I don't really have anything this week

Photo by Messala Ciulla.

We have an internal Introduction to Management thing that we do. It's pretty basic but it covers the fundamentals. We tell them they have to do 1:1s and stuff like that.

That's great. And how's it going?

The training?

No, no. The 1:1s. You tell them they have to do them and then what happens? Are managers doing them consistently across the org?

Hmm. Well, it's hard to say. I know some of our managers definitely are. But then Engineering seems to do their own thing. And then Sales, I'm not really sure...

This isn't a single conversation. It is the start to nearly every conversation we have with companies of a certain size. Big enough to have at least one full-time HR person. And big enough to run onboarding for their managers. Somewhere roughly between 100 to 1000 people. Because they've all read the same studies.

Employee engagement in a bottle

The Organizational Psychology people make their money and get their tenure by identifying the things that make organizations effective and productive. They knocked it out of the park with Psychological Safety — the magic ingredient for building high-performing teams. Popularized in a TED talk. Studied by Google. Evidence-based. Peer-reviewed. Robust as a finding.

The good news is that most modern HR teams are already all over the connection between psychological safety and healthy work cultures and thriving teams. Employee engagement in a bottle is pretty damn appealing. The part that gets slippery is how an org goes about getting that all-important it-factor of psychological safety. Unlike many great workplace innovations, it's not something you can buy at Staples.

The single biggest predictor of psychological safety is...wait for it...whether employees have regular check-ins with their managers. This seems ridiculous. Like, surely it's got to be more complicated than that. But if you think about it, it makes sense. If you never talk to your own boss, you're left to guess and assume and flail. Sometimes you'll guess right. Sometimes you won't. But you know what you sure as shit won't do? Stick your neck out. Take a big swing. Or say anything even marginally unpopular in a meeting.

If you work at a job or in an industry that doesn't believe in 1:1s, you're not alone. We talk to a lot of folks who have spent time in orgs like that. They tell us it's hard to know what's important. Tricky to figure out if they are working on the right things. That they are frequently surprised to the downside. And that they struggle to get the feedback they need and desperately want.

The word that comes up more than any other is disconnected.

It's no wonder many orgs have mandated 1:1 training for managers. And bring in software to nudge bosses to have those 1:1s. They are high stakes. So most bosses will nod along in a lunch-and-learn about the importance of 1:1s. They get it. Often, they've sat through the same lunch-and-learn at a prior employer.

And then as soon as it gets busy, they'll do exactly what they did at their last job.

Which is why the question is not how the training is going. But, rather, whether the 1:1s are happening. And if not, then the question is why.

Tastes great, less filling

We've been part of a lot of failed 1:1 cultures. We've worked in organizations with no 1:1s, or with 1:1s so infrequent that seeing one scheduled caused immediate panic. We've worked for bosses so bad at running them that HR would sit in to make sure that they happened, and then apologize to us afterwards for how poorly they went.

We've also been the bosses who have cancelled 1:1s. Been the bosses who showed up excited and prepared for some of them, and avoidant or irritated for others. Not because we were trying to build toxic and disconnected workplaces. We would have told you the exact opposite, and believed it. (We still do!) And not because we didn't know that 1:1s were important, either.

Look, the truth is this. 1:1s are an investment in team health over the long term. And, like any other long-term healthy choice in your life, there are a multitude of tempting, short-term, unhealthy options that come pre-packaged with rationalizations.

I don't really have anything this week, so why don't we skip it?

We mostly cover everything in standup anyway.

We don't need regular 1:1s but my door's always open if you want to talk.

Tastes great, less filling!

The reason these rationalizations show up so persistently — re-invented by every newly minted manager staring down their calendar — is that 1:1s take so. much. time. Like constant, never-ending, jesus-big chunks of time. You can love talking your team and still feel like carving up your days with 1:1s is a disaster. Especially when the payoff is slow and long term. Especially when you feel like a lot of what you're talking about, even though it's impolitic to say, could have been an email.

So you make... some of them. Especially if someone seems a little loose, or wobbly, or sad. But most of them you rationalize off of your calendar. And when your boss, or HR, asks if you're doing your 1:1s, you say "Yes, of course." Because you do! Like, not every week. Not with every team member. But enough! Ish! And anyway your people seem like they're surviving just fine.

There is no shortcut to the long game

You might be right. Most people show up to work wanting to do a good job and wanting to believe that their workplace is a good one. They'll do a surprising amount of work to meet you halfway — more than halfway, honestly — if it gets them what they need to survive.

But there's a difference between surviving and thriving. It's a funny word, thriving. There's something about it that forces honest reflection in folks. When you ask people if work's going well, they nod, but when you ask if they're thriving, they have to stop for a beat. Am I? Thriving? Really? It's the same with bosses. Is the team good, solid, tight? Sure. Is the team thriving? Well. Sort of?

If you'd asked us, in those past lives when we were not as on top of our shit about 1:1s, our teams were not thriving. We aren't sure we'd have described ourselves as thriving either. We knew we were punting on something important. But honestly, we thought we had to, because it was the only way to get everything else done. It's relatively miserable to feel like you're failing at your management job, but also that whenever you make time for 1:1s, some other ball drops.

If we could go back in time and talk to past us. Or to any of you in the same spot. We would say that there's no shortcut. You can't get your team's work done by leaving your team behind. So take the 1:1 training, for sure. Buy some reminder software if you think it'll help, though nudges don't generally work for this kind of thing. But mostly the answer is that you have to show up.

The long game of building a thriving team is in showing up for your people week after week, and intentionally holding that space. You will not always see the value in each 1:1 right away. Your people might need help, too, to understand how to use them effectively. But over the long run, the benefits of an engaged and thriving team are immense.

If you can't make the time to do them, there's a conversation you need to have with your own bosses about what is getting in the way, and how you can rebalance your obligations. In time, a thriving team should be able to help you carry more of that load, so these things are in less tension than you might expect.

But if, on the other hand, you simply won't do them. If you can stare down the knowledge we have about what builds great teams, and shrug, and say that you really just don't have the time. Then you need to get out of the seat. This is the job. It's not more complex than that.

— Melissa & Johnathan