The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change

by Camille Fournier

Skip-Level Meetings Skip-level meetings are one of the critical keys to successful management at levels of remove. And yet many people skip or undervalue them. I know, I’ve been there. No one wants to add yet more meetings to their calendar, especially the type that are often without an agenda. Still, if you want to build a strong management team, understanding the people who report to those managers and maintaining a relationship with them is hard to avoid. What is a skip-level meeting? Put briefly, it is a meeting with people who report to people who report to you. There are a few different ways that people hold these meetings, but their purpose is to help you get perspective on the health and focus of your teams. However you choose to hold them, keep this purpose in mind. One form of skip-level meeting is a short 1-1 meeting, held perhaps once a quarter, between the head of an organization and each person in that organization. This tactic accomplishes a couple of things. It creates at least a surface-level personal relationship between you and everyone in your organization, which keeps you from viewing them as “resources” instead of human beings (something that is a risk in managing large organizations). It also gives those individuals time to ask you questions that they may not feel are worth scheduling a meeting themselves to ask. These meetings are most successful when you provide prompts about potential topics, and remind the person that the meeting is largely for h...