Why I failed in my 1:1s
It has been quite a long time since the day I wrote my last article on this matter. So, Today I am very excited to share my thoughts and experience so far with 1:1 meetings in a virtual team, specifically about what didn’t go well with me and what I could have done better.
The post-pandemic era plus the global crisis are taxing heavily on our day-to-day lifestyle including our work environments. especially, tech employees have gone through tremendous changes in the way they work which resulted in a considerable shift in remote environments. In that line, 1:1s is a powerful tool that helps engineers and engineering managers to build trust between the virtual teams.
First, let’s try to understand why it’s so important to nail the 1:1s. As a gen-z kid and a member of a super agile engineering team, I have been spending most of my career in virtual meetings. Also, I am a firm believer in collaborative culture over one-man shows. There are challenges, miscommunication, disagreements between team members, and so on. That’s one of the key areas where 1:1s with your team members or your manager will ease the negotiations and trade-offs. Not only that but also providing/receiving regular feedback, career development tips, etc. which would eventually build that intangible bond known as trust. In a nutshell, 1:1 is a lifesaver in a remote work environment at least for managers and business leaders.
So here are the things that didn’t go well on my side,
I started messing up the schedules:
As expected 1:1 eventually became one of those fancy terms between engineering teams, where everyone started initiating recurrent schedules without a second thought about it. Where I was not an exception, I did the same and ended up blocking my manager’s and my team members’ calendar just for the sake of having one and it resulted in inefficient catchups and wasted both of our time.
I didn’t pay enough attention to the action items:
Even though I had some noteworthy conversations with my manager and my team members which should have been tracked in the backlog, I failed to keep track of it and they went out of track. I was able to experience the result of it too. So, I guess the better approach would be to note down the meeting minutes and track the to-dos on both side.
I started skipping few:
There were some exhausting days when I had to skip 1:1s to save my battery. But over time it became a habit and then my procrastination together put me down the path where I didn’t bother to be regular in my schedules. Rescheduling would have been a better option in that sense.
The conversation started deviating from the focal point:
We all get into the trap of converting any calls into a stand-up-like conversation where we talk about our project updates, ongoing blockers, and so on. I was too much into that, maybe because of the pressure on the project delivery side. Rather 1:1s is a more personalized touchpoint where you and your manager or team member exchange feedback and trust.
As far as I realized, that concludes why I failed in my 1:1s and I strongly believe that I would be able to correct these mistakes going forward. Also, I hope this would give you a little view of what you shouldn’t do in a 1:1.
If you would like to see more similar insights related to engineering management or technology, Please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter.
