about helping direct reports reach their professional goals when times are good (it's a great time to literally ask what they want), and provide an emotional outlet when things are bad.
It helps me find assholes in my organization who need to be fired to maintain the company's health.
"Should be able to" is doing a lot of work there. Are people able to do this? What supporting structures make that possible? Are you sure all those structures are in place and applicable to a certain person's work? A 1:1 would be a good time to find out if not...
Also while any particular 1:1 might be unnecessary, the 1:1s that catch things that might be going bad are IMHO much more important than the ones that aren't strictly necessary. A slow cadence can let problems fester for weeks.
Well yes, it’s a management technique, not a leadership technique. It’s about making sure that someone’s happy with how things are going, talking about the things that don’t get talked about day to day, but should be dealt with more frequently than every 6 months at a performance review.
We don’t do them weekly, but they’re definitely valuable.
I think 1-on-1s can be "unreasonably effective." In one group I managed, I implemented 1-on-1s and watched year-over-year attrition drop by ~80%. I thought they were so effective that I implemented them in my marriage and saw great (albeit, not directly measurable) increases in marriage satisfaction. If nothing else, my wife enjoyed them enough that she is now the one who insists that we have a "weekly connect."
With that said, I think that almost all of their effectiveness comes down to who's leading it. When I first become a manager, I assumed that I would probably suck at it, so I read everything I could on how to be a better manager. That was especially true when it came to leading 1-on-1s. But, when I've worked with managers who just didn't care for them, or didn't care to learn enough about how to do them properly, they were invariably a waste of time. So, despite my own experience, I don't begrudge anyone who thinks 1-on-1s are a waste of time. In many (most?) cases, they are.
I rarely have found 1-1s 'effective', and I've experienced them in four different companies. In stints as a manager, I never have them.
First: like all management, their usefulness depends utterly on how effective the manager is. In my experience, most managers just use them to 'chat'. Which is invariably a waste of both our times.
Second: Most things I want to talk to a manager about, I can talk about anytime. We just talk as the need arises. In my experience, most managers schedule them 'just so we have available time', which really means "I don't have time unless you're on my calendar".
To be an effective manager, I need them to be available, to communicate well, to listen, and to give me feedback and guidance based on what they hear. And that has nothing to do with a regular '1-1' meeting.
But are most managers available? That is the last word I think of when I think of managers in general. Maybe available in an emergency but what about when I want to ask questions that are relevant to my career/the company/technology but not directly relevant to my/our current task or goal?
I wouldnt really expect my manager to drop everything Monday morning to talk to me about that unless I know I had a weekly scheduled time to do so.
This isn't so much an article about 1:1s in general, I would say, but more of a rant about bad Ph.D. student supervision in one particular case, which the author generalises from N=1 observations.
Of course there are many stories of poor grad school experience and the notable Prof. Smith from the legendary Ph.D. comic; but just to point
out that there are also "rock star" supervisors:
for instance, I was blessed to be able to email
drafts of conference papers to mine at 11 p.m. and get corrections back by 5 a.m.
Now I can't say I know how the distribution of grad student supervisors looks like on the good/bad scale, but let's just be careful not to extrapolate from a single data point.
PS: I applaud the author's approach to try to help using the methods he knew - a beautiful example of making use of transferrable skills (computing is full of them).
I think the reason it's used here is because the one-on-one was surprisingly effective even when applied outside a typical work environment, just like the original usage was that math was surprisingly useful in understanding natural phenomena:
> One is that grad schools are really dysfunctional. If I, a person whose sole qualification is caring a lot, could help Eve speed up her dissertation by ~25%, then her philosophy department is leaving a lot of productivity on the table.
They are dysfunctional from the perspective of grad students. For the advisors (professors) their priorities are:
1. publish
2. get grants
Basically nothing else matters in terms of what they're evaluated on.
"My grad student finished 25% faster" does pretty much nothing for the advisor's career compared to "My team performed 25% better" for a manager's career.
Anecdotal (but then again so is the whole discussion) ...I recently started a job with a company that does regular 1:1's and wow.
Been in this industry for 20+ years and I never knew how badly I needed this.
Theoretically, obviously, managers can have "open door" policies where you can talk to them any time about any thing. Theoretically, this would suffice. In reality, I have always generally felt awful about bothering managers and taking up their time. Having dedicated 1:1 time is an absolute gamechanger.
One-on-ones can be highly effective, no doubt. The kinds of practices that the author describes are often helpful. However, I'm not sure the claim applies to all companies and pairings. I've had a wide range of experiences with one-on-ones.
I've worked for the company that the author is talking about (full disclosure: I worked with him there, had an excellent and productive time, and then was fired). That company places an extremely heavy emphasis on imposing a specific culture from the top down — not just a culture of how work is done, but pervasive to the extent of personal habits and lifestyle advice. Alternative suggestions about culture are generally not entertained because there is a primary tenet that everyone has to align 100% with the culture for it to work, and it is more efficient for everyone to simply align with exactly what the CEO believes than to make culture decisions as a group. Maybe that's the best way to run a startup when your overriding priority is to execute as fast as possible, but it does have other negative side-effects, which were unfortunate for some of my teammates.
Consequently, I am reluctant to generalize from experiences of working there. It is a unique company, and not all working environments and team relationships are going to be like that.
One on ones are a very good tool. In someone with good training and in a good job environment are incredible to gather feedback, make sure that the company environment is good, and it's an opportunity to help individuals with the kind of problems that is hard to talk in public. Finally, even in functional companies, employees may feel unsure about their performance. Regular meetings help to dissipate any doubts.
That the article also applies it to personal life makes sense. It's not just a company tool.
If you have been in a company where ones on ones were bad or counterproductive be open to think that it may be a problem on how it was used not inherently a problem with the tool.
one-on-ones are kinda anti-pattern, if you have something to say, there should be an easier way to say it. if you have nothing to say it becomes dumb status report about things any competent manager would already be aware of.
I've found that many people are really, really averse to the perception that they're "bothering" their manager, no matter how often it is emphasized that ad-hoc conversations about things that are important to the teams' members are part of the manager's job and despite however much effort the manager puts in to genuinely welcoming these ad-hoc conversations when they happen.
Regularly scheduled 1:1s are a great backstop for this kind of thing, and let people feel confident and prepared for conversations with their management.
If neither party has anything to say, its true the meeting can become a dumb status update - but if neither party has something to say, that implies the time since the last 1:1 saw no growth, no challenges, nothing of note at all to bring up... and this is probably a red flag on its own.
I'm perfectly willing to reduce frequency of 1:1s with very senior and self-sufficient members of my teams, but even once a month is valuable.
There are some conversations I think are better exchanged more thoughtfully and that takes time. Schedule of people with many direct reports is just overwhelming and it's too easy to naturally avoid certain discussions unless they are deliberately scheduled. IMO 1-1 is "at least" meeting than "at most" meeting.
As someone who has led (mostly) remote teams for years, 1:1s are essential, but can't be made cookie cutter. I use a fairly spartan template for the structure of them to start, and let them evolve as different people have different needs.
I of course want to make sure that I'm getting what I need out of them (e.g. clarity about what is being done, what has run into an obstacle, the general state of mind of the report, et al) but I also want them to feel engaged in whatever way that builds rapport and makes them feel comfortable discussing sometimes uncomfortable things (I do lean towards 'exception based' meetings rather than rote repetitive agendas).
What this means is that my last team got very good at asserting what worked best: one senior person used up almost all of his default allotted hour a week, because they dealt with a lot of escalation/thorny stuff and wanted to soundboard/problem solve in tandem, which I was more than ok with, one was completely "fire and forget" and for weeks at a time 1:1s would rarely last longer than 10-15 minutes as they hammered through various client tasks in volume and I didn't need to bird-dog any of it.
It improved comms overall, and I never felt like I was in the dark on major concerns, and they feel/felt heard.
Too often 1:1s become time sinks of reflexive behaviors and telegraphed responses, and you should avoid that.
I have been pretty unlucky in my career where my prior 1:1s were with managers who viewed the responsibility as a chore rather than a way to provide constructive feedback. As a result, my prior 1:1s were usually always cancelled or were a status update. Now my 1:1s are a little bit like what the OP has here.
Really interesting to see the mixed sentiment kinda reflect my attitude as well.
Well, 1:1s are just a tool, not the goal. As any tool they can be totally ineffective or a game-changer. I've written about the potential purpose of 1:1s, as well as things to avoid: https://leadership.garden/the-basics-of-one-on-ones/
[+] [-] par|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] travisjungroth|4 years ago|reply
Like the author, I have had some ongoing 1:1s be incredibly productive. Like really changing my life. Unlike the author, I wouldn’t broadly recommend them. They’re so easy to do in a way that isn’t productive. I think that’s the default, really. So if I was going to tell people to do them I’d be very explicit that you need to do something different than you probably think. Here are exacts steps and characteristics, if you don’t follow these then it won’t work and don’t come to me about it.
The overall general trend of why they’re not effective is they’re too surface level. You say some updates to your boss in a way that doesn’t get you fired, maybe complain about some stuff. You kinda just talk about things.
It needs to be a time when there is some work really happening. It’s metawork, but it’s still work. Like “what were the things that distracted you last week?” and you write them down, there in the meeting. Not “anything distracting you lately?” “nope I’m fine”. It’s a much more vulnerable, interactive process. This is probably why a 1:1 with your boss isn’t the most effective person. Too much image to maintain.
I think the sports model is better. In baseball, the Manager (coach or head coach in other sports) makes decisions about who is playing. Coaches (aka assistant coaches or trainers) are skill experts who help you get better. You can be more vulnerable with them. I think some industries, especially software, would do well to have more of a manager/coach model.
[+] [-] xtracto|4 years ago|reply
You should really listen to the Manager Toolbox podcast on 1:1s (there's 3 segments, all of them very worth the time):
https://www.manager-tools.com/2005/07/the-single-most-effect...
Basically, that "time sucking" activity with trivial conversation is actually what helps people build a [professional] relationship with their bosses/reportees. From my experience, it is an error to use the 1:1 to check every week how work is going. There's a lot of other channels for that (including the dreaded daily standup). As I mentioned to my reportees: "One on Ones are to talk about anything you want, particularly, company/office stuff that is not part of your day to day job. If you want to tell me about someone that smells bad, this is the place, or about the water dispenser that never works, etc". Of course if someone wants to tell talk to you about work, it is also great.
Specially on remote-work scenarios, having weekly "how are you" calls is important to pull the members of a team closer to the team.
[+] [-] codingdave|4 years ago|reply
I have little to say to my current boss most weeks. I just keep my platform running independently, so he gets to trust me to do so and ignore it. It is a good working relationship. Our weekly calls are 5 minutes long, just a quick check in and move on. Until they are not - and then we raise concerns, talk them through, fix them, and go back to the regularly scheduled program.
Each individual 1:1 is fairly worthless. But the habit makes all the difference in the long run.
[+] [-] nostrademons|4 years ago|reply
It's so you don't get blindsided out of nowhere with "I'm leaving for Facebook now" or "Sorry, your project is canceled" or "We're not happy with how things are going, so you're now on a PIP."
It's the same reason to say "Good morning" and "I love you" to your spouse every day and buy them flowers - by itself, it's inconsequential, but if you don't you'll likely hear "I'm leaving you for your best friend" in a decade or two. Same reason, for that matter, that people are looking at America now and going "What the hell happened?" Trust and emotions are real things too.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|4 years ago|reply
When done properly, 1:1s are powerful. But they require at least one side to be willing to be vulnerable. To talk about problems and weaknesses and needs. That doesn’t come naturally to most of us, and requires practice and intent to become habit.
[+] [-] lacker|4 years ago|reply
In particular, you mention "time-sucking status updates". In my experience, often someone thinks you want a status report, but from your point of view you are sufficiently aware of the project status already. As the manager, you can just politely suggest that you are already happy with the project status, and move on to other topics.
Some of the most effective 1x1s are either when the manager has a tough problem to solve, or the report has a tough problem to solve, and the 1x1 can be some focused time to detect these problems and resolve them. This can be anywhere from a technical issue that this report has some expertise in, or a social issue like "I feel like it's been taking a while to reach an agreement among the team on topic X, how do you think we can speed that up?" Or perhaps you notice that a report seems frustrated on a project, but you aren't quite sure why, and you can use the 1:1 to draw that out.
I find it helpful to take notes ahead of time, with some ideas for myself for what I might be able to accomplish with a 1:1. Otherwise you run the risk of not really knowing what to say, your report doesn't really have anything urgent in mind either, and you fill up the 1:1 time with chit chat.
I really like this blog post on how to run effective 1:1s:
https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-update-the-vent-and-t...
Running an effective 1:1 is an important managerial skill, it's something you can practice and improve at over time, and it's worth working at it since there is so much you can accomplish through 1:1s and you're likely spending a lot of time as a manager in them.
[+] [-] jklinger410|4 years ago|reply
Not every aspect of productivity in a company is about completing a specific task.
[+] [-] asdff|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|4 years ago|reply
One on ones where we make small talk about the weekend are useless to me. One on ones where we can talk through a technical topic I don't understand and I know I have at least a half hour of time to do so with someone who knows the topic well? Very helpful.
Most of the time its only tangentially related to anything I've been working on.
[+] [-] UnpossibleJim|4 years ago|reply
I've also had one on ones with small team leaders, who knew their people and knew their jobs and understood their motivations that were SUPER helpful. Even if it meant preparing those people to leave the company. That's the difference between a good manager and a bad manager. That's also why I like working in small teams. We gel faster, work closer together and get to know our manager (even though that manager is me, right now). I've tried to learn from my former managers and bring that to my team of a few people and try to shield them from as much corporate BS that I can. That isn't their job. They look at code (as do I, when I can), and I go to meetings and deal with that. And when members of my team seem interested in other things (and mention it in one on ones), I try to help them with that. That's what they're supposed to be for. Not just poor performance... hopefully. Maybe I've just gotten lucky.
[+] [-] legerdemain|4 years ago|reply
You could ask for suggestions how to do your job. But your job is your job, not your lead's. The best they can do is offer some heuristics. Ultimately, there should be some planning or engineering review process where you work, and a one-on-one with your lead is a crappy substitute.
You could ask your lead to share confidential information about upcoming changes at the company, such as a senior departure or a team reorg. This only happens because senior leadership has asked your lead to share this info one on one, not because you have an intimate relationship of trust.
A one-on-one is sometimes useful to me when I'm the lead, because my direct reports might tell me something they aren't comfortable bringing up in stand-up: a deadline is slipping, they're unhappy with a teammate, etc. It's very useful for me to know this stuff. But the action I take as a result very rarely benefits that employee directly. It's just me collecting intel.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] balaji1|4 years ago|reply
Anything of value or importance has to be written down, it is a short objective statement, usually a few lines. And then pursuing those over time (1 to several weeks or months) and having accountability check-ins. This would make 1:1s very formal and 1:1s usually seem better as casual conversations.
[+] [-] brimble|4 years ago|reply
See also: all project management methodology discussions.
[+] [-] PaulHoule|4 years ago|reply
At least in a team meeting you never are thinking that this is going on.
It might not be the usual situation but it happened to me once and because of that the 1-1 is going to have a bad smell that's going to require a huge amount of trust in the manager to overcome.
[+] [-] iamdbtoo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oceanplexian|4 years ago|reply
One is that the manager has to say the same thing to multiple reports, which simply isn’t scalable. Second the person at the other end of the 1:1 feels commoditized, and third, people start to spot inconsistencies (intentional or not) between what the manager is telling different reports, which damages their credibility. Their solution is to form triads (three person meetings).
[+] [-] XorNot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] par|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] swagasaurus-rex|4 years ago|reply
At that point you start a paper trail and can track down where inconsistencies or straight up dishonesty are originating.
[+] [-] baxtr|4 years ago|reply
I used to managed a large group of people. I always made clear that this is the time of the report. She/he could use the time with me at their will.
I have found the best use of our time was when a report would walk in (back in the day, you know...) and shared what they were struggling with. We would then jointly problem solve. This way, I could get an insight into their daily struggle, get updates on status and help them.
The least effective ones were over after 5 minutes or so, when the report didn't want to share anything. I am aware that this is a trust issue. But you can't build up trust without time to interact.
[+] [-] codeflo|4 years ago|reply
I've experienced this in both roles, and honestly, engineers, no matter how junior, should be able to get by a few weeks without constant management intervention.
Maybe weekly 1:1 are so common because there's a glut of nontechnical managers who don't know what else to do with their time? That's not the situation Ben Kuhn describes, but I don't know.
[+] [-] mindwok|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Msw242|4 years ago|reply
1:1 is about helping direct reports reach their professional goals when times are good (it's a great time to literally ask what they want), and provide an emotional outlet when things are bad.
It helps me find assholes in my organization who need to be fired to maintain the company's health.
[+] [-] ianbicking|4 years ago|reply
Also while any particular 1:1 might be unnecessary, the 1:1s that catch things that might be going bad are IMHO much more important than the ones that aren't strictly necessary. A slow cadence can let problems fester for weeks.
[+] [-] nicoburns|4 years ago|reply
We don’t do them weekly, but they’re definitely valuable.
[+] [-] Upgrayyed_U|4 years ago|reply
With that said, I think that almost all of their effectiveness comes down to who's leading it. When I first become a manager, I assumed that I would probably suck at it, so I read everything I could on how to be a better manager. That was especially true when it came to leading 1-on-1s. But, when I've worked with managers who just didn't care for them, or didn't care to learn enough about how to do them properly, they were invariably a waste of time. So, despite my own experience, I don't begrudge anyone who thinks 1-on-1s are a waste of time. In many (most?) cases, they are.
[+] [-] stakkur|4 years ago|reply
First: like all management, their usefulness depends utterly on how effective the manager is. In my experience, most managers just use them to 'chat'. Which is invariably a waste of both our times.
Second: Most things I want to talk to a manager about, I can talk about anytime. We just talk as the need arises. In my experience, most managers schedule them 'just so we have available time', which really means "I don't have time unless you're on my calendar".
To be an effective manager, I need them to be available, to communicate well, to listen, and to give me feedback and guidance based on what they hear. And that has nothing to do with a regular '1-1' meeting.
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|4 years ago|reply
I wouldnt really expect my manager to drop everything Monday morning to talk to me about that unless I know I had a weekly scheduled time to do so.
[+] [-] jll29|4 years ago|reply
Of course there are many stories of poor grad school experience and the notable Prof. Smith from the legendary Ph.D. comic; but just to point out that there are also "rock star" supervisors: for instance, I was blessed to be able to email drafts of conference papers to mine at 11 p.m. and get corrections back by 5 a.m.
For example, here are some interesting supervision anecdotes from CMU (computer science, not philosophy): https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_3361714_1/component/file...
Now I can't say I know how the distribution of grad student supervisors looks like on the good/bad scale, but let's just be careful not to extrapolate from a single data point.
PS: I applaud the author's approach to try to help using the methods he knew - a beautiful example of making use of transferrable skills (computing is full of them).
[+] [-] brink|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djur|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness...
[+] [-] cmrdporcupine|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imgabe|4 years ago|reply
They are dysfunctional from the perspective of grad students. For the advisors (professors) their priorities are:
1. publish
2. get grants
Basically nothing else matters in terms of what they're evaluated on.
"My grad student finished 25% faster" does pretty much nothing for the advisor's career compared to "My team performed 25% better" for a manager's career.
[+] [-] JohnBooty|4 years ago|reply
Been in this industry for 20+ years and I never knew how badly I needed this.
Theoretically, obviously, managers can have "open door" policies where you can talk to them any time about any thing. Theoretically, this would suffice. In reality, I have always generally felt awful about bothering managers and taking up their time. Having dedicated 1:1 time is an absolute gamechanger.
[+] [-] zestyping|4 years ago|reply
One-on-ones can be highly effective, no doubt. The kinds of practices that the author describes are often helpful. However, I'm not sure the claim applies to all companies and pairings. I've had a wide range of experiences with one-on-ones.
I've worked for the company that the author is talking about (full disclosure: I worked with him there, had an excellent and productive time, and then was fired). That company places an extremely heavy emphasis on imposing a specific culture from the top down — not just a culture of how work is done, but pervasive to the extent of personal habits and lifestyle advice. Alternative suggestions about culture are generally not entertained because there is a primary tenet that everyone has to align 100% with the culture for it to work, and it is more efficient for everyone to simply align with exactly what the CEO believes than to make culture decisions as a group. Maybe that's the best way to run a startup when your overriding priority is to execute as fast as possible, but it does have other negative side-effects, which were unfortunate for some of my teammates.
Consequently, I am reluctant to generalize from experiences of working there. It is a unique company, and not all working environments and team relationships are going to be like that.
[+] [-] Hokusai|4 years ago|reply
That the article also applies it to personal life makes sense. It's not just a company tool.
If you have been in a company where ones on ones were bad or counterproductive be open to think that it may be a problem on how it was used not inherently a problem with the tool.
[+] [-] mooreds|4 years ago|reply
If it is a status report, it should be an email.
It should be a place for you to discuss topics that are stymieing you and/or build rapport and trust.
I've had direct reports tell me they wanted to have a 1:1 less often, so I know my style of 1:1 doesn't work for everyone. It's a big world.
I wrote more about 1:1s here, esp managing them from the perspective of a new developer/employee: https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2020/03/16/how-to-manage-...
[+] [-] robertlagrant|4 years ago|reply
The mind boggles as to what could be done with that increased productivity.
[+] [-] jldugger|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeplusplus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sethhochberg|4 years ago|reply
Regularly scheduled 1:1s are a great backstop for this kind of thing, and let people feel confident and prepared for conversations with their management.
If neither party has anything to say, its true the meeting can become a dumb status update - but if neither party has something to say, that implies the time since the last 1:1 saw no growth, no challenges, nothing of note at all to bring up... and this is probably a red flag on its own.
I'm perfectly willing to reduce frequency of 1:1s with very senior and self-sufficient members of my teams, but even once a month is valuable.
[+] [-] tomcat27|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeruch|4 years ago|reply
I of course want to make sure that I'm getting what I need out of them (e.g. clarity about what is being done, what has run into an obstacle, the general state of mind of the report, et al) but I also want them to feel engaged in whatever way that builds rapport and makes them feel comfortable discussing sometimes uncomfortable things (I do lean towards 'exception based' meetings rather than rote repetitive agendas).
What this means is that my last team got very good at asserting what worked best: one senior person used up almost all of his default allotted hour a week, because they dealt with a lot of escalation/thorny stuff and wanted to soundboard/problem solve in tandem, which I was more than ok with, one was completely "fire and forget" and for weeks at a time 1:1s would rarely last longer than 10-15 minutes as they hammered through various client tasks in volume and I didn't need to bird-dog any of it.
It improved comms overall, and I never felt like I was in the dark on major concerns, and they feel/felt heard.
Too often 1:1s become time sinks of reflexive behaviors and telegraphed responses, and you should avoid that.
[+] [-] ndneighbor|4 years ago|reply
Really interesting to see the mixed sentiment kinda reflect my attitude as well.
[+] [-] ochronus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahaferburg|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goguy|4 years ago|reply
If you don’t, you risk being seen as ~reliable~ and people might feel you’re not there when they need you.