Abstract
One of the most difficult challenges to overcome in a hybrid or remote work environment is the lack of social connection between team members—and worse, the often insufficient time that managers spend individually with their reports. Spending too little time one-on-one with your team members can have career-hindering effects: there’s not enough time for many of the conversations that lead to better work outcomes, such as giving feedback, career development discussions, and social time to build trust.
One-on-ones are the best tool at your disposal for ensuring that those vital conversations happen and that your team feels connected, even when you aren’t working together in an office every day. They’re incredibly valuable no matter what a team’s work setup is, but even more so when working in hybrid and remote teams: they might be the only time that an engineer gets to spend alone with their manager, putting a lot of importance on this single meeting type.
In this talk we’ll discuss why one-on-ones are so vital for teams that aren’t co-located, and how to leverage them to build strong relationships and a healthy team. We’ll also cover topics such as:
- The big benefits of virtual one-on-ones over their in-person counterparts
- How to structure hybrid one-on-ones to make the most out of the setup
- Why and how to use a shared agenda
- Common one-on-one issues, and how to troubleshoot them
- How to leverage one-on-ones to foster stronger relationships with peers
You’ll leave with many practical steps to successfully run your hybrid and remote one-on-ones, and learn how to use them to keep the team connected while working apart.
Interview
I am a senior engineering manager at Fellow.app, which is a company where we're building a meeting notes and collaboration platform. I'm leading a few engineering teams there, both managing engineers directly and managers that manage their own teams there. So I am doing a lot of work around helping people develop into leaders and also helping to set the product direction for that meeting notes collaboration platform.
I've been working remotely for ten years now and I have noticed that one on ones are some of the most important meetings to have for teams no matter what, but especially when working remotely. I really want to make sure that people are using that time to their benefit and really making the most out of it, because it's one of the most important types of meetings that you can have as a manager and as an engineer, because it's something that can really make or break your career and set the right direction for you. So I wanted to take all the lessons I've learned over the last ten years of working remotely and help people in this new remote hybrid world understand how to do those properly when you're not meeting with your manager or your direct reports every day face to face.
The target audience is going to be basically everyone - but especially managers and leaders of teams, and I think that it's going to be relevant for people even if you've been doing one-on-ones for a while. There are a lot of very granular things that I'm going to get into, about how to really make the most out of that time together and how to troubleshoot a lot of common issues that often, people leave to the side and let bubble up for a while. It's going to be relevant to everyone because I think it's on the manager to run great one-on-ones, but it's also up to direct reports to really make the most of that time and the user to their benefit. So I think that understanding the manager's perspective and seeing what they want to get out of one on ones is going to be very useful for engineers to set the direction for themselves.
I want people to walk away with this understanding of what the purpose of one-on-one is, because that's something that's often not very well understood: how to run them well, how to get buy-in so that people actually want to participate in them and also how to troubleshoot when things go wrong. So a lot of direct, actionable tips about how to make these work.
Topics
QCon San Francisco 2022 is a three day conference for senior software engineers, architects and team leads. An international program committee of working engineers selects every session. Patterns and practices, not products and pitches.
Part of the track
"Before & After": Hybrid Work Strategies Hosted by James Stanier Director of Engineering @ShopifyFrom the same track
Monday 24 October
10:35 Ballroom BC Session Hybrid Work Successful Leadership in Hybrid Environments: Powerful Principles, Practical Steps, and Poignant Examples Lena Reinhard Founder, Coach, Consultant @Lena Reinhard Leadership Coaching & Consulting, Previously VP of Engineering @CircleCI @TravisCI Being a technical- or people leader in a hybrid work environment can be extra challenging: While on paper, it may look like hybrid work combines the “best of both [remote and co-located] worlds”, the reality often looks drastically different: 11:50 Ballroom BC Session Hybrid Work Building High-Trust and High-Performing Teams at Shopify in a Remote World Jesse McGinnis Senior Development Manager @Shopify and Author of Embracing Uncertainty The switch to remote-only and hybrid has unlocked so much potential for the world and our companies: we can hire the best, people can live where they want, and we can form teams based on skills and interest instead of location. 13:40 Ballroom BC Session [Panel] Hybrid and Remote: How Do We Start Making Change Right Now? Lena Reinhard, Jesse McGinnis, Alexandra Sunderland, Brian Elliott The panelists have all been part of organizations that have fully embraced hybrid or remote work, and some were leading that charge. The question is, how do we go back to work next week and start making real changes for the better? 14:55 Seacliff D Session Unconference: Hybrid Work Strategies Shane Hastie Global Delivery Lead for SoftEd and Lead Editor for Culture & Methods at InfoQ.com What is an unconference? At QCon SF, we’ll have unconferences in most of our tracks. 16:10 Bayview Session Hybrid Work Leveraging Hybrid One-on-Ones for Better Connections Alexandra Sunderland Senior Engineering Manager @fellowapp One of the most difficult challenges to overcome in a hybrid or remote work environment is the lack of social connection between team members—and worse, the often insufficient time that managers spend individually with their reports. 17:25 Seacliff ABC Session Hybrid Work The Future of Work: How Flexibility Unlocks Potential for People and Organizations Brian Elliott Executive Leader, Future Forum & SVP @Slack | Author, How the Future Works The last two years created a massive discontinuity in how we work, and now the debate rages: are we going back to the way things were, or investing to move forward?