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Effective 121's

Effective 121’s isn’t just something that a manager should be concerned with. Engineers who are serious about becoming leaders can use their 121’s as a tool to help their career progression. As with many other things in life though, the comfort and repetition can lead to some complacency. Below you will find some tips and guidance to ensure that you’re making the most of those regular 30min slots.

Contracting​

When you join a new team or company and you’re given a new manager, the first meeting you have with them should be like creating an informal contract. This is a really simple exercise where the outcome is to better understand the expectations of both parties. You can ask questions like what are the areas you can support me with? It could be with technical challenges, resolving difficult relationships with colleagues in your team, or even improving self-confidence at work.

For the manager, it’s really important to let the other person do the talking so resist the urge to suggest items yourself.

The second important aspect of contracting is to communicate how you want to receive your feedback. People have different personalities and some prefer to be given feedback privately whilst others don’t mind receiving it in a team meeting or a slack group.

Planning​

121’s need some effort and planning from both sides in order to keep them fresh and engaging. This means both parties should come prepared with a small agenda of items to discuss. The most important topic is personal development and you should bring this up regularly in your 121’s. Think about how productive you’re feeling at the moment and whether you’re being challenged or working on interesting problems. If something is frustrating you or blocking your development then your manager may be able help explore the deeper reasons or unblock this for you.

It's important to set out challenging goals for yourself whilst working at CRUK and your 121’s should be the time to evaluate how well you have progressed on those goals. Do you feel like you’re getting enough opportunities to work towards them in your product team? If not, what can your manager do to help? Perhaps your motivation for these goals has waned, maybe it’s time to talk about setting some new ones?

Other things you can talk about in your 121s are technologies that you have read about recently that really excites you, and any concerns that you have that could be about the team or the products that you are building.

Repetition​

If you feel like your 121’s with your manager are becoming repetitive you can try and adjust how often you meet, what time to meet (it doesn’t always have to be the same time), Who runs the meeting (could you take turns running the meeting?), Where you meet (consider a walking meeting or a coffee meeting), What preparation you both do (try more, or less, prep) and things like the agenda and length of the meeting.

Getting experience​

If you are a senior engineer without any direct reports you can get great experience running 121’s by taking on a mentor. A big part of being a leader is coaching and you don’t need a manager’s title to do this. When you kick-off a meeting with a fellow engineer, the best thing to do is start with the question “what's on your mind?” This is the ultimate conversation starter and will usually lead you into areas where you can ask your mentee something like “What's the real challenge for you on this task?”

Try to identify the needs and wants of your mentee - people are always driven by wants or needs. When you have identified a need ask questions like “How can I help you with this?” This lets you check whether the mentee is actually asking you for something or just wants to let off some steam, it also clarifies the issue by pushing your mentee to get to the point.

The most challenging aspect of coaching is to try to hold your tongue and not blurt out the first bit of advice that comes to mind. Coaching is all about listening and asking open ended questions to help the mentee get to the answers themselves.

Finally do not be afraid of silence. Silence is an asset in coaching, when you are silent after you ask your question you give your mentee time to think about what they want to say. When a mentee gives you an answer summarise their thoughts to you show that you have understood, doing this shows that you care and encourages your mentee to share more

Retrospectives​

Working in agile means we have many opportunities to hold retro’s with our product team and improve the way we work. Consider make every other one-on-one meeting a retrospective to discuss improvements to your one-on-ones. Think about what has worked well, the stuff that hasn't worked well and what you want to change and communicate this with your manager. This will help you brainstorm a list of actions and select a handful that you can try out in the next meeting.

References & Further Reading​