They might mean that it's on both parties to make the 1:1 effective.
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.