One-on-Ones Help You Develop a Peer-to-Peer Relationship, Not a Maternal or Paternal Relationship
The managerial relationship in a one-on-one is more of a mentoring or coaching relationship. The manager represents the organization to the employee. This is not a parent-child relationship; this is a peer-to-peer relationship.
I have learned from “my” employees. I put quotes around my because they aren’t mine. They are employees of the organization. They don’t belong to me. They are human beings who are affiliated with me. My status in the organization doesn’t depend on how many people I “have.”
What does matter to me is that all the people in my group are performing at their maximum capability. If I can enhance their capability, if I can leverage their work, then I have performed my job as a manager. That says to me I need to serve my staff.
One-on-ones Allow the Manager to Serve
Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, in their book Break all the Rules, have data that says that the best predictor of an employee’s likelihood of staying in a position is the relationship with his or her manager. After that, comes having friends at work.
When you have one-on-ones with your staff, you can build that trusting relationship with them. You can see if people have friends. You can serve your staff by helping them—if they want help—with career development, coaching, and mentoring. You can provide feedback if you catch people doing something great and if you notice them doing something not so great. And, you know what people are working on, so you can manage the project portfolio and know when it’s time to hire people.
You can be a servant leader. Not so bad for twenty minutes once a week, eh?
Read all of Johanna's Management Myths here:
- The Myth of 100% Utilization
- Only the 'Expert' Can Perform This Work
- We Must Treat Everyone the Same Way
- I Don't Need One-on-Ones
- We Must Have an Objective Ranking System
- I Can Save Everyone
- I Am Too Valuable to Take a Vacation
- I Can Still Do Significant Technical Work
- We Have No Time for Training
- I Can Measure the Work by the Time People Spend at Work
- The Team Needs a Cheerleader!
- I Must Promote the Best Technical Person to Be a Manager
- I Must Never Admit My Mistakes
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About the author
Johanna Rothman, known as the “Pragmatic Manager,” helps organizational leaders see problems and risks in their product development. She helps them recognize potential “gotchas,” seize opportunities, and remove impediments. Johanna was the Agile 2009 conference chair. She is the technical editor for Agile Connection and the author of these books:
- Manage Your Job Search
- Hiring Geeks That Fit
- Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects
- The 2008 Jolt Productivity award-winning Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management
- Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
- Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People
Johanna is working on a book about agile program management. She writes columns for Stickyminds.com and projectmanagementcom and blogs on her website, jrothman.com, as well on createadaptablelife.com.
User Comments
Hi Johanna, I really loved that story. Made a lot of things clear for me and was entertaining at the same time!
Thanks a lot,
Matthias
Matthias, thank you!
This series is really helpful. I'm hopefully about to move into line management in the next few months and I want to do the best job possible so I really appreciate articles like this one.
Ceri, I am delighted that you are enjoying these articles. I'm writing the next one now!
Great article, Johanna!
I do use my one on ones to gather some status information, mostly about topics that I suspect that employees are reluctant to discuss in our daily stand-ups, particularly around things that are political hot buttons or have potential personality conflicts. For example, "I've been working with Tom about JIRA story 767, but he is really not in alignment with the other customers and he keeps saying that the Product Owner is out of touch and not listening. I just don't know what to do." I try to coach and mentor them and remove roadblocks for them. I don't think I do enough personal development discussions and your article was a great reminder of all of the different things I need to include on our bi-weekly "agenda". As always, you are a big help! Thanks!
Laura, yes, if someone reluctant to bring up an issue in public, that is an issue for the one-on-one. And the meta-coaching and mentoring you are doing about *how* to talk about an issue is key.
If the meta-coaching is first on the agenda, do that, and then deal with the personal development. You can only do so much every week or two.
Johanna