Effective Skip-level 1:1s

One of the first activities most new managers learn is the regular 1:1 conversation with their direct reports. (If you’re a manager and you’re not doing that already, then let’s talk.)

As you move into a manager of managers role, you get a new kind of 1:1 opportunity – the “skip-level” 1:1, where you meet with a direct report of one of the managers that you lead.

Don’t let the similarity of the name fool you, though. Skip-level 1:1 meetings are different from manager 1:1s. They serve a different purpose.

A manager’s 1:1s seek to build and maintain a personal professional relationship. That’s why the frequency of a weekly or every-other-week cadence is important. Manager 1:1s often give direct opportunities for supportive or corrective feedback, and the conversations often have some connection to the details of current work.

A skip-level 1:1 does still give the team member a sense of a professional relationship, but that’s not the main purpose, and the frequency isn’t enough to serve that role. Instead, a skip-level 1:1 gives the skip-level manager an opportunity to look for trends that are common to multiple people. While it’s a great opportunity for the skip-level manager to receive feedback about their own effectiveness, it is not a good place to give feedback to the team member. Direct feedback should come from one’s own manager, not the skip-level manager.

Some good questions for a skip-level 1:1 would center around learning what’s working, what’s getting in the way, environmental conditions – whether physical, emotional, or psychological, and what opportunities there may be to make improvements.

Different people will have different comfort levels sharing details about their own managers, and different people will have different observations and interpretations about those managers, too. Your response to what you hear should be to aggregate and reflect on a wide range of input, not to try to fix every potential problem that you hear about.

Having effective skip-level 1:1s can be a challenge for some new managers of managers. If you’d like a thinking partner to explore your own leadership activities, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.