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Wow, you are either a troll or clueless. There is no more powerful form of ensuring manager/employee alignment than 1:1 meetings.
by cek 7y ago
Wow, you are either a troll or clueless.
There is no more powerful form of ensuring manager/employee alignment than 1:1 meetings.
- stephc_int13 7y agoI've co-founded companies, I've led teams and been CEO of a small video game studio. As a manager, I never felt the need to bother anyone with 1:1 meetings. I think it is very easy to shoot yourself in the foot with feedback, this is a difficult art. And I think the best strategy is to use feedback only to deal with outliers, ie exceptional or catastrophic achievements.
- hk__2 7y ago> As a manager, I never felt the need to bother anyone with 1:1 meetings. How do you collect feedback then?
- stephc_int13 7y agoTalking with people in an informal way, over lunch, work meetings (brainstorm) and direct day-to-day conversations.
- joshuamorton 7y agoSo you make an effort to take time out of your day for informal, one on one conversations with members of your team? Over lunch, and directly in passing?
- pvorb 7y agoI think it's important to give feedback to employees that behave like you'd expect, too. Otherwise they might wonder if they are doing something wrong and change their behavior.
- Insanity 7y agoI've worked for managers that did and didn't do 1:1 meetings. At some places I've missed them - because the managers were out of touch with the team. In other places where there were no 1:1 but a lot of 'hallway conversations' that seemed to replace them. So they had an 'finger on the pulse' of the team. That was pretty great - because of how informal it was and it worked. I've also had great 1:1s though. So YMMV I guess, but it's hard to generalize. I think a lot depends on the company culture - some companies might benefit from them while others don't. There's no golden rule.
- marcinzm 7y agoThe issue I see with hallway conversations on their own is that some people don't convey much information in such a short informal setting. Other do but it can leave a blind spot for some individuals and for problems too large (or sensitive) to articulate in such a setting. Some people just aren't comfortable forcing a meeting with their boss to discuss a large or sensitive issue.
- Insanity 7y agoI agree, I'd reiterate my point about the company culture here though. And the team - but I think that figuring out what works for your team would be part of the managers' job. Just to be clear, I've never been in the manager position here. Always the engineering position, so I can't really speak for a broad set of people.
- johannes1234321 7y agoAs a employee 1:1s give me a low barrier meeting to bring up topics which neither fit in regular working meetings, nor fit to "water cooler talk", nor warrant calling an extra meeting. Often there's not much, but it's a nice thing to have scheduled.
- pfarrell 7y agoIn my experience, the importance of the 1:1 is correlated with the size of the organization. At a 1000+ person company with teammates spread across 10 time zones, the meeting is a must because I have no physical cues. This only works, now, because of the ubiquity of video conferencing.
- cambalache 7y agoThat is just your opinion. To offer an anecdotal counterbalance, I was a cog in a 100k+ employee fortune-20 company. Nothing was more demoralizing, soul-sucking and useless than an 1:1 meeting. I always felt like crying out and quitting. This in a career with 10 different managers, 5 different nationalities.
- lonelappde 7y agoWas that the only bad part of the job? Or merely a symptom of the larger problem. Perhaps the motivation to quit was a positive outcome. Why did you end up leaving?
- cambalache 7y agoIt was not the only reason of course. I was fired in a downsizing. It is a bad idea to be a loner who has 0 political skills in a big company.