The regular 1-on-1 thing is mantra because people are notoriously bad at determining when they are actually needed, and because so many managers spend far less time actually listening to their reports than they think. They often spend lots of time with their reports, but usually talking to them or over them, or focusing entirely on tasks rather than giving attention to the person.
If 1-1s take one or two days of back to back meetings, to me that means the team is either too large for you to effectively manage without putting putting in place a team lead or more to delegate to. Or alternatively those meetings are really necessary, or you wouldn't have that much to talk about. If it leaves someones voice hoarse as a manager, it makes me think they're not listening enough.
Not really. It can be tough even at 8-10 reports, 30 minutes each (some may go over): 4-5 hours of meetings. It's hard to schedule them literally back-to-back because of everyone else's schedules, so it winds up taking up two afternoons or whatever (it won't literally take up two full days from morning to evening).
> If it leaves someones voice hoarse as a manager, it makes me think they're not listening enough.
Very cute. Maybe I don't have the stamina for non-stop talking as others do :-P
8-10 directs reports is already too large in my opinion, at least to me, exactly because of the amount of effort it takes to follow all of them up sufficiently. I've had teams with that many direct reports, and it sucks for me and it sucks for the people reporting to me if there's not then a team lead or similar exactly because it drains time. I don't see cutting the time I spend on people as viable at all.
The threshold might very well differ from person to person, but in my opinion, if you can't afford to schedule 30 minutes per person on a weekly basis (whether or not you actually end up using the full amount of time) without feeling it is too much, then you can't afford to manage that many people directly, no matter how many people we're talking. For some that might mean 10 or even more works, but in my experience as the team size grows the amount of time you need to invest per person grows as well as interpersonal issues and communications gets more complicated.
> Very cute.
Maybe, but it's not meant to be - I'm very serious on that point. When I do 1-on-1's with reports, if I'm the one doing the talking it's a sign we've spent more time than necessary and the meeting is at an end.
That might also be part of the reason why I have a different attitude to them: If a report doesn't have anything to bring up, the meeting is over in 5 minutes. But in my experience at least, there's a big difference in what comes out when you bring someone into a meeting room for 5 minutes (or on a private call), and specifically ask them in a one on one setting if there's anything they'd like to bring up, anything I could help with, what personal development they'd like doing etc..
I'm sure that for some people that's not necessary and they get people to open up without creating that setting all the time, but my experience with my own managers too is that managers in IT (probably applies elsewhere too, but I've only ever worked in tech companies) are notoriously bad at creating good environments for this. And I need to keep a very close eye on myself too, as it's not a part of the job that comes naturally to me.
That is where the ceremony comes it. It's not for the people who are great at getting everyone to talk. It's for everyone else - including a lot of people who think they're great at getting people to talk.
8-10 is a big team. That's when you should think abotu splitting up your team beyond you managing everyone because it is as you suggest hard to give everyone attention.
If 1-1s take one or two days of back to back meetings, to me that means the team is either too large for you to effectively manage without putting putting in place a team lead or more to delegate to. Or alternatively those meetings are really necessary, or you wouldn't have that much to talk about. If it leaves someones voice hoarse as a manager, it makes me think they're not listening enough.