From the course: Tech Career Skills: Moving from Developer to Engineering Manager

Holding one-on-one meetings

From the course: Tech Career Skills: Moving from Developer to Engineering Manager

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Holding one-on-one meetings

- One-to-one meetings are regular discussions with one of your team members at a time that you're going to hold in a room conducive to confidential discussion. One-to-ones are more than just status updates. They're a great way to learn about the stress levels on your team or the health of your team. And they're an important part of your toolkit to build trusted relationships. To conduct a meaningful one-to-one, you can prepare by creating an agenda beforehand and taking notes during the one-to-one. Let's take a look at a conversation between a manager and a developer on her team. (both laughing) - We all do. Well, thanks for meeting with me today. So how has everything been going with you? - Great. Taking some time of for a vacation means I had a lot of energy when I came back to work on the client project. I've been paring with Alex on the back end work and we just finished the ticket we got back from the front end team. - And you were in Rome. How was it? - Oh, such an incredible trip. Thanks for pushing me to take the time off. I've always wanted to see the Colosseum. - Hey, we can all use some down time. I'm so glad you got to go and that you had a good time. So following up on our action items from our last meeting, were you able to complete the four tickets with the front end team? - Um, all except for the one about the log in functionality. Do you mind if I show you? - Sure. - I've been blocked. I have some notes here on what I would need from security to move forward. - Wow. These are really well documented. Thank you. I'll add an action item for myself and follow up with the security team and see if I can get this unblocked. You've been working very closely with Alex this spring. How's that been going for you? - He's been helpful in coming to grips with the refactored code on the new project, but he seems really frustrated to have to slow down to pair with me. - Ooh, that must be hard for you. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about this. How's that making you feel? - It's a little intimidating. I don't know if I'm slowing him down too much. - Well, Alex has talked to me about wnating to do more pairing and metoring, so I hope he's not frustrated having to slow down to practice these skills with you. How about this? We'll move you around in the next sprint and have you work more closely with Jane and I'll check in with Alex to make sure that his work load is going okay and that he's still interested in mentoring. - That would be perfect. I've been wanting to do more work with Jane and she's been wanting to learn about the new framework with me. - Awesome, great. - Fantastic! This meeting was held in a quiet room, with the door closed. Great! And they didn't just talk about work, which is amazing. Keep in mind, you're unlikely to forget, but your team members are people, with lives outside of work. Taking an interest in their whole selves is something many great managers do. They took notes, unobtrusively as they talked, to follow up on some of these points later. Good managers help their team members maintain good work-life balance. By encouraging this team member to take a vacation, this manager helped potentially reduce burnout and increased the resilience of their team. The developer came back with lots of energy after this life-changing trip. If the developer hadn't brought up their current project, of course this manager would've asked about their work to get a status update with context. The manager immediately focused on a potential blocker, their relationship with the coworker they collaborate with. Having these in-person conversations allow managers to spot potential problems early. While these two had their one-to-one together, in the same room, if you're managing remote teams, this might not always be possible. Try to meet regularly via video calls with both of you in a quiet room, conducive to private conversation. As a fallback, phone or audio calls might be another great tool.

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