Management rites: 1:1 and skip-level meetings

In a technology company, each professional’s development should be closely followed by management. Weekly one-to-one meetings (1:1) are a great tool. Its main characteristics are:

• Can be resolved in 30 minutes
• Create a good meeting rhythm, even if occasionally there are cancellations
• Overcome the feeling of isolation from remote work or introverted personalities

Meetings make up a considerable part of the management overhead, so they must be conducted rationally and efficiently, without losing the personal element that makes them a unique tool for developing the company’s human resources.

Streamlining meetings means using them for the few processes that will work better synchronously rather than asynchronously— issues that couldn’t be resolved through written communication, for example. Preparing agendas so that people arrive with already thought-out points to discuss is a good practice that should be encouraged. Agreeing on what will be discussed asynchronously before the meeting can make it much more productive. 

Skip-level meetings

In skip-level meetings, an employee meets with the person who manages their manager. This type of meeting can be held at the employees’ request or on a routine basis, individually or as a group. A good frequency is one meeting every 45-60 days.

Positive aspects of skip-level meetings:

• Increase transparency within the company
• Detect management or relationship problems
• Identify opportunities

Perhaps the manager identifies a talent that deserves to be closely monitored or learns that their direct report, the manager that is being “skipped” and who is therefore not present at the meeting, is unable to keep up with the team’s work, due to being overloaded or some other reason. Direct contact between managers and their “skips” (direct reports’ subordinates) increases supervisory power and gives employees more confidence that there is room for them to express their ideas and concerns.

On the other hand, skip-level meetings should not be requested by people trying to gain direct access to the top levels of leadership just to stand out, as this strategy is very unlikely to work. Senior managers are, by nature, difficult to impress.

It is not healthy for an organization when there is a widespread impression that subjective criteria and personal favoritism are the norm and that some employees are taking advantage of loopholes in the system for their benefit. This kind of perception creates a terrible working environment. People management processes need to be very clear, and management needs to be closely aligned with them.

A company’s management team should work like an algorithm. If someone asks any of the hierarchical leaders: “What does an employee need to do to be promoted from level B to level A?” the answers should always be similar, demonstrating that they all have the same promotion standards and see the company’s processes through the same prism.

A company’s management team should work like an algorithm.

Achieving this uniformity among managers is a laborious task, and the consistency of rituals plays a key role in keeping leaders in a cohesive and aligned group. Human resources automated tools can help achieve this goal.