Last week we talked about 1:1s with your manager direct reports. Today let’s talk about the skip level 1:1.

What is it?

When you are a manager of managers, in order to effectively give your direct reports appropriate feedback, you’ll need to get other perspectives. In the skip level 1:1, you’ll meet with the people, who report to the manager, who report to you.

How often should I have them?

Regular 1:1s where you are responsible for pushing information to or pulling information from other people one level up for down in the organization are generally done weekly, every other week at worst. If you try to meet with where “you’re their boss’s boss”, your calendar will get exponentially more complicated. I generally, will only have one skip level 1:1 each week. I pick the same time slot every week, and rotate through meeting 1 person/week until I’ve got through them all, and then I start the cycle again.

For example, the manager who reports to me has 3 direct reports. I meet with each person every 3 weeks on a rotation. Unlike the other 1:1s there isn’t necessarily an expectation of a regular cadence for these types of meetings.

What is it for?

In the skip level 1:1, there are a few things you can ask about

Establish trust

In skip level 1:1s, your first priority will be establishing trust with the employees you meet with. In my first skip level meetings, there was a very strong sense of hierarchy in the new hires. I scheduled a meeting with the entire team to explain my management philosophy, what I was hoping to get out of these meetings, and to explain that I wanted it to be a psychologically safe environment where they could feel free to share any sort of issue or dissatisfaction with me.

Of course, telling someone they’re safe and getting them to believe it are two very different things. In the next few skip levels, I was very careful to explain what I would and would not do for them, and if I could commit to something in a skip level 1:1, I set several reminders to make sure I followed through. By honoring my commitments from conversations, I was showing that I could be trusted, and that gave me to space to build a sense of psychological safety and allow the employees I met with to open up a little more.

Feedback on their manager

After trust has been established, I’ll start to ask for feedback on how they feel their manager is doing. Getting face to face feedback (even over Zoom) is tricky, especially when they’re reporting on their boss, to their boss’s boss. Never assume that you’ve done enough to build trust, it’s an ongoing effort. You have to understand that to an employee in a skip level 1:1, they don’t necessarily know that what they say will be confidential. Especially if your working relationship with their manager predates their employment.

In these situations, I’ve always tried to explain that my priority is making sure everyone in my department is functioning to the best of their ability. If there is constructive feedback for the manager, or even a concern about their performance, that is very important for me to know. And to maintain the psychological safety of the organization, it will be anonymous feedback to the manager. In certain circumstances, it might need to go to HR, but I would do my best to keep the feedback anonymous.

That’s not to say that the feedback will always be bad. There’s been times where I’ve heard positive feedback about a manager a long time after they’ve left the organization. A few weeks ago someone told me that they liked how their manager used to encourage them to do their 1:1s on a walk to get them away from their desk.

Feedback on any changes

As a manager of managers, you’ll be implementing changes across your department pretty often. The skip level 1:1s will allow you to collect feedback more directly from the people who will be most affected by the changes. Depending on the size of your organization, you may need to go down more levels to get feedback from the individual contributors.

What is the team struggling with

The individuals on a team will be able to provide you with the best perspective on what the team is struggling with. Remember, that it’s not your responsibility to unblock these issues immediately. You’re going to take their feedback to your 1:1 with the manager, confirm that they are seeing the same pattern, and then come up with a plan together to address these struggles.

How is morale, what are people worries about?

Aside from what the team is struggling with, you can also find out how morale is or what people are worried about. This might not relate directly to the work or processes that have been changed. They could be more existential or personal concerns. How is the company cash runway, when are we hiring next, when are the next opportunities for promotions, etc.? In these cases, you can provide as much information as you are allowed, but also remember to ask the employee to bring up these concerns with your manager. In your next 1:1 with the manager, you can also provide them with the team’s worries and see if they were aware of these concerns.

What is it not for?

One thing that you need to be wary of in skip level 1:1s is enablement. In your regular 1:1s, you’ll always be looking to coach someone through a blocker, or see where you can provide the necessary support to unblock your team’s work.

In a skip level 1:1, you shouldn’t directly unblock anything right there and then. Although you have a lot of authority, and can probably unblock most issues for them, you risk cutting the manager out of the process. The manager between you should be pulling for this kind of information in their weekly 1:1s, and help to coach them through whatever blocker they may be facing. If it is beyond the manager’s scope or authority, the manager should bring it to you. At the very least, it’s important that the manager has visibility on the issue so they are aware and can triage the blockers. If the IC asks for your help directly, you can explain that they should go through their manager.

It can be helpful to explain that their manager’s role is to unblock them or move issues up the chain if it’s beyond their scope or authority. But it’s still critical for the manager to be involved in the conversation. If you start unblocking things for people 2 levels down, the manager ends up being out of the loop and confused about what’s happening on their own team.

The other issue is that, these issues are not your Lego anymore. Their manager is responsible for unblocking their work, and although you may feel that it’s helpful or faster for you to unblock them, what you’re really doing is saying no to the more strategic and impactful work that you are responsible for. After all, there’s only so many hours in the day, and only so many that you can dedicate to work.

Wrapping up

The skip level 1:1s allow you to build trust with your entire department, get feedback on how the management layers are performing, get feedback on how you and the management team have implemented changes, where the team is struggling, and what they’re worried about. With this information, you can adjust your approach and provide better feedback. Just remember, which things are your responsibility to fix, and which are the responsibility of the managers who report to you. A good process for skip level 1:1s combined with clear division of responsibilities will allow you and your department to provide better feedback and implement improvements so that you’re all performing at your best.