2024-06-11 18:54:00 During my experience as an engineering manager for a bit over 2 years I have found 1-1 meetings difficult to manage __at scale__ . They have always been the highlight of my week, best way to connect with people, understand their ambitions, learn from them and more imnportantly as a manager help them grow in their career path. These meetings should not to be treated as status updates which can easily become an invasive practice by managers. > [!Warning] Please note that: > This article does not argue with the necessity of the 1-1 meetings but aims to show why it is not the best practice in many cases. ### Equal Access to Information: I believe in providing equal access to information for everyone. I prefer to share challenges, problems, solutions, and directions with the entire team at once. So that I can ensure everyone is “singing off of the same song sheet” without privileged access to information. ### Empowerment Through Transparency: Sharing information openly empowers the team. It ensures all team members are aligned and can contribute to solving problems collectively. ### Feedback as Collective Learning: I prefer to provide feedback openly in front of everyone, turning it into a learning opportunity for the entire team. This way we can view feedback as a way to teach reasoning and decision-making collectively. I believe that learning from others’ mistakes is more efficient than learning from one’s own mistakes. ### Avoiding Miscommunication: I discourage my peers the scenario where feedback or directives are shared privately and **then reinterpreted inaccurately by others.** It helps ensure clarity by having everyone hear the same message directly. ### Case Study Approach to Mistakes: The mistakes or issues can be treated as case studies for the whole group, maximizing learning from individual errors or misjudgments. ---- #### Shortly to summarize my experience about this: > [!info] 1-1s are a good practice when > - Building trust and relationships > - Used for personalized coaching and development > - Confidential or sensitive issues (hoping you don't have these in your team) > - Detailed feedback and personal growth > - Clarity and alignment on personal objectives > [!danger] They are not a good practice when > - Sharing information that needs to be broad. It can easily lead to inefficiency > - Collective learning and resoning: Don't let the team to miss on the opportunity to learn from each other > - Promoting open feedback culture > - Time efficiency in large teams