The unreasonable effectiveness of one-on-ones
benkuhn.net
benkuhn.net
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.
This was rude and uncalled for.
I can see people believing this for Agile-style standups (I can argue both sides of that one), but something like a scheduled weekly 1:1 should always be valuable sync time for an IC and manager. It also should not be a prison: if you want to skip a week, slack your manager and say "I've nothing, you have anything this week?" or something like that.
edited to add: that said, I too have never had the "unreasonably effective" experience, which is your broader point.
Think about that!
It is irrelevant to them that there are managers and even Corporations (ew! boo hiss!) that do not, in fact, act that way. They really hate it when anyone points out that treating employees well can result in greater profits, not fewer.
And from the manager standpoint, that means that they've never tried to assign work that matches up with the interests of people they manage?
Did you simply mean to say both fucked up?
I would be surprised to find that neither of these have ever applied. That would seem to indicate that their entire professional working experience has been only ever adversarial and toxic. Just not a great look, especially if you've also been responsible from the manager side.
It may very well be that the original commenter should look into changing how they handle and respond to 1:1s. It might help them.
I don't have any sort of dog in this race, but I read and reread your comment, and each time took the impression that you think little of 1x1s. Having read your other comments in the thread, I think I see better that you were disagreeing with the _broadness_ of the author's claim, not the claim itself, but I can understand other commenter's reactions.
I mean if it's your well established thoughts then it's definitely your well established thoughts, regardless what anyone else thinks you thought, but I don't think jcash was the only one caught of guard with how/what you were countering the author on.
This is true, and also feedback on your views from the replies on HN can be valuable and make you a better manager.
Your comment on the other hand is completely rude and uncalled for as it gives zero value and the only thing we learn is that 'it hurt your feelings', probably because you too dislike 1:1s
Your main comment could be read in a way that you almost hate 1on1's and find them completely unnecessary. But in another comment you said that it's not true - you actually love them.
Now in here you say "lol" and that it was rude, so which is it? are you laughing at this comment or feeling offended?
I don't think it's necessarily rude to point out something that is obvious, without judging. You are the common factor of the 1-on-1's you took part in. They could suck because of the whole organization, or because of the people that talked with you, but it's also possible it's something related to your character or skillset. I think it's worth looking into this and a reasonable feedback, not a "rude" one.
I have no idea about you, so in very general terms to have them be unreasonably effective there needs to be preparation and input from both sides.
Even if nothing else happens in the 1x1, it is where you can build personal relations as well. That will happen regardless of how prepared anyone is, but it is not always a positive one.
I read an article saying how great 1x1s are and how they worked surprisingly well in a new situation. Then I saw your comment that said you disagree and had some descriptions that I would take it to mean you don’t like 1x1s. You also described the broadness of your experience (thousands, countless people, both sides).
So, I tried to indirectly (sort of as a joke) point out that in one way your experience is not broad.
I’ll say it more explicitly: You are in all of your 1x1s. If you’ve had many 1x1s with many people, we can pretty certainly say it’s something about you that’s the common factor. And no judgement with that! Maybe the common factor is “I don’t like talking through work with one other person at a scheduled cadence”. Totally fine. I have no specific criticisms about you in your 1x1s.
Then I kinda launched into my own opinions on 1x1s thinking it might help you or someone else. Also just to clarify my thinking by writing, let’s be real.
And based on another comment you left, seems like I was wrong about you disliking them? Then, yeah, don’t worry about it. Keep doing what you’re doing.
How? You would need to be on a team that's basically completely nailed safety in order to have an accurate view into that just from group conversations.
That they are a timesink used to justify a positions existence, rather than boost productivity? That's correct.
I agree. I don't really like admitting failure to my manager. While they're very understanding and easy to work with they're also the person writing my reviews, so there's some tension there.
I think I'd be able to open up more with someone not in my management chain. Maybe even someone who is not in the same business unit as me.
Meetings should be treated like investments: by spending the time of the participants, are you going to reap the rewards of time saved in the future?
Sometimes there is information that does need to change hands, often there just isn't, and meetings take away considerably more time than they take by breaking people out of work that isn't always easy to pick right back up.
Meetings are often just babysitting for managers, keeping them entertained and engaged when they don't have anything better to do (or preventing them from doing the things they need to be doing necessitating hiring more managers who make more meetings and result in less time available per person)
So many standups and 1:1s I've been in have just been an exercise in all parties thinking of something to say because it is presumed stuff needs to be said.
To be fair, I do still think it's worth showing up to the meeting even if you think there's nothing to be said beforehand, since sometimes breaking out of the routine gives you the opening you need to get something off your chest. Sometimes it's possible to get overly caught up in the flow, which can be useful for solving the immediate problem, but might hide other stuff that hasn't been given room to breathe. Meetings like 1on1s and retrospectives are opportunities to take that break.
I don't need to "get something off my chest" every week, most people don't.
There is of course value to communication, but managers without better things to do are trying to have it far too frequently. It is also much easier to schedule meetings as needed and keep the frequency of the regularly scheduled ones on as long a period as possible.
I do know how easy it is to get in the zone as a developer, and subsequently feel frustrated that a useless meeting just popped up in the middle of your flow, but that's not a good reason to write off 1on1s entirely. Worst case your flow will be interrupted once a week. Two if your team has a weekly retrospective as well. If two interruptions per week is significantly damaging your productivity, something is wrong.
Personally, I am not a fan of meetings in general, and I do consider many of them to be useless. But 1on1s and retrospectives are the two that I mandate in the teams that I lead - one is for the health of my reports, and the other is for the health of the team. All other meetings can and should be optional. If someone is feeling snowed under by all the other meetings, then it's exactly during the 1on1 or retro when those feelings can be shared. If you don't have those meetings, then you're relying on everyone on the team to always speak up whenever they need help, and while that might work for certain, very assertive and/or self-centered employees, it doesn't work for everyone. For that reason I think it's important to schedule these times in deliberately to give people the opportunity to express themselves.
When there isn't a culture of open communication - which is established through regular meetings of this sort - many employees find it difficult to be honest about their challenges and difficulties (on the negative side) or goals and aspirations (on the positive side). In either case I believe it improves productivity and retention to give employees dedicated space to talk about that stuff.
If I have a standup at 10am every day, this guarantees that I'm not going to ever get anything substantial done before 10am. A 3pm weekly meeting can mostly destroy my ability to get in to deep work for that afternoon.
I don't "schedule" deep work, it is a thing that happens as a combination of what needs to be done, the time available, minor tasks, and interruptions.
Daily and weekly meetings significantly reduce the surface area available for these things to happen, and often serve as a source of boredom and frustration, being in a room with people who obviously don't have anything to say, saying words because they're supposed to.
The whole point of 1on1s and retrospectives is to optimize your work. If you literally only have these two meetings per week and you still find that unreasonably disruptive, then you could discuss dropping them to once a fortnight. If you still find those two meetings per fortnight unreasonably disruptive, and you really get absolutely zero benefit from them whatsoever, perhaps you should be working as an independent contractor and not a salaried employeee with a team of colleagues and a manager.
I do understand where you're coming from. I have had several direct reports who never had anything at all to say in their 1on1s, who had no interest in setting goals, no interest in advancing in the company, no interest in improving their workflow, who honestly just wanted to sit down, do the work, get paid, go home. That's fine, and it's useful to have some people on the team who want to work that way, but they really are a minority of people I have worked with in "normal" company environments. To be frank, I would prefer to work that way myself, but that's not really how most companies operate, because most companies are geared for growth, so it's not enough to just stay at the same level of productivity forever. The goal for most companies is to continuously improve and increase their output, forever. This is why most companies see value in having these meetings, because they are a way to focus employees on becoming ever more productive.
That escalated quickly.
Good points, though you're talking past each other a bit. (I'm not disagreeing about 121s' value nor flow's unschedulability.)
You should try it!
This really cuts to the point of what I’m trying to express. The general model of meetings is that they are there for exchanging information. One issue with this is something you’ve pointed out, that people feel compelled keep the meeting but there’s no information to share. So there’s just nothing.
There’s a second issue. There are things you can do through talking with another person that aren’t just sharing information. If you only see meetings as a way for information to change hands, you can’t see these options. I find it hard to put into words, but I’ll try to give some examples.
You could change how you feel about something by talking about it. A concern that is too scary to fully think about could be spoken about so you can face it. There’s value in talking about it that’s separate from the information sharing or even the problem solving.
You could generate ideas. One person creates space and the other fills it by coming up with new ideas.
You could understand something better by explaining it (see Duck, Rubber).
You could set an intention. Having the memory of telling someone you’ll do something may make you more likely to do it (separate from them holding you accountable).
You could practice what you’ll say in some other situation. Maybe one sided practice, maybe role play.
All of these are a sort of “talking as doing”. It’s a very different gear from “talking as information sharing”. I’ve found it can be really hard to get people to change those gears. It’s odd. It’s not like they’re directly resistant, they just seem unaware. It’s like someone holding their lunch in a park wondering where we’re going to eat. Here! Go ahead! I don’t want to hear about you being alive, I want to see it!
I don't need daily group therapy with my team or weekly individual therapy with my manager.
There's not that much to say, I can't invent that much to say, people rarely need that much communication.
I don't need to brainstorm ideas daily/weekly, don't need to set intentions. I often know what needs to be done for long stretches and am more than capable of communicating it ad hoc when it is most useful to communicate it. We have at our disposal half a dozen forms of communication, forced regular meetings can be the worst kind.
What's not fine is being forced to do them, unable to exit the waste of time.
Your argument refuting the OP would be stronger without the straw man argument against forced 1:1s
Look, I don't care if you do one on ones, standups, whatever. No need to tell me you don't need them. I don't even know you. I'm just trying to share some ideas with you and anyone reading.
Sometimes, often even, there just isn't anything
that needs to be said. I feel the same way about
standups and 1:1s.
Meetings should be treated like investments: by
spending the time of the participants, are you
going to reap the rewards of time saved in the future?
Let's assume a 40-hour work week. (lol, I know)
Daily standups should be <= 15 minutes. Let's also suppose we're doing biweekly 30 minute 1:1s.
That's 1.25 hours per week, combined. Of course the real productivity loss of a meeting can be greater if it pulls you out of a "flow" state. Let's assume some of these rituals also incur a "flow state interruption" penalty of 30 additional minutes of lost productivity. So the total productivity cost is 2-3 hours per week per team member, or roughly 6% of their theoretical productive time.
I think this is a reasonable overhead. Working on a team requires communication. This seems like an efficient way to do it.
What's the alternative? Communicate whenever you feel like it? That's extremely iffy to put it mildly even if everybody on the team is an amazing communicator, which is an extremely unlikely ideal state of affairs. Adding a little structure makes sure the communication actually happens.
There is value too in scheduling a 1on1 that is easy to cancel. It's easy enough to quickly check if it's necessary, if it isn't, no worries.
To make sure IC's remember managers have power. That's all there is to it. No real useful stuff gets done.
At the end of the day it's just two colleagues in a room, if you can't get anything done with that, there's either nothing to get done or you couldn't get it done.
1. This process requires trust from both parties. Often this doesn't exist, and manufacturing trust is basically impossible. This requires a happy and healthy workplace, and unfortunately, many people do not work in these.
2. This is an excellent opportunity to extract information from an employee which otherwise wouldn't see the light. I.e. are there issues which should be discussed? Things making them unhappy and unproductive? Is someone bullying them? Are their teammates dropping the ball? Are there problems in their teams I could help with? Are there problems at home? Do they need some time off so they're refreshed and ready to go afterwards? All of these things require, as above, trust. They can be used to great success. Sadly some workplaces formalise these and instead use 1:1s as a way to grade employees. This means the employee is extremely unlikely to expose any kind of weakness or vulnerability.
3. Shooting the shit isn't usually productive (but can build rapport). Likewise, status updates are not necessarily productive when a status email will do. The purpose is to dig deeper. Inasmuch, I have a OneNote dedicated for my 1:1 where I record thoughts and ideas throughout the week. I select a few of these during the 1:1 to dig into. Sometimes nothing eventuates. Sometimes they become larger discussions.
Not every aspect of productivity in a company is about completing a specific task.
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 direct report may try a couple of times to go deeper or be vulnerable but if the manager isn’t receptive that 1:1 just became perfunctory into perpetuity.
I'm a very candid person and I have no issues saying exactly what's on my mind when I'm comfortable.
I've hardly ever seen my managers speak anything but the party line. I can't get comfortable talking about issues with someone who doesn't believe there are problems.
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.
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.
Daily stand-ups are mostly also not really that useful - but getting team together so they are used to at least 15-20 mins talking to each other I believe has benefits anyway.
The same with writing unit tests, I see my team is writing too many useless unit tests. But then if we have habit of writing tests - important tests will get written as well. If we would skip tests and say that we write only "important ones" then I saw that no tests were written in period where we had such an approach.
This is my feeling. Wouldn't a weekly meeting where we don't need to stand up be sufficient for this?
I guess it depends on the people and how they function. And how the team communicates throughout the day or the week.
? Nobody would ever suggest that you should feel that way, or that an individual 1x1 would be singularly effective.
When you go Heli-skiing, you ski with a partner, and you're constantly shouting out to your partner to let the know where you are. Primarily, you do this because of the various kinds of danger, especially avalanches. That those things are unlikely does not abnegate the need for communication.
One thing never made obvious in films or popular culture is the amount of communication in the military. 1/2 of the game is communicating. It's information, which is the basis of coordination, which is the basis of management of force. A 'radio' is as important as one's 'rifle'. A rifle can defend you against one person; a radio connects you with the totality of the power of the system you are in.
The point is it's a form of systematic communication which I would overwhelmingly support.
Especially the bit about 'open ended' - my gosh there are so many details lost in the normal operative aspects it's almost scary.
'Status Updates' are generally not meaningless, it's one of the means that people use to coordinate, though they can be cumbersome.
Wasted time in meetings is definitely endemic, at the same time, a lot of complaint is sometimes rooted in the lack of understanding of the nature of one unit within the larger system.
As developers, we feel that our 'code' is our productivity, but it's like the 'rifle' - it's just the obvious thing. The 'radio' is the other key thing.
Also - the 'performance' bits are probably overdone. It's extremely hard to change habits. You can definitely get people to do things like adjust to a coding style, but it gets hard past that. I'm more of the view of just trying to leverage what people are already good at because most people are good at 'something'. But merely as 'coordination', these things are important.
Especially with direct managers, there needs to be fairly consistent communication, which is different FYI from large team meetings of which there are probably too many.
1-on-1's are very effective. No single 1-on-1 is going to feel particularly effective.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Good point, although as a manager I take that (listening to what is bothering my employees) as my job. That's literally what the company is paying me to do. So I will be happy to listen to their problems and see how I can help them solve them.
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.
See also: all project management methodology discussions.
Having said that, perhaps the lesson we can learn here is that reading is a powerful technique to learn to employ.
This is interesting, I'd love to hear what percentage of the time this is for most HNers here. I've definitely had some "incompetent or malicious" managers but it's definitely not more than 50%. Is my experience uncommon?
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.
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).
― Cardinal Richelieu
Frequently people tell untruths because they really don't know the truth or are confused. Also people who hear bits and pieces of a story might come to the conclusion that deception is going on when actually their imagination is getting the better of them. Also information changes over time. You might tell reports A and B that X is the case, then you talk to C who educates you that X is not the case and really Y is the case, then you talk to D and E and tell them that Y is the case. A and B might never get updated or get updated after some time delay in which they might compare notes with D or E and think there is a problem.
Even if you don't lie you are going to pay for the sins of other people who lie who hear stories that don't add up and think you are lying.
Given this clarification, the original point is fair.
At that point you start a paper trail and can track down where inconsistencies or straight up dishonesty are originating.
Regularly scheduled 1-1s are for the direct, to have a dedicated, planned 30 minutes a week to talk, with a person who controls your access to food, water shelter and all material needs, but whose calendar is often booked solid. Even when there's no immediate need for clarification, approval or discussion, theres still discussion about promotions and career development that need to happen more frequently than once a year or quarter.
As for promotions, career development, etc. that's not something that everyone is going to get through the organization that they work in for various reasons. (e.g. "This is a library and if you want to be promoted you have to be a librarian to get ahead")
Organizations like that don't deserve to not be able to hire computer programmers and a programmer can be perfectly satisfied working there. That programmer might be somebody who isn't ambitious or if they are ambitious they might pursue their ambitions outside of work in the form of side projects, relationships, etc.
There's more to career development than promotion into management. Level promotions are a thing, after all. Or at the very least, annual reviews and compensation.
Its the difference between "we talked about many things, including this issue" and "we need to meet to discuss this issue". I find the second starts everyone off on a defensive foot, regardless of peoples' best intentions.
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.
Having variability here is good leadership to me.
It's really hit-and-miss whether my managers have wanted to engage with any idea. More miss than hit, unfortunately.
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.
We don’t do them weekly, but they’re definitely valuable.
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.
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.
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.
We don't have kids, but if we did, we would definitely use this time to sync up about that. Make sure we both know what activities they have coming up and/or shared understanding of how to love, praise and discipline 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.
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.
So when should I ask my questions? If urgent, now. If not, during our 1 on 1.
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).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness...
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.
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.
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.
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-...
The mind boggles as to what could be done with that increased productivity.
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.
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.
Really interesting to see the mixed sentiment kinda reflect my attitude as well.
If you don’t, you risk being seen as ~reliable~ and people might feel you’re not there when they need you.
It was a great way to handle issues while they were still small and manageable.
Someone unhappy on a project? I'd do my best to talk to the project mangers and voice the criticism in an impactful way, or possibly reassign the person.
Problems at home? I would have never picked that up during our normal interactions.
Those meetings gave me the opportunity to help my coworkers with lots of stuff they would otherwise not have mentioned.
It was a true pleasure when I was able to help them out, and even when I wasn't, I think it helped a lot that they just had that chance to vent and then get on with stuff.
While some one-on-ones might have been a waste of time, I believe that overall they had a very positive impact.
Reading the rest of the comments here, I think I might have been in a very favorable position. I started as a developer, and then got promoted at a time where I was the obvious choice. So I always felt like "one of us" during those conversations, and I could very much relate to every work-related challenge.
Both as a worker and a manager, I hardly know about other co-workers lives. Gay or not gay, married with kids, or eternal bachelor, I don't really have (or want) a clue about their private life, much less have a report tell me about his. Just say 'I am dealing with something, need some time off' and there, you got it, but I don't need to know your mother has cancer or you are going through a divorce. You are an adult, take the time and use it as you need.
This works especially well if the person doesn't want to take vacation, or cannot, for one reason or another, and can also be in the form you state (I have to deal with stuff, I need a bit of slack at work). Not everybody is comfortable saying even that in a "team" setting.
It's not easy for everyone to ask for extra flexibility or time off. When you have this open conversation space, that one-on-ones provide, it becomes very natural to make room for people's lives.
I've seen a lot of people overvalue this format of lessons as a way to "get better" at their craft rather than weekly practice sessions with a group or private lessons. This is usually because there's a lot more friction and effort to set up practices and private lessons usually mean _you_ have to come up with what you want to learn.
As others have mentioned though, the most important factor is to go into it being earnest and genuine. Group lessons can be done poorly just as 1:1s can be done poorly.
To be unreasonably effective I suppose something should handle problems most of the time and only fail on a few edge cases, in which case if we want to accept one on ones as unreasonably effective I think the next step is to write an article The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Falsehoods Programmers commonly believe about Names, or addresses or any of the other suppositions that we are commonly wrong about, because I think our misconceptions about these things are as a general more likely to succeed than not, which is as unreasonably effective as one on ones are.
The whole point of research is to push into the unknown. It's, in some sense, something that consists nearly only of unknowns and things you cannot really plan for. Sure, there's some general tricks like knowing when to take a step back, knowing when to abandon an endeavour that seems doomed, knowing when you've gone far enough, etc., but it's still nothing like where the author seems to be coming from.
What these articles don't really prepare you for is when your report refuses to play ball and they just say they have nothing to talk about, everything is fine and ask for an early lunch. Much like the cynical commenters on this thread. Then you've got managers trying to 'reach these kids' and lots of friction.
So there we are: it is and can be awesome. But in too many corporations games -- especially lack of openness -- prevents things from going anywhere. And that, friends, is a darn shame.
As I mention time to time on HN the best, short, spot on reads that take this to its core avoiding simplistic conclusions while arriving at doable, realistic things are two:
https://www.amazon.com/Human-Element-Productivity-Self-Estee...
https://www.amazon.com/What-Total-Quality-Control-Japanese/d...
In different, self reinforcing ways, there's a confluence: those with self awareness will figure it out nicely summarized by Schutz's Jung quote:
"All the greatest and most important problems in life are fundamentally insoluble ... they can never be solved but only outgrown. This 'outgrowing' proves upon further investigation to require a new level of consciousness."
This dovetails with one of the central insight's in Human Element: the biggest impediment to teamwork are rigid individuals. The how, why, and what next? Gotta hit the books. Good grief: used copies of the book can come to your front door for less than a Padron cigar or 15 year Laphroaig single. That's value.
Off subject but a particularly funny example of can't-change is the Angelica Huston part in Buffalo-66, an absolutely outstanding film.
When I had a team, our 1:1s were 99% just a lunch with the two of us. Neither party had a set agenda and there was no expectation on achieving anything than a full stomach and a free lunch for both. (Company paid for 1:1 lunches) It was also considered as work time.
Sometimes people opened up, sometimes they didn't. Still I managed to keep track of my team just fine that way.
I find the ones I've had with most managers is typically split into these things.
1) Small talk about some nonsense for about 1/3 of the duration.
2) Talk about work for a 1/3 of the duration.
3) Moan about something at work.
4) Hope that I haven't screwed something up.
Then awkwardly ending the meeting. I dunno they've never worked for me.
I've found some of the author's points could also apply to a moderately structured mentoring relationship.
If you find these headlines compelling then I also have one weird trick for making you unreasonably effective at making headlines.