One-on-One Meetings
Explore the importance of weekly one-on-one meetings in engineering management. Understand how to schedule them thoughtfully, respect your team's productivity flow, and engage effectively with your manager to foster communication and team development.
Book a weekly one-on-one meeting
Now that you’ve met everyone, it’s time to start putting meetings on the calendar. Depending on your background before management, you may have avoided meetings like the plague. They were the periods of the day that ruined your flow while you were focusing on solving difficult programming problems. However, you’ll see soon that meetings are how a lot of your work as a manager gets done. If you’re severely allergic to meetings, I hate to say it, but get out now. Just run away. You’re going to spend a lot of time in meetings. However, if you persist, you may learn to tolerate them or even love them. Trust me.
Maker’s schedule, manager’s schedule
Y-Combinator co-founder Paul Graham wrote
outlining the key differences between the daily schedules of makers, like programmers, and managers. an article Paul Graham. Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule. Essays by Paul Graham. 2009, July. Managers typically schedule their days around hourly blocks in their calendar, whereas makers are most productive when they can schedule their time in blocks of half a day. This is because the work of makers is deep and takes time to achieve productivity.
As a new manager, you may be tempted to drop meetings onto your staff’s calendars at your convenience rather than theirs. Sometimes, it’s unavoidable, but try your best to protect the time of those on a maker’s schedule if you can. Have meetings with them at times that allow them to be focused and productive the rest of the day.
One-to-one meetings are one of the most important regular activities that you’ll perform as a manager. They’re so important that we’ve dedicated an entire chapter to them, One-on-Ones. We’ll dig into the details soon, but for now, get the meetings booked. Open your calendar software and get going.
Some rules of thumb to abide by
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Make them a recurring weekly meeting, ideally at the same time and place each week. Regular cadence is important.
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Make them an hour-long to begin with.
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Ensure they are in a private space, such as a meeting room, so both of you can talk about confidential and sensitive issues without concern that others can hear.
One more thing: at this moment, your calendar is probably looking pretty empty. After all, it’s your first week. Use this to your advantage, and ask each of your staff if there is an ideal time of day for them to have the meeting with you. This is considerate and gives the best opportunity to respect their flow.
Flow
Coined in 1975 by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, flow is a mental state in which a person is fully and enjoyably immersed in the activity that they are performing.
Also known as being “in the zone”, you may have experienced this highly productive state when programming, drawing, writing, knitting, fixing your bicycle, or numerous other activities that require skill and concentration.
Programmers often rely on the flow state to be at their most productive. This allows them to fully immerse themselves within the task that they’re doing. This is especially important when they are debugging an intricate problem.
Okay, so you’ve booked a one-on-one with everyone? Excellent, but you’re not done yet. You need to do one more introductory meeting.
Have an introductory meeting with your manager
You’ve met your team individually, and now it’s time to do the same with your manager. Don’t wait for them to schedule something with you. Be proactive and request some time with them. Don’t worry about them thinking this is rude. . As a manager myself, I actively enjoy when my staff proactively seek my time and guidance because it’s one less thing for me to schedule myself.
Follow the same procedure as you did when meeting with your direct reports. Use open-ended leading questions, listen, and take notes. However, you’ll want to be more guided in your questioning since your manager will likely have some key insights that you should know about.
For example, you’ll want to find out:
- Their opinion of the team and their performance
- Details about individuals: Are they superstars or struggling?
- Framing of the current project or workstream: How long have they been doing it? Has it changed much?
- Thoughts on how best to work with them. You don’t necessarily have to follow this, but another opinion always helps.
- General advice about how to do your role within the organization
Your manager’s insights will form another part of the snapshot that you’re putting together. After the meeting, follow the same procedure as you did with your staff: thank them for their time and schedule a recurring weekly one-to-one.
So, you’ve completed your investigation. Now, let’s make some sense of your findings.