Submitted by gusstu on
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I've recently become an engineering manager and I've been doing one on ones for about three or four months. I've been using the one-on-one tracking form from the website but I was considering modifying it a little to fit my specific needs.
A little about my situation. I manage 5 directs, all of them engineers or engineering interns. They are assigned to specific engineering projects that they, for the most part, work on individually. Each direct has a top priority project and a secondary project to work on if for some reason they can't make progress on their top priority project. The projects generally take between a couple days to a couple weeks to complete. Some are on the scale of a couple months.
I'm finding that the majority of the time in these one on ones is talking about the projects that the directs are working on. I do my best to communicate to them at the beginning of the meeting that they can talk about whatever is on their mind but so far, invariably, they either have nothing to talk about and we end up talking about thier projects in my section, or they go directly into talking about their projects. Maybe part of the reason that they're so quiet is that I've only been doing these one on ones for a few months and the trust isn't there yet, but my instinct is that the bigger reason is that I'm dealing with introverted engineers and they just don't talk much about personal stuff.
That's not to say that the whole meeting is just me talking. Generally I ask about the projects that they are working on, they update me on progress they've made, things that are holding them up, and other questions that they have. I make suggestions on how to fix their problems and guide them which way to move forward. From that perspective, the one on ones are productive.
I've seen some advice on this forum to be wary of making the one on one meeting into a project update meeting because it takes away from the primary purpose of the meeting which is the relationship. That being said, I can't help but feel that we're already in these meetings talking about projects so why not document progress? I'm considering adding a project section to the one on one form. In that section I'll document some things like the next deliverable, whether the project is on track to meet the due date, the number of hours worked on the project this week, and the biggest obstruction to progress.
So that brings me to the question. Do I move forward and change the form (and therefore the "manager" section of the meeting) to document details on specific projects? Or, do I try to take a step backward and talk less about specific projects during one on ones? That is going to make the one on ones very short and probably mean that I'm going to have to schedule a "project update" meeting with each of my directs which becomes rather awkward. Or, do I try to stay in the same place that I'm at right now and talk about projects, but not necessarily about "are you going to meet the deadline" and "are you being productive" aspect of them.
That question ended up a lot longer than expected. Thank you for your help.
Gene
Suggest separate meetings for "result" and "relationship"
BLUF: Consider an O3 with each person to focus on relationship, and another "projects" meeting with each to focus on results.
Keep the one-on-ones focused on the relationship. Make sure you're not accidentally taking the reins during the first portion of the O3 -- there's guidance in the casts and book on this. You'll naturally talk about the projects, but consider this as additional communication and a side benefit. The weekly rhythm of rolling up reports on progress often meshes poorly with the weekly rhythm of doing O3s.
I easily keep project update meetings separate from O3s, because my project update meetings are with several people at once. The project-manager gathers and collates info outside the meeting (which can include at O3s), and everyone syncs up in the meeting to update and coordinate the next week's work.
Those times where I've had one-person projects to manage, I've kept separate status meetings but let them finish early. I keep the slot on my calendar, as if I expect to have more folks show up. Or, for the more senior guys working "solo", I let them manage their projects, and we meet to review both progress and process of plan/track.