3 ms·

The biggest benefit to 1:1 is that the under person feels heard. Everything else is fluff. That said, the power of feeling like your voice is not silent is VE

The biggest benefit to 1:1 is that the under person feels heard. Everything else is fluff. That said, the power of feeling like your voice is not silent is VERY important for most people in their work and having audience with their boss for even 20 minutes a week can help fill in gaps that matter.

nucleardog 7y ago
I wouldn't say everything else is fluff. Having them feel heard helps. Actually solving some of the issues they raise helps a lot more. I inherited a small department from another (over-committed) manager. Productivity and satisfaction has skyrocketed and I lay most of that purely on the fact that when we do one-on-one meetings, I'm realistic with people about what we can accomplish but whatever we agree is realistic actually gets followed up on. We're not just setting goals for them, but for me too, and I hold myself just as accountable to those goals as I hold them to their goals. Someone who listens is a manager. Someone who listens and holds themselves accountable to making their employees able to be productive is a leader.
- guitarbill 7y ago
  i think you hit the nail on the head here. some weeks, devs do just need a rant. but there's very few things as patronising as 1:1s when nothing changes. because then it's basically forced smalltalk with a nice little interruption. devs will notice this sooner or later, and morale suffers.
scottLobster 7y ago
"Feels" heard being the key word. In my experience (having been through about a half-dozen 1:1s from the lower-level employee side at large corparations) is any complaint I raised in one, however professionally, is/was treated as a "morale issue with scottLobster" rather than an actual potential issue worth investigating. Which on one hand is fair given the nature of the meeting. Actually providing resources necessitates more scrutiny than a 1:1 could provide. On the other hand knowing that the root cause of my "morale issue" will likely not be addressed (given an established track record) makes me less likely to raise it and give a non-committal "yeah everything's going as good as can be expected, hit a few snags but we really pulled through and it felt really good to finally push through that issue [subtext: which never would have occurred in the first place if you'd listened to 80% of the senior engineers on the program 8 months ago, never mind what I think]...". At which point the exchange can be boiled down to "Are you going to quit without notice or shoot up the office? No? Great!" Maybe I've just had bad experiences, but the 1:1s described in the article basically define a strong personal mentor/mentee relationship, and I've never gotten or witnessed that from any formal business process (in this case a periodic, corporate-prescribed 1:1 on a large program where each manager has lots of direct reports).
- jupp0r 7y ago
  Sounds like a pretty toxic culture problem to me. I’ve definitely seen the opposite - management caring - in those situations.
- eq_sd_ 7y ago
  I feel your pain. My manager treat problems I mention as just my problems and not as a team/culture problem that I am particularly vocal about. My current manager views me so negatively right now that they have criticized me every 1:1 for the past month. I wish I didn't have to talk to them anymore at this point.

nucleardog 7y ago

I wouldn't say everything else is fluff. Having them feel heard helps. Actually solving some of the issues they raise helps a lot more. I inherited a small department from another (over-committed) manager. Productivity and satisfaction has skyrocketed and I lay most of that purely on the fact that when we do one-on-one meetings, I'm realistic with people about what we can accomplish but whatever we agree is realistic actually gets followed up on. We're not just setting goals for them, but for me too, and I hold myself just as accountable to those goals as I hold them to their goals. Someone who listens is a manager. Someone who listens and holds themselves accountable to making their employees able to be productive is a leader.

guitarbill 7y ago
i think you hit the nail on the head here. some weeks, devs do just need a rant. but there's very few things as patronising as 1:1s when nothing changes. because then it's basically forced smalltalk with a nice little interruption. devs will notice this sooner or later, and morale suffers.

scottLobster 7y ago

"Feels" heard being the key word. In my experience (having been through about a half-dozen 1:1s from the lower-level employee side at large corparations) is any complaint I raised in one, however professionally, is/was treated as a "morale issue with scottLobster" rather than an actual potential issue worth investigating. Which on one hand is fair given the nature of the meeting. Actually providing resources necessitates more scrutiny than a 1:1 could provide. On the other hand knowing that the root cause of my "morale issue" will likely not be addressed (given an established track record) makes me less likely to raise it and give a non-committal "yeah everything's going as good as can be expected, hit a few snags but we really pulled through and it felt really good to finally push through that issue [subtext: which never would have occurred in the first place if you'd listened to 80% of the senior engineers on the program 8 months ago, never mind what I think]...". At which point the exchange can be boiled down to "Are you going to quit without notice or shoot up the office? No? Great!" Maybe I've just had bad experiences, but the 1:1s described in the article basically define a strong personal mentor/mentee relationship, and I've never gotten or witnessed that from any formal business process (in this case a periodic, corporate-prescribed 1:1 on a large program where each manager has lots of direct reports).

jupp0r 7y ago
Sounds like a pretty toxic culture problem to me. I’ve definitely seen the opposite - management caring - in those situations.
eq_sd_ 7y ago
I feel your pain. My manager treat problems I mention as just my problems and not as a team/culture problem that I am particularly vocal about. My current manager views me so negatively right now that they have criticized me every 1:1 for the past month. I wish I didn't have to talk to them anymore at this point.