The Work Was Already Handled

Most of us schedule a recurring meeting with the people who report to us and then spend it the same way every time. We ask what they are working on. We ask what is stuck. We move down the list, we close the loop, we get back to our own pile of work. Thirty minutes of status, repeated every week or two, until the meeting becomes one more thing on the calendar that everyone is a little relieved to cancel.

I ran those meetings too. But the ones I remember, the ones that actually changed something, were never about the work. The work was usually already handled. What needed attention was the person.

Let me tell you about two people. I cannot use their names, but you will probably recognize the type.

The first was one of the most thorough and responsible people who ever worked for me. If something landed on his desk, it was done right. But put him in a room with people who carried a bigger title or more years than he did and he went quiet. He spoke in a soft voice, deferred, and let louder people take up the space. His expertise was real, and almost nobody outside our team could see it.

So in our one-on-ones I started talking about his knowledge. Not in a coaching-speak way. I told him, plainly and often, what he was good at and why it mattered to the team and the company. I was building his confidence on purpose, one conversation at a time. Then I started pulling that into the open. In team meetings I would ask him questions directly. In project meetings for a system implementation he was key to, I referred to him as our expert, because he was. He still needed the prompt. But over time he began to operate with more confidence, and the rest of the organization started to see what I already knew.

None of that happened because I tracked his tasks. It happened because the recurring meeting gave me a steady place to work on something his task list would never show.

The second person was technically sharp and fast. We were building a new role around him, putting cybersecurity responsibility over our operations and manufacturing areas. That work had lived with a different group, one focused on keeping operations moving rather than on security. He could see the gaps clearly and he was ready to move quickly, fix the obvious problems, and put better practices in place.

His ideas were not the problem. The problem was that the team on the other side was not ready for someone to come in fast and change how they had always done things.

So in our meetings we talked less about the security work, which he had well in hand, and more about how to carry it. I asked him to be an ambassador. To walk beside that team through the change rather than push it onto them. To go slower than his instincts wanted. He took that approach, and it worked. We made real gains on security, and we built trust and credibility with a group that could have just as easily dug in.

The technical answer was never in question. What we developed in those meetings was how he showed up for the people the change depended on.

Two different people, two different needs. One needed to be seen. One needed to slow down. In both cases the work in front of them was handled. What I was investing in was the person, and that investment happened in the quiet, repeated space of the one-on-one.

I understand why most managers do not use the time this way. When I talk to IT leaders now, the recurring meeting has usually become a status update. Not because they do not care about their people, but because the demands flowing down from their own leader are relentless. They are being asked for status, so they ask their team for status. The pressure they feel becomes the shape of the meeting they run.

It is an easy pattern to fall into and a hard one to notice from the inside. The meeting still happens. The boxes still get checked. But the part that quietly grows a person disappears.

There is also no single right rhythm for this. I met weekly with my managers and with newer people who reported directly to me. With more seasoned contributors I moved to every other week. Even that was not a fixed rule. The cadence shifted with a person's experience, with what was happening in their life outside of work, with their comfort in their own abilities, and with how heavy their project load was at the time. It was more art than practice. The number on the calendar mattered far less than what we did with the time.

If I could go back and tell my younger manager self one thing, it would be this. The status will take care of itself. The person will not, unless you make room for them.

Reflection for this issue:

So here is the question I would leave you with. The next time you sit down with someone who reports to you, what would change if the work were already handled and the only thing left to talk about was them?

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