The Bent Archive

Help! I’m dreading my weekly 1-on-1

I am a manager and an extrovert, but honestly have really struggled with being a people manager through the events of 2020.

Cool Boss Move: The Email Moratorium

It’s so freeing when we discover that an unchangeable fact — my email inbox is always open and the system is always functioning — is just a thing we all agreed to believe in.

I want to move and also keep my job

When do I ask (tell?) my boss about this? How honest should I be about my plans? If they say yes to my move, do I owe it to them to stick with the job for any amount of time? What happens if the answer is no?

Three strategies for speaking up

If you do any prep before speaking up, I recommend working on some sentence starters that will diffuse confrontation — not overdo the argument.

Reader mailbag

My boss is late. I’m sad I didn’t get laid off. Should I apply? One of my reports is pregnant. How do I not fuck this up?

Listen and take action

I am thinking specifically here of white people like me who are working among other white people and feeling the urgency — the need for growth plus a desire for growth. How do we keep going with accountability, every day from here on out?

Rumors

I find great relief in knowing that my job isn’t ever to stop a rumor from existing. It already exists! If Beyonce can’t get an “unflattering” picture off the internet, I’m certainly not going to be able to stuff a rumor back in its bottle. My job is to help surface the truth in the most useful way possible. As a manager, I’m more weatherman during a tornado watch than god of wind.

Introducing Cool Boss Moves

Cool Boss Moves is a new series where we share the tips, tricks, and strategies we stole from other great managers. This week: Be the volunteer.

How do you manage your time?

Combined, we’ve worked for over two decades and managed hundreds of people. We’ve survived holiday seasons, hiring pushes, product launches. We’re not perfect and we’re not superheroes, but we do accomplish a lot of work. (We also know how validating it is to learn that someone shares one of your habits.) This is what works for us.

Is it too much to ask?

I don’t think it’s wrong at all to expect follow-ups from your team when something has slipped through the cracks. What I love most about this question, though, is that there’s not a single clear-cut answer. It’s one thing to ask your boss to respond to an email that’s been languishing in their inbox for three days. It’s another to have to ask again after a week, and again after two.

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