Recording 1-2-1s with Line Managers

[Freefaller]

Hi all,

A friend has asked me this and I'm no expert.

He wants to start recording his 1-2-1s with his LM as he keeps getting messed around on his objectives and getting excluded from meetings.

As long as he asks for permission and is given consent there's no issues with recording and then saving that recording to a personal device is there? I told him I'd ask around, and told him to phone his EAP advisors.

Or is there something more nuanced going on? Fortunately at my level pretty much all meetings are recorded and minuted - but I don't really know what to advise him at that sort of middle management level.

I guess the other thing he could do is minute the meeting and email them and as long as there's no response consider it as "approved"?

 

[Freefaller]

Yeah reading back your comments it does seem pretty weird - I just needed to hear it from other people!

I think I will say to him, either write down the actions and email them to his boss afterwards, or quite frankly start to look for another job. It does seem pretty toxic

Couldn't imagine being that frustrated to start doing that.

 

[Freefaller]

Welcome to the corporate world of saying stuff but never intending to actually do it, it comes as a shock to those who say what they mean and intend to do.

He's not much younger than me, so it's quite a surprise to me. I mean I've never not delivered stuff regardless of what the company policy or line manager's behaviours were, but I have a fair bit of gumption about me and am not a conformist... although it has landed me into hot water in the past.

 

[Freefaller]

Ignoring the valid points made as a point there’s no law preventing someone making secret recordings for their personal use.

So in theory your friend can covertly record meetings.

I don't want to encourage him to do things like that... I'd rather he sorted things out or found himself in a better situation/job. I'll try and get more context from him. However you've all highlighted the issue that I think I was being too "safe" to come up with myself.

 

[Freefaller]

Slightly more helpfully if your friend is getting stressed or anxious about these meetings then it can be useful to record and then prepare a written summary to share after the event with the recording to help prepare that summary in less stressful circumstances.

Or get another job.

I've told him that he should just start to minute his meetings, and send them to his boss. Start to review them during his 1-2-1s. If he gets some ****, he can say "well I sent you the minutes and you didn't say no to any of them...". I just want him to cover his arse and not do anything stupid. I have told him to look for new opportunities. The thing is he likes where he works (he works for a tech firm that supplies manufacturing plants) and he gets to meet lots of people and actually has been doing really well, he's just trying to improve/do more/go beyond etc... and he just feels held back or that he's being undermined.

I suppose an alternative is to ask to work for another LM? But that could make it awkward within the business (It's not a huge business).

It's tough to like the work but hate your boss!

 

[Freefaller]

I'll need to find out the details can't say I have been given a huge amount of information and not having been there I'm having to join the dots a little.

Some really good comments @dowie thank you. Let me chat to him and get his perspective.

 

[Freefaller]

This is a bit vague tbh.. mate. Messed around how? Are they asserting that he's missed some objectives they set? Are they claiming they claiming he was due to carry out some tasks/meet some other objectives he's saying he was unaware of? Are they changing objectives continually? I guess the latter is something he'd need to suck up so long as they can acknowledge prior work and that objectives were changed after he'd be working on other things or towards different goals.

Are these annual, monthly or weekly meetings?

Annual objectives ought to be put in writing for sure, I can certainly see a weekly or monthly meeting not necessarily having minutes/notes though and just being a brief thing.

Openly recording could come off as a bit weird and discretely recording is the sort of thing people might do in advance of a tribunal, by all means if he can do it totally discretely and as a personal record do it but I'd not advertise the fact.

One thing he might consider doing, rather than just emailing a meeting summary, is just to drop a weekly update e-mail to his manager say each Friday, just a brief few lines or bullet points checking off his progress on whatever things he's working on, and maybe the odd comment about stuff the manager needs to chase perhaps [X still outstanding, still waiting for Y from Z team, have chased are you able to escalate?] etc.. and then in the bottom part of the email perhaps mention the objectives and which are met, in progress, ongoing etc...

That might help solve his issues, just being visibly productive if there are issues between him and the manager - does the manager know what he's been doing day to day? Like say these objectives are monthly and he's updating this weekly email and showing progress towards them then at the next month the manager is like "oh what about issues B and C" well he's sent 4 emails during the past month showing exactly what he's been working on with the objectives at the bottom and maybe [completed] and [in progress] , [to be done] etc.. next to the objectives and the manager hasn't said anything by then??? Perhaps that regular email then means that sort of thing would be less likely for that to happen - even if the manager is disorganised and this new task/objective comes in mid-month and he forgets he's not told your mate about it.. well they've got this regular email now and they can both refer back to it at the next 1 to 1 meeting. And before that meeting, the manager may well see on one of the emails that matey isn't working on the thing he's going to ask about next week and then realise he's unaware of it and mention it to him.

I had a chat and this seems to be the issue:

• regularly excluded from meetings (i.e. team/department meetings) therefore missing out on key information
• Every time they agree on progress, and he delivers work based on the requests it's never "good enough" or doesn't seem to land
• He feels he's had to re-do his work dozens of times and basically not making any progress
• Whenever he delivers things it's either said he can't publish it, or has to be reviewed, and it's never reviewed and ends up disappearing, only for 6 months later to become the most important thing, and gets no recognition or asked to get involved despite having already done a significant amount of work towards it.
• His 1-2-1s are basically the same every single time and feels like he's basically not making any progress.
• He's fed up that his manager doesn't have his back or seems to push his agenda in senior meetings and feels "forgotten"

I think I'm going to suggest that he minutes the meetings sends them to his LM. Then keep a log of what he's up to and how it aligns to this role and business targets so that there can be no issues with him. If he keeps a log of his work it'll be useful for him to showcase what he's done but also from a professional development perspective give him some encouragement that he's actually done some good.

He has good working relationships with the rest of his peer group - he just seems to get blocked at doing more and actually trying to deliver stuff - there's a misalignment of what his LM thinks needs to be done and what actually needs to be done.

From the sounds of it to me it sounds like the LM is out of his depth or is clueless at managing teams/people or driving projects forward and is a bit of a prevaricator with a lot of smoke and mirrors... but I'm only seeing 1 side of the story, but being a good mate, I would tend to be on his side.

It's so hard to be the man in the middle of these conversations! However it's so good to be able to share things with a wider group and keep some sort of anonymity means that no one gets hurt or have repercussions!

Thanks again for all your insights.