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My boss and I create a Slack thread each week for 1:1 topics. One thing to remember is that 1:1 time is YOUR time, not your boss's time. They can schedule a meeting with you any time for their topics, but 1:1s are always your chance to have face time alone with them. It's up to you what to talk about, but as a manager, I don't need status updates. If I'm a good manager, then I already know what you're up to, so let's…
This is awesome. I bet your team really loves working with you.
These are for managers but can be flipped to find agenda/ questions for direct reports.
Usually as much as we have the time to discuss: - status of current projects and resources that I manage (I am a manager myself) - priorities and direction changes - help needed, in any kind: escalations, resources, etc From time to time, about every 3 months: - feedback and intermediate performance review - work plan updates - strategy updates
Can't you give most of those status update-y things another way? Seems like most of that would be covered in a standup, or email. Your 1 on 1 could be so much more: your career growth, situations you want help with, feedback and ideas for them, things you want coaching on, any issues they should know about (like say a sick/dying family member), etc
The last time we spent 15 minutes to discuss my idea of re-engineering the technical platform I own; my manager does not have the deep technical knowledge to understand the details and implications of the change, but I need his support to make it happen (to convince others, to allocate resource, etc) so I had to explain and convince him it is the right thing to do. The discussion was based on the 10 slides with diagrams that I sent a week before.
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I definitely agree with everything you said. I have had some productive 1:1s where they led to interesting changes to my work. But those enlightened managers are rare. And then the flaw with interviewing your manager is that you often can’t control your manager once you’re hired. I’m currently on manager number four, just one year in to my current role. The other ones all quit or were interim managers. So for me, it…
Sounds like you're not in the greatest work environment if so many managers have quit. Curious why you think that is? Also, if you have such strong feelings about management, maybe try it out? Based on what you're saying, managers are dropping like flies and it might be helpful to promote from within.
The common argument I hear (from managers and others) is 'but we just want a time that's guaranteed reserved, in case you need it'. But that's a calendar problem, not a 1-1 problem. If a manager needs to put me on the 'calendar' to be sure that they can talk to me, they've failed as a manager.
TL;DR: '1-1' meetings are unnecessary when you have a manager who understands communication and realizes their job is to help you succeed, not 'supervise' you.
1) Determine if I am still meeting expectations
2) Figure out what I should be working on. This sounds dumb, but if you work on a varied set of projects/tasks that change all the time like I do, then figuring out priority isn't always obvious. I like to use these sessions to help refocus me to make sure I'm on whatever path my manager feels adds the most value to the business. Because everyone can drift into things over time that are interesting, but not necessarily what is needed by the business.
3) What new stuff can I do? Are there any new projects coming up? Any new skills I should be trying to get or things I should be studying up on?
Essentially, these three things are making sure my career goals are at least somewhat where I want them to be and they are in line with what the company needs/wants from me. Those items are how I get there. It may vary depending on the specific position a person has.
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> If you can delegate your task to the manager and they are actually able to solve it, then you can use it to keep the progress rolling Managers are supposed to delegate tasks to you, not the other way around. If you are delegating tasks to your manager, (as opposed to your manager saying something like, "I'm going to assign this task to XXX," or "I'm going to go try and get team YYY to do ZZZ,") then your manager is…
> Managers are supposed to delegate tasks to you, not the other way around. In software engineering? Not really. They aren't engineers, they can't delegate anything because they have no idea what to do or how to do it. In SE, the best managers can do is be helpers in non-technical tasks, like manage the attendance system for you or talk to other departments when your issue tracker goes down or if there's an internet…
Which makes it very easy for the engineers to BS the managers. If the manager doesn't understand technical details and gets all the information from the engineers, how does the manager tell who is actually getting the difficult work done so he can promote the right people? I guess that explains another reason why promo/review systems and the "career ladder" are almost always dominated by corruption.