As an Engineering Manager it\u2019s not always obvious where to allocate time for maximum impact.<\/p>\n
Time spent in 1:1 discussion with my direct reports is the highest leverage time in my calendar and it\u2019s the de-facto place I go to every week to see where I can make a difference. For 30 minutes of time I get the opportunity to amplify the work of somebody on my team by an order of magnitude for a sustained period. Multiply that out by my team size and compound that over 52 to get a feel for the kind of impact effective 1:1\u2019s can have on team success over 12 months.<\/p>\n
This week I will spend 35% of my time in 1:1 meetings. When I started allocating this kind of time I was deeply dissatisfied with the return on investment. Sometimes I\u2019d leave happy, only later to discover that my directions weren\u2019t clearly understood. Sometimes I\u2019d forget what I\u2019d said last week. Sometimes I\u2019d spent 30 minutes shooting the shit. Sometimes we\u2019d rehash things discussed in planning. Sometimes we were talking at a time when we really should have been doing.<\/p>\n
When two people chat, each person will leave with their own perspective on what that conversation was about.<\/p>\n
Over the past few months fueled by ideas from people like Andy Grove<\/a> and Jeff Caselden<\/a> I\u2019ve been tinkering to try improve the impact of my 1:1 time. Here are some things I\u2019ve found to be important.<\/p>\n You need buy in from your report that the 1:1 meeting will not only be a valuable use of her time but an essential component to her success at your company. You should spend at least the first couple of 1:1 sessions imparting your philosophy. I find it useful to appeal to the self interest of the team member at first. Let them know what you can offer them directly. Typically this means career development, growth opportunities and guidance. The goal here is to get your team member to take the 1:1 slot seriously \u2013 and not consider it an interruption to otherwise more important things. You might need to repeat this exercise many times.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re a brand new manager, on a new team, or new to the company it might be worth inverting this completely to start. Let them know how they<\/em> can help you<\/em> so that you can eventually help them.<\/p>\n Ownership of 1:1s and associated work is a little tricky. One non-negotiable is that the time belongs first and foremost to the person you\u2019re managing. Regardless of what you want to talk about, always give your report first choice on the agenda. This means they should turn up with an agenda \u2013 I think that\u2019s also important. Chatting for three minutes about what to chat about is a really good use of the first three minutes.<\/p>\n I personally prefer to own the scheduling and notes by default. This can be flexible though, as long as things are clear. As with much management work, identifying ownership and expectations up front is a useful exercise in avoiding misspent time.<\/p>\n You want to be really open initially, so avoid explicit scoping in the first few meetings. 1:1s are the right place to talk about career goals, expectations and to give performance feedback. They are the right place to gather feedback on you, others or the company and to get in tune with satisfaction levels. They are one setting in which you can identify potential blockers or ways in which you can help as a manager.<\/p>\n They are the wrong place to discover project status, to understand what that person is currently working on, or to assign ownership on roadmap work. You should discover project state and assign ownership to work elsewhere. If these things come up they should be directly related to the experience of the problem<\/em> rather than a process of discovery for you. They might want or need help or direction on something. In that case it’s in scope.<\/p>\n A large part of your role as manager is identifying the right people to solve a problem and linking those people together. You\u2019ll probably come across things that are legitimately in scope for somebody to raise with you, but are out of scope for you to deal with directly. If there\u2019s a difficult personal problem, it\u2019s worth understanding where you can help, where the limits of your remit and ability to help are and what options you might have to get additional forms of support \u2013 either for you or for your report.<\/p>\n People complain a lot about meetings. Unfortunately I haven\u2019t discovered a more high bandwidth, high leverage way of sharing knowledge than a face to face meeting. What I think actually bothers people is bad meetings. Bad meetings are the bar across the industry right now. There are a few reasons for that. One is lack of preparation, which I genuinely don\u2019t understand. There\u2019s no excuse: Get your shit together and get it done on time. If for a genuine reason you\u2019re not prepared, cancel the meeting. Don\u2019t go through the motions.<\/p>\n As a manager, safety is your responsibility.<\/p>\n To help with preparation there are two note sets that I maintain per person on my team. The first is a feedback diary. A simple bank of short, constructive and positive feedback that I note down over the week. The second is meeting notes. I jot down what we chatted about in bullet point form and identify actions as well as owners for those actions. A good cadence on this means 1:1 prep requires very little overhead. I typically spend 10 minutes per 1:1 sorting this stuff out.<\/p>\n There are some 1:1s that require more than 10 minutes preparation. In difficult performance review situations I like to spend at least 30 minutes with a peer running through what I want to say and how I\u2019m going to say it, to sanity check my position and identify flaws in my reasoning. I\u2019ve found this really useful. More often than not it\u2019s the thing you don\u2019t identify up front that becomes the primary issue, but the act of running through things with somebody else crystallises my thinking and makes it easier for me to think on the fly. I think of this as a kind of code review for managers. Not only a chance to leverage the collective experience but a chance to share context and understanding across the management team.<\/p>\n When two people chat each person will leave with their own perspective on what that conversation was about. Depending on many things, those two individuals who think they are completely aligned will in reality range from somewhat aligned to totally misaligned.<\/p>\n To help us get in sync, at the end of each 1:1 I jot down the key points of the discussion as I understood them, note down the key next steps and the owners of those and send that email to my team member. For a small investment of time this has some great upsides, including:<\/p>\n It\u2019s incredibly difficult to have a successful team if your team members don\u2019t trust you. It\u2019s incredibly difficult for them to trust you if you don\u2019t create a safe environment for them to express themselves. The most insightful and useful 1:1 conversations happen when everyone feels safe. It\u2019s not easy to create safety, especially when the stakes are high and people are out of their comfort zones. There\u2019s a whole book<\/a> on this. I boil it down to:<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth remembering that as a manager safety is your responsibility. It might even be your primary concern. I\u2019ve been in 1:1s where managers have lost their temper, where they have burst into soliloquy or pontification at the slightest sense of disagreement. When that happens my back goes up. Good luck understanding what I\u2019m really<\/em> thinking from that point on. I try to remember this when working with my team.<\/p>\n In the aftermath of a 1:1 gone bad I\u2019ve heard managers pawn off the seriousness of the situation with \u201cMy intentions were good\u201d. It\u2019s very hard to prove what your intentions were, even to yourself. Also, nobody cares about your intentions. People don\u2019t experience intentions they experience outcomes. If you mistime a tackle in rugby and end up around the opposing player\u2019s neck it\u2019s your fault. Your intentions are irrelevant because the consequences for the player are severe. Even if your intentions were golden you\u2019re leaving the field of play and your teammates<\/em> behind for 10 minutes, or 10 weeks, depending on the outcome. Team member safety is your responsibility \u2013 no excuses. Create and maintain a safe environment.<\/p>\n By default I schedule 30 minute meetings with five minutes either side for prep, notes and follow up, so 40 mins per 1:1. I fix this time on a weekly cadence creating an open opportunity to chat and a predictable rhythm. That\u2019s my starting position. Sticking to this schedule as much as possible and giving enough notice at a reschedule is really important. People that rely on you like you to be predictable.<\/p>\n 1:1 time is the most valuable time a manager has to have impact.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve found it more important, however, to be really flexible. If you\u2019re only starting to draw out the really useful<\/em> feedback at minute 25, or something of critical importance comes up in minute 27 the absolute worst thing you can do is indicate you\u2019ve something else to be doing next and there\u2019s a chance you\u2019ll be late. This will be a judgement call but my point here is don\u2019t live by the clock. There are some places you\u2019ll go in 1:1s where you\u2019ll want to stay for an extended period right then and if you interrupt that flow you\u2019ll literally never get back there. So be flexible. Whoever you\u2019ve scheduled next will appreciate this when it\u2019s their turn.<\/p>\n Another reason the bar for meeting quality in our industry is so low is timing of meetings. It\u2019s naive to schedule a meeting, get a \u2018yes\u2019 in reply and then to assume that \u2018yes\u2019 will continue to apply right up to the start of the meeting.<\/p>\n There are so many reasons why exactly now might not be a good time. I manage engineers. There\u2019s a point of flow in an engineer’s day that they spend most of the rest of the day chasing. It\u2019s the uber productive time where they\u2019re in deep work. It\u2019s the place where they add millions of dollars of value. There is a study<\/a> that shows when engineers move from that place it takes 20 minutes to get back there. This assumes they will get back there. In practice and with even the best of intentions there might be two hours of elapsed time before that 20 minute process starts. It might be home time then. As a manager, flexibility is part of your job description. I like to open each 1:1 with \u201cIs now still a good time?\u201d. It\u2019s really important to create a predictable schedule but it\u2019s even more important not to be beholden to it.<\/p>\n I\u2019m inclined to avoid more specific recommendations like \u201clisten more than you talk\u201d or \u201calways ask another question\u201d. In different situations with different people applying these kind of principles has ended up with me listening very attentively to complete silence or irritating an engineer by coming across as a professional socratic questioner and little else. The key point here is be present, use your judgement and adapt your style to the person, the context and the general mood.<\/p>\n Over the past few months I\u2019ve found that by following these guidelines:<\/p>\nKnow why you’re meeting<\/h2>\n
Clarify ownership<\/h2>\n
Scope the meeting<\/h2>\n
Be prepared<\/h2>\n
Follow up<\/h2>\n
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Create and maintain a safe environment<\/h2>\n
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Schedule effectively \u2013\u00a0but be flexible<\/h2>\n
Adapt your style<\/h2>\n
Learning and iterating<\/h2>\n