How to talk to your Manager

TL;DR - Break your manager 1:1s into three parts. This will create clear lines of communication and help your goal of both impressing them and getting the help you nee.d 

Why?

Your manager is busy. While one of their main goals is to help you be successful, they also have at least 2 or 3 (typically many more) people they need to do the same for, all while impressing their manager. To leverage their time most effectively, be clear on what you need vs what you are just telling them. 

Your Goals

1. Impress your Manager

2. Get Alignment

3. Get Help

How to Structure Your Conversation

Therefore, when you meet, you can be more effective if you breakdown your meeting into three key discussion points. 

1. What you have under control

2. What you believe I have under control (but your manager might be able to help)

3. Where you know you need help

How this aligns with your goals

1. Impress >> Show them all you have under control and you can impress them

2. Impress >> Make it easy for them to know what you need feedback on, don’t make them fish through a long, verbose rant to figure out where you most need help

3. Get Alignment >> If they don’t think you should be working on something, you give them a chance to tell you that in private. If you are doing this every week, you can tell them what you believe is coming up and they can react before you double down.

4. Get Help >> If you tell them where you need help and why, they can focus most of their energy there.

Don’t forget to make structure clear to your manager

Many managers are overwhelmed or just bad managers. When a direct report tells them something, many managers feel the need to ALWAYS give feedback or input, even if it isn’t needed. (Especially if they are micromanagers.) Therefore, it is important to be clear with your manager: “The way I want to run this meeting today is to discuss three things: What I have under control so you have visibility into what I am doing. 

Use the Callout to Supplement

If you use the callout, an email you send weekly with goals, learnings and updates, you can transparently keep your boss up to date on what you have under control and buy more time for the more critical conversations during your 1:1. 

NOTE: There are a lot of inexperienced managers out there that will still tell you what to do even if you have it under control. If, after leveraging the aforementioned format you still have that problem, I highly recommend looking for a new role. If you just started the role, try using the callout and keep your 1:1s focused ONLY on the areas where you need help to avoid the overkill on what you should do when you don’t need that.