Over the past few years, I had weekly 1:1 meetings with my manager. However, after returning from a long sick leave, I realized that these meetings were doing more harm than good.
While weekly 1:1s are useful for identifying issues, they created the following problems for me:
- In weekly 1:1s, team problems are often managed by the manager, which is counterproductive. Why would you fix something within the team when your manager is already handling it? Managers should focus on eliminating roadblocks rather than managing team dynamics.
- Weekly 1:1s also prevent you from filtering out minor issues, leading to discussions about trivial matters every week. This constant focus on problems negatively impacts morale.
- What about Performance & Development (P&D)? Are we really working on performance weekly? That’s unrealistic. P&D should be done in year/6months. Weekly focus on P&D doesn’t provide any personal benefit and get you to focus in short goals instead of big goals.
What I'm doing instead of meetings?
Weekly email status:
Currently, I'm sending a weekly email with status update, something that my manager can digest. If something is on fire, we can have a quick chat. The template that I'm using is:
- Status: The two sentence status about how the week was.
- Blocker: If I can see any blocker out there.
- Pain: The list of things that are painful this week, and if something can be fixed.
- Achievements: Things that I achieved this week
- Next Goals: Goals for the next week
Monthly 1:1
These are focused on performance and development. I usually send my agenda to my manager beforehand. During these meetings, I concentrate on my own progress and what I can do to improve, rather than on team matters.
Team meetings:
I'm trying to write more, a lot more. In my dayly standups(slack) I'm trying to explain all with more details.
What am I aiming to achieve?
- No more private messages: Does it make sense to have private conversations with my manager? No! This encourages me to bring up issues in team meetings instead.
- Discuss team matters with the team: If something is important, it should be discussed with the team. In my current project, where personal agendas are prevalent, having public discussions helps others identify and address issues.
Does it work?
Currently, I can see that I do not complain weekly, so my mod is much better at the end of the week. I also focus more in the roadblocks and long term. In terms of development, I don't have weekly nosense preasure. I'm happy as hell with this idea, let's see in the long term if that works.