Originally a series of posts on blue sky here.
A friend asked for advice and based on a recommendation I’m sharing for a broader audience: They told me “I absolutely never feel excited about working leaving 1:1s with my boss”. My response was: “Have you told them this?” This can be a very hard conversation to have.
I happen to also know this person’s boss, so I do have an inclination about how such a conversation would be received. Some people absolutely will not listen to constructive feedback from a direct report. If that’s the case, my recommendation may be to update their resume and consider leaving.
The person’s response to me was “That’s a tough thing to tell someone…” Yes, 100% agree. Hard conversations are hard. I can also say from my experience that I have never once regretted having a tough conversation after the fact. I have regretted conversations that I didn’t have.
It reminds me of this meme, which relates to therapy. I don’t know where the original is to attribute correctly.
Everyone we work with is just another person with their own concerns, ambitions, baggage, and strengths. Many people go into management not because they want to be leaders. And that’s okay, too. Not everyone has to be a great leader of people to be an effective manager.
If we are in a bad situation, often the way out of it is to take some kind of action. Sometimes that means having a hard conversation. I would want to include in that conversation not just “when you do this I feel that way.” Rather, I’d want to go in with a path forward.
In this case, the answer is probably something along the lines of “When we have our 1:1s can we set objective criteria at the end of the meeting for what you want to see, specifically, at the next one in order for it to be considered a success? Can we do that right now?”
We can’t expect others to have all the answers all the time, so it’s often important to go in with a recommendation. They might tweak it or they might reject it. Until we take the risk of having the hard conversation, we won’t know and we won’t grow.