One on One

Confirming expectations is useful for larger, more established organizations with established operations.

This text is written by an investor in startups, who typically rely on hiring motivated and autonomous individuals with the expectation that employee will be self-directed, so the purpose of those meetings is to broadcast and remove the obstacles for such employee.

> isn't an employee supposed to take direction from a manager?

Well, yes. But the relationship should also benefit the employee.

I'm not a great fan of managers in general, but I do recognise that they can play an important role in shielding you from a lot of the political nonsense that can float around in a large organisations.

On top of this they also have a role to play in providing HR guidance, pastoral support, and also as someone to bounce ideas off - I sometimes use my manager as my rubber duck [1]

However, if your relationship with your manager is all one way then there's almost certainly something wrong there. The best managers (IMHO) clear the path to allow their staff to achieve what needs to be done, rather that micromanaging and cracking the whip.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

That is not the point of the one-on-one. The one-on-one is a time for the employee to speak his/her mind, express concerns, etc. Read the link to Rands' post somewhere else on this thread. The entire book is great, and I think every manager should read it.

>isn't an employee supposed to take direction from a manager?

No,

The manager manages the direction[reviews, tracks, corrects course], but doesn't necessarily set it. Its not like the manager is a father and the employee is a day care kid. Who needs to do his homework, eat vegetables and drink milk at the fathers command.

Essentially the manager acts like a intelligent information router which can improvise decision making based on information he/she is routing.

The job of a manager is to make himself redundant to build great teams that can manage themselves. So that he can himself grow up to the next level and manage the managers and so on..

There's a podcast for that: http://www.manager-tools.com/2005/07/the-single-most-effecti...

One on one is not a working session and it is not an all-hands.

I completely agree, I don't even think it is limited to a stereotypical introvert. In an environment where the management is very hands off I have worked with unhappy people who are paranoid enough to worry that if they ask or challenge the boss they think it would be a kind of insubordination.

I used to think that it was a sign of weakness that people need management, and in a way you could claim that to be the case. However, I have become convinced that there are many people who real do need 'good' regular managerial assistance to help them with their job. Ideally it's up to you to establish whether you need this support.

I've already got an offer by a startup and am currently weighing my options of staying vs leaving. The problem is that I'm not in California, so it's a bigger move than anything I've done before. But to answer your question, my boss is not preventing honesty. I don't have much experience with this but it appears to me that the corporate environment prevents it unless you are too valuable to lose or are respected there. The first time I made a mistake that annoyed our project manager we had a team meeting specifically to complain about my work, yet everyone was there and the statements were generalized. I was shocked that this is how it was handled instead of simply asking me why that had happened. I don't understand how to communicate without honesty because I've never attempted to do it before. I can't bring up issues like this without doing a private 1:1 and made the mistake of attempting that at the wrong time with depressing results.

Trust is exactly the issue I am having. I can't trust someone that I cannot communicate honestly with. Why risk telling my manager any of my problems with the job when it is their job to potentially use that information against me? I wouldn't even know if they did. My brain starts overthinking the situation and I end up waiting until the only option is the worst one.

well, i can't argue with that.

The case for one-on-ones in the follow-up is better. I would have found your colleague's first post on the subject satirical if I didn't know any better. The overall topic was about what it takes to make a company a good place to work and includes a conversation that makes Ben sound like an asshole (does he think he sounds like a badass?) and ends this way:

“In summary, you and Tim are preventing me from achieving my one and only goal. You have become a barrier blocking me from achieving my most important goal.  As a result, if Tim doesn’t meet with each one of his employees in the next 24 hours, I will have no choice but to fire him and to fire you. Are we clear?”

Now really, just imagine the conversation with Tim and his boss later that day... Then the quality of all the one-on-ones with Tim and his reports...

Maybe you should get someone to review some of these posts because Ben just embarrassed himself with that previous one.

There is a right way and a wrong way to chastise someone (or keep them on task). The previous blog post: http://bhorowitz.com/2012/08/18/a-good-place-to-work/ demonstrates the absolute wrong way.

I started to realize in about 5th grade (by watching a threatening, playground bully that everyone hated and a popular friendly kid that everyone liked) that there are ways to get people to do things you want them to do without pissing them off (Those you can't you just cast off and replace). Perhaps the author was the bully, or he missed the lesson.

Threatened, disgruntled employees will leave or worse (cause dissension, loss of productivity, they will take their frustration out on their peers and underlings, They will conspire against the threatening, abusive boss, poor morale will spread). I have witnessed this more than once already thus far in my 10 year career.

If warning them in a human adult-to-adult civilized manner does not work, and they continually demonstrates incompetence or insubordination, then replace them... no need to threaten them in such a harsh manner and blog about it like you just won a fistfight against a little kid (smacked em down good). You are not doing anyone any favors - trust me.

Your Abusive Ego may feel good, but your company will certainly suffer. Funny that your very claims for doing what you did are to make your company the best place to work - but in reality you just made it worse with your approach and choice of words.

This approach may sound new-age, feminine, soft, or touchy feely to you - but (in some ways) unfortunately it is the reality of today's tech worker's generation and how they expect to be treated (with some respect and consideration). Those who do not understand this, will repeatedly fail.

I say in some ways unfortunate - because it is taken way too far in way too many cases by today's young generation and they are simply lazy, unmotivated and have an entitlement attitude. Their expectation of respect and consideration is taken way too far (they expect to be coddled and never reprimanded). I am not changing my earlier viewpoints, I am simply establishing a foundation by which my statements should be based on.