Don't Skip 1 on 1s | Hacker News Reader

Don't Skip 1 on 1s

blog.danielna.com

Try this:

Tell a story about a recent win, something personal or in work, unprompted. If your direct report (above or below) on the other side of the 1:1 does not get excited and celebrate, however small, they have no interest in your success.

Most of my 1:1s are now "how I win and what I learned" and invite them to do the smae.

And then what?

These shit-tests reveal things. When one side has power over the other, some things aren't meant to the tested unless you want to consistently discover how little people care about the folk that have very little impact over their lives.

I know plenty of people who are exceptional at their trade that could not care less about most of their coworkers, especially their personal lives. Maybe it's not the culture fit you're looking for or something, but I glean that you believe that their interest in your success is indicative of their work output and ethic. That's just not true. In fact, sometimes it's the people who pretend to be the most excited are also providing the least value. Work is about putting on a show to some people; and other people are tired of that show and just want to do a good job to avoid any potential problems and then go about their own personal lives.

My attitude about work is a bit more on the obsessive side, though I recognize one does not need to be obsessive about their work to do an excellent job.

I had a manager religiously protect 1:1s who canceled (without rescheduling) one week.

I immediately assumed I was being laid off, but I was only partly correct - that Friday the whole program was eliminated.

> A weekly 1:1 is critical to building trust and context

Oh, man, I wouldn't last a month there. I hate 1:1s to begin with. Having to do them weekly would be very hard to deal with.

I think the context is important

"The context of this advice is direct reports, not skip-levels. I’m less prescriptive about skip-levels because I think recurring skip-level 1:1s can become untenable depending on the size of your org and personal bandwidth. If you can’t sustain scheduled skip levels, other patterns like Office Hours, Lean Coffee or org/group/seniority-level meetings can be useful mechanisms to build community and solicit feedback."

This makes sense if it's a larger org, as a developer, once a month is enough

I have no experience with skip-level 1:1s at all, so can't speak to them. The concept strikes me as very odd, but I don't think they're as fraught as direct report 1:1s.

I'm an EM, if one of my direct reports doesn't like 1:1's we can have them less frequently or however suits them.

Any manager who pushes for face to face weekly 1:1's is a bad manager.

For the confused this is meant to be "One-on-ones", not some sort of code to a game position or math rule or something like that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com