This guy sounds like a horrible manager. The screed about too many people in the wrong meetings is good, but there are large meetings that have a reason to be. Also, the emphasis on email over meetings is misplaced — it’s not either or, of course you do both. The worst part is the tone described in his one on ones, which apparently are blame games and witch hunts. It’s spectacularly unproductive to encourage team members to throw each under the bus as a normal rule.
One on ones are hugely valuable, but in my experience managers who emphasize those over team meetings are usually practitioners of differential communication — telling everyone a message customized to make them happy — otherwise known as spin. This is usually associated with new managers who practice a weak form of management, focused on being liked over results. That isn’t this guy’s problem, though!
One on ones should be focused on specific discussions the employee is thinking about. Topics include career development, performance management, company issues, and most importantly concerns they have that need to be addressed before they become truly serious. In that way they serve as an early warning system for issues that are affecting the team.
Think about it, the one on one is probably the only time you are guaranteed to have a direct, personal interaction with your manager that is likely to be more than a brief interaction. It’s definitely the only time you’re not meeting to talk about specific projects. Anything other than mostly listening by a manager during this time is a bad plan.
I wholeheartedly agree. I never would like to work with or for this guy.
> If a person is running late on a project, the best way to find out the reason is to have a one-on-one meeting with them. They are free to incriminate themselves, in ways that I find useful. For instance, they might put all the blame on someone else. After the meeting I will investigate their accusations and discover the truth. Is the other person to blame? If I conclude that the other person is not to blame, then I know I have a person on my team who both runs late and dishonestly blames other people for their problems.
This reads like micromanagement, wasting so much effort into finding someone to blame, and creating an atmosphere of fear and self-doubt.
What he should do instead with all this wasted energy:
Encourage people to discover self-management techniques. Create an atmosphere of trust and reliability by positive, affectionate reinforcement. Give them freedom to breathe, give them reasons to ask themselves every morning "What is one thing that I can improve in my workflow today?" intrinsically?
Intrinsic motivation is key. If you build pressure, they'll never develop their potential, because they never knew that it's possible.
Lead by example, becasue nothing motivates stronger than thinking "Wow, I want to be as cool and productive as my manager, he's awesome!".
This guy does everything wrong. He's wasting time and money, and people will leave until he learns.
Yeah, none of the managers I've met with that sort of negative attitude have been successful. I hope that he straightens himself out and gets it together soon, especially if he has a family that relies upon him for income. He seems to have some good thoughts in other parts of the essay though.
I think you are confusing 1-1 meetings with meetings between two people, because the author used “1-1” to describe the second.
A 1-1 is the name commonly used for a standing meeting between an employee and their manager, primarily used to allow employee to vent/discuss issues important to them.
Having a meeting with one person to discuss project status is also technically a 1-1 meeting because, it’s just two people. Obviously in them the manager should listen to the employee, but the meeting is going to be directed by the manager. You can’t just say, “how’s the project going” and let them filibuster.
I think he’s talking about both the traditional 1:1 as well as ad hoc meetings where the “mostly listening” mandate is absent. I agree with him that the vast majority of large meetings should be emails in an ideal world. In Trump’s America though only about half of people read their work emails and follow up on action items in them, and often later than would be ideal for anything time sensitive. Theoretically doing all 1:1s for that communication is only about 2x as expensive as one big meeting, but it takes much longer to organize and execute.
One on ones are hugely valuable, but in my experience managers who emphasize those over team meetings are usually practitioners of differential communication — telling everyone a message customized to make them happy — otherwise known as spin. This is usually associated with new managers who practice a weak form of management, focused on being liked over results. That isn’t this guy’s problem, though!
One on ones should be focused on specific discussions the employee is thinking about. Topics include career development, performance management, company issues, and most importantly concerns they have that need to be addressed before they become truly serious. In that way they serve as an early warning system for issues that are affecting the team.
Think about it, the one on one is probably the only time you are guaranteed to have a direct, personal interaction with your manager that is likely to be more than a brief interaction. It’s definitely the only time you’re not meeting to talk about specific projects. Anything other than mostly listening by a manager during this time is a bad plan.