As a counterpoint, my experience has been that having a recurring 1:1 on some cadence makes it feel less weird to flag an issue. If somebody has to block out an adhoc meeting to raise a concern, it feels like a bigger deal. That won’t stop all people or all issues, but it does set a higher bar and that means some conversations won’t clear it.
My 1:1s are not all on the same cadence, and some of them end up spending more time on general rambling than others, but it means that there’s a known space where people who report to me know they have my time and can just bring up whatever. Notably, I do not use 1:1 time to ask tactical questions about projects that are ongoing, there’s other existing channels for project status tracking.
"As a counterpoint, my experience has been that having a recurring 1:1 on some cadence makes it feel less weird to flag an issue."
Agree with this completely, and is something I always introduce straight away with my team.
If someone stops me in the corridor
/ sends a slack to say "Jim's tapping drives me nuts" (as a lame example), then it's now a big thing. I have to stop what I'm doing to establish how much of a problem it actually is, and how soon I need to deal with the issue. It takes a lot to interrupt someone for something that potentially is a small, yet personally important thing, so people are less inclined to do it.
If instead, at the end of a regular scheduled one on one, as we're winding down, at the inevitable "anything else" stage, someone mentions "oh, yeah, small thing, but Jim's tapping drives me nuts", then we can discuss and establish a path forward in an open environment. Invariably they feel listened to, we can decide a way to approach the issue, and it's far less dramatic.
> As a counterpoint, my experience has been that having a recurring 1:1 on some cadence makes it feel less weird to flag an issue. If somebody has to block out an adhoc meeting to raise a concern, it feels like a bigger deal. That won’t stop all people or all issues, but it does set a higher bar and that means some conversations won’t clear it.
I think this is a significant part of the 1-on-1: to catch problems when they're small / solvable, rather than only recognising the problem when it's beyond the point of repair.
A "just raise the problem if you have it" only works if people have high psychological safety.
Though, if in the 1-on-1 the reportee doesn't feel confident raising issues/concerns (or aspirations), then I'd agree the 1-on-1 is useless.
Yeah. 1:1s should be a bit more like office hours. This is where you can deal with priory as individuals outside of a project. There’s nothing wrong with making it a bit of a high level status update, especially if your manager isn’t attending certain project meetings, but it should be more about resource management. Explain pain points, and that sort of thing. It can also be a place to drill down on topics that got brought up in the larger team meeting as well.
When I run 1:1s I end up scheduling them for 45 minutes, but target them for ~25-30 minutes. The extra time is there for when we need to go long without forcing a hard stop too quickly.
My 1:1s are not all on the same cadence, and some of them end up spending more time on general rambling than others, but it means that there’s a known space where people who report to me know they have my time and can just bring up whatever. Notably, I do not use 1:1 time to ask tactical questions about projects that are ongoing, there’s other existing channels for project status tracking.