My 1:1 meetings were never good, but, jfc. Seven minutes late. 19 minutes about their personal life. No answers to questions asked before.
Skips aren’t any better.
Why do managers fail so epically to do their one job? And why are they here?
8 replies (most recent on top)
My manager and 1 level above him are pretty open about how the place is being run into the ground, but anything they try to move up the chain gets ignored or squashed pretty much immediately. So they run interference and try to let us do our jobs as best they can, but it's hard when the Good Idea Fairy seems to run rampant through 'senior leadership'.
I think 1:1 weekly are a WASTE of time - the manager should know what I am working on and hopefully that I will ask for help if/when needed. But the Schwab equates Meetings - "work/value"
Manager here. To be totally honest if I'm late to a 1:1 it's because I'm being held over on a previous call. You know how Schwab thinks meetings = "work getting done" but I digress on that. Often times I have to bail out of a previous meeting in order to make it to 1:1 within 5 minutes of start time.
Now, for content of the 1:1's, I try to have a normal conversation. We're all sick of work. It's nice to focus on getting to know my team members as individuals and talk about shared hobbies, life outside of work, etc. Having a relationship matters. Once we get past personal topics the last 10 minutes or more is focused on work related subjects e.g. what's going well, what su-ks, is there anything I can help with, are there roadblocks impacting you or escalations I need to take away. Ultimately, it's all about how I can help you out and ensuring you've got a line of communication open with me and some level of trust established.
I have a couple of people on my team who want to focus the 1:1 strictly on work topics and that's totally cool too. It's all about you and how I can support you.
My team has extremely low turnover and I've heard more than once that I'm the best manager they've ever had and it seems to be genuine. I'm trying to help and my team seems to feel that I'm genuine.
For those of you with less than stellar managers, my advice to you is to try and drive the 1:1 conversation towards what you need from your manager to help you get your work done, make your workday less stressful, or whatever it may be. You should have a strong say in the subjects of conversation in your 1:1s.
before I was laid off in STS...my manager would show up on time, but then "oh something came up" and them I would see him go "Away". I dont miss this place at all!
I have yet to have a good manager during my time at Schwab and I’ve been here over 5 years. Honestly mangers don’t do much for the “team” unless it’s call reviews if you’re in core or cbs.
Only 7 mins late…I would consider that on time.
agree. They also manage up really well. Their managers think they do a great job so they don't really care about the people they manage.
Because they were promoted into management at Schwab when they shouldn't have been - probably "yes" men