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One on one's

Common advice given to leaders is having frequent one on one's with your team members. There are many benefits in this practice: you het to know your team members better, you know what they are working on as well as what are their current challenges, it gives a good opportunity to give feedback and above all it shows your appreciation towards them.

When working as a team lead, especially on a smaller team this is still relatively easy to arrange. Having frequent meetings is still not taking too much of your time. The problem arises when the team size grows, or when it's no longer about direct leadership. The meetings are suddenly starting to take a surprising amount of time. It's not only about finding time for the actual meetings but also having enough time to prepare and recap those meetings as well as ensuring the appropriate follow up actions.

I've been a leader of leaders now almost a year. That's another challenge having the time to talk with everybody who wants it. I try to keep up with the meetings with the people I'm directly managing, but quite often there is also request from people down the line who wishes to have at least a semi frequent chats with me as well. I definitely want to keep my "door" open for them too, but with the total people under my management closing three digits it's increasingly becoming an impossibility.