Boost Your Productivity as an Engineering Manager by Scheduling 1:1 Meetings Smartly.

Introduction:

As an Engineering Manager, I have always found it challenging to schedule and manage 1:1 meetings with my colleagues. After struggling with recurring meeting invites, I decided to develop a more efficient and flexible approach to scheduling these meetings. In this article, I will share how I enhanced my productivity by smartly scheduling 1:1 meetings with colleagues I work with.

🤝 The Purpose of 1:1 Meetings:

1:1 meetings provide an opportunity to exchange ideas, share problems, and collectively find and work on solutions with your colleagues. They also help build better relationships with your colleagues and provide instant feedback, which can help improve their work.

🔄 The Challenges of Auto Recurring Meeting Invites:

Initially, I used to schedule recurring 1:1 meeting invites with my colleagues. However, this approach had its limitations.

1. Some other important meetings would come up at the same time
2. Either myself or my colleague might be unavailable.
3. Additionally, there were times when it was okay to move the meeting ahead, or I needed to schedule a meeting earlier than planned.

🧠 Creating a Smart 1:1 Meeting Scheduler:

To address these bottlenecks, I decided to develop a smart 1:1 meeting scheduler. I modified my existing 1:1 meeting template to help me schedule meetings more flexibly and efficiently. The new template allows me to decide whom to meet next and helps me decide quickly using colourful messages. Please see the attached glimpses of 1:1 meeting - smart scheduler template

💡 How the Smart Scheduler Works:

1. Instead of sending recurring invites, I use the new template and weekly open the 1:1 meetings view to know whom should I meet next.
2. I can modify the days I want to meet
3. I can set variable duration of the meetings with different colleagues and the alerts work accordingly.
4. The template provides me the flexibility to decide how often I want to meet each colleague, depending on the nature of our work.

📊 Benefits of Smart 1:1 Meeting Scheduling:

Since I started using the smart scheduler, it has been easy and light to manage 1:1 meetings. It has saved me time and made scheduling meetings more flexible, ensuring that I meet my colleagues more efficiently.

🏃 Using the Templates:

I am sharing the links to the templates that I created for managing 1:1 meetings.

1. The first one can be used for auto scheduled recurring 1:1 Meetings. → I want this ←
2. The second one is for the smartly scheduling 1:1 Meetings. → I want this ←

Both templates come with detailed walkthroughs and step-by-step guides to help you use them efficiently.

Start using these templates to enhance your productivity as an Engineering Manager.