A lot of times, engineering management can devolve into status updates and performance management. There are, after all, a lot of i’s to dot and t’s to cross and given that engineers tend to loathe meetings, a regular 1:1 might feel like the only time to get insight into how the mechanism is functioning.
Or, it’s the easiest time to do this work. There’s already a meeting on the calendar!
The thing is, a 1:1 isn’t the time you want to spend doing this work because there are more valuable things for you to accomplish. We’re managing people, not cogs in some corporate machine. And one of your foremost tasks is to connect at a human level – to show that you care about the person.
There are lots of other meetings, documents, applications to manage the process and status. 1:1 meetings are the only meeting place to manage the person. So, start with something like “How ya feeling?” Or “What’s up?” Or follow up on something you know they’ve done outside of work since your last meeting.
The trick, if there is one, to creating a human connection in this sort of environment is to first care about the people you manage, and secondly, to open up and be vulnerable yourself. Like relationships outside of work, you often get what you give and if you expect an engineer – another human being – to open up about themselves, you likely need to do some opening up of your own.Talk about what’s going on in your world, what you’re looking forward to, what’s frustrating you (as long as it isn’t another team member!).
Earning the space to ask an engineer about how they’re feeling, if they’re having fun, what sucks at work, where they want to their career to grow, what they’re struggling with – all of those topics are more valuable than rote status updates and serve the core purpose of effective 1:1 meetings.
You have a limited amount of time to receive and provide feedback, and making that human connection to an individual engineer on your team and covering dry status updates – which could be better done in public usually – is a waste of time in a 1:1.You’re spending human time on document time. Most status updates are the definition of “this meeting could have been an email”.
One way to wrangle the status updates is through a shared agenda document or a head’s up sent asynchronously before the meeting.Get status updates done asynchronously or in some public, team meeting. Not only does this free up 1:1 time for the valuable stuff, but it also helps both parties prepare mentally for what’s to come.
For instance, if you need an engineer to explain why something is delayed or taking a long time, give them the opportunity to think through the answer to that ahead of time – and be explicit about the expectation you hold.An exception is when an engineer is well and truly stuck and needs a mental lift, a roadblock removed, or a kick in the keister.
You can identify these opportunities a few different ways:
Stalled progress in public standup or status updates
Expressed frustration with progress
Explicit asks for help
Something running later than expectations
Save 1:1 time for the exceptions to status – the things that are stuck and unmoving, or praise for the things that are going swimmingly or ahead of schedule.
A 1:1 is also the primary delivery mechanism for feedback, especially the negative or problematic feedback that might be triggered by the status exceptions.And if you know ahead of time what that feedback needs to be, you can prepare to deliver it calmly and thoughtfully rather than in a snap when discovering it in the 1:1 itself.
To recap:
Don’t spend 1:1 time getting status updates: Get those documented ahead of time, either through (ideally) public meetings/standups/checkins or a private check ahead of time.
Spend your 1:1 time on a personal level: Manage the person, not the process.
Bring yourself: You’re a human, too. Be one. Talk about yourself. Connect on a human level.