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Comment by KingOfCoders | Hacker News Reader

I think 1on1s are the managers Swiss army knife and the best way to support employees in their development.

If possible I do them as walk'n'talks, people are more open and ideas often flow better when walking outside the office.

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I have always done "walk'n'talks" as well, and have found them to be much more effective over the years. I always preach about them when I get the chance. It's unsurprising to me that sitting in a claustrophobic 2-person room, where it can feel like an interrogation, is less effective.

Walks n talks are great but they aren’t 1:1’s in the way the author is envisioning them. The difference is a walk n talk is something you do when you have unscheduled free time and want to sidestep email for a direct conversation. A 1:1 is More like a weekly postmortem.. you celebrate wins, you figure out how to not repeat mistakes. But from a manager’s perspective, a 1:1 is all about ego management. For example, if I am a ceo, there’s some things I can do in a staff call to resolve conflict and bottlenecks but not much - otherwise I squander the energy of the staff meeting. Instead, I can have 1:1’s starting first with revenue... what are the roadblocks. Outside a 1:1 setting I can’t get the sales manager to get honest with me and own up roadblocks that his/her own doing vs the ones from other departments. From there it’s a cascade of meeting with successive department leads until I’m down to the one guy who owns fixing them all - product. If you’re the manager of a team further down in the org, you don’t have this end to end ownership for the entire business but the theories are the same... organize your week so you’re building a pipeline of issues and then meet with the people most able to resolve them. Doing it in a regular 1:1 session helps isolate egos and creates consistency.. if you’re trying to solve roadblocks that appear/resolve inside that weekly cadence, you’re doing too much of your own employees work for them. Ideally you’re focused on the next major milestone and the one after that.

Gp's "walk and talk" just mea s having a meeting while walking outsit instead of sitting down. it's good for casualness and rapport but terrible for organizing thoughts and remembering what to follow-up on.

Yes. I'd often have at least once per month the weekly 1on1 in the office. Also depends on people, some are ok with broad development, some feel better with action items and todos to follow up on.

It's better to spend a couple of hours a month to focus your team than dealing with a fast-approaching deadline.

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