Yeah, HR cannot help you be a better manager, especially considering many of the worst managers and experiences people have at their companies involve HR.
Those training sessions are also terrible. Even if they did have good content (instead of rah-rah and feel good BS), you can only remember so much at once, which even has a name for it: the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve https://peakmemory.me/2013/06/29/hermann-ebbinghaus-and-the-...
Yeah, certainly consequences matter. The more they have to change or else X (which they really don't want), the more likely they are to change. That said, unfortunately, many will only do just enough to not get fired.
It's certainly a two way street between a manager and team member to work well together, but in my experience the best managers in Silicon Valley/tech retain great people for a long time. In fact, many bring former team members with them from company to company, being a talent magnet.
If you're doing it right as a manager, it's not about authority. Instead, you should be working to align interests and support your team.
Having someone younger than you as a manager can feel awkward, but if they actually invest in you and listen to you, it can be a great relationship...especially if you know you don't want to be a manager. Then, it's like this person is doing you a favor, so you can stick to the IC work you like.
Knowing what to do is a hugely uphill battle on its own, but then actually being brave and making the time to have the necessary discussions with your team is another level. Many managers are afraid of doing so or fear the time commitment.
The counter intuitive lesson many leaders have to learn is that when you proactively have these discussions that align interests between employee and company, while also showing some empathy for your team, you fix many problems when they're super easy, instead of massive fires to fight.
With all that in mind, that is exactly why I started Lighthouse; knowing what to do and then actually doing it are two separate things. Keeping it all in Google docs and making your own system from scratch rarely holds together as well as someone automating things and reminding you of the right things to do.
Certainly finance has its own terrible reputation and problems, but that does not absolve Silicon Valley / Tech companies from doing better. They absolutely have the knowledge, funding, resources to do better.
The reason the Valley is different is because if you have 35% turnover at most companies, you're out of business.
In Silicon Valley, you can hide it behind more recruiters and funding. I've talked to multiple companies with first hand accounts of that level of turnover, which is rare in other industries because they'd go out of business losing that many people.
I appreciate the skepticism, but that's a very fixed mindset. People can absolutely change and I've seen it hundreds of times.
It certainly can take a "come to Jesus" moment like you find out your team hates you, you get fired, a wave of employees quit on you, etc, but people can absolutely change when they decide to.
Character is absolutely important, and it does predispose one to being a better manager, but you can become a good manager later in life.
Unfortunately, as we discuss in the article (I wrote it), the incentives aren't always there, nor are the positive examples of what to do.
A lot of employees either A) don't know what to talk about or B) aren't sure what their current manager considers safe topics.
Questions like the above (though not all of them) can help spark discussion and get them to open up. I've personally seen a number of times where team members have a lot to say about something and didn't realize I wanted to hear their ideas on that topic.
Obviously, delivery matters, and choosing a good question is important. If you have a foundation of trust already built (see Psychological Safety research) then a lot of those questions can help.
Your 1 on 1s are going to evolve over time with them.
At the start you want to simply build some rapport and get a feel for their work style. Ask them about how they prefer certain things like project updates and how to handle problems that arise.
Then, as you get comfortable, your 1 on 1s can and should cover a wide variety of topics:
- Your Career Growth / areas of interest you have
- Suggestions for improving you/your team's work
- Problems you want their help with / what they think of the solution you came up with
- Personal issues that could affect your work (babies, funerals, long term sickness of loved ones, divorces, etc)
- Praise things your manager did you like so they do more of it (They're human too...let em know)
- If they're open to it, feedback you have for them
- FYIs that you may know about that they may not have visibility to and will want to monitor (see Andy Grove's "Black box of management" https://medium.com/@iantien/top-takeaways-from-andy-grove-s-...)
- Things you want to lobby for (changes, class you want to take, a project, a certain assignment, etc)
1 on 1s as status updates are horribly inefficient, which is why managers should not use their 1 on 1s for them.
However, when a manager uses 1 on 1s for what they're actually for (career growth, feedback, blockers, coaching, praise, etc) they have the best teams and best performance, because they make sure the employee stays motivated and the team as a whole operates better.
I've uncovered so many problems that would have otherwise blown up later, as well as found tons of ways to better motivate team members from them, I can't imagine not having them, nor ever working for someone who doesn't do them.
Can't you give most of those status update-y things another way? Seems like most of that would be covered in a standup, or email.
Your 1 on 1 could be so much more: your career growth, situations you want help with, feedback and ideas for them, things you want coaching on, any issues they should know about (like say a sick/dying family member), etc
From Creativity Inc, by Pixar cofounder Ed Catmull:
“My door had always been open! I’d assumed that that would guarantee me a place in the loop, at least when it came to major sources of tension like this.
Not a single production manager had dropped by to express frustration or make a suggestion in the five years we worked on Toy Story.
…Being on the lookout for problems was not the same as seeing problems.”
Those training sessions are also terrible. Even if they did have good content (instead of rah-rah and feel good BS), you can only remember so much at once, which even has a name for it: the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve https://peakmemory.me/2013/06/29/hermann-ebbinghaus-and-the-...