{"id":3949,"date":"2025-04-23T19:03:33","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T19:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aomtodayprod.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=3949"},"modified":"2025-07-09T15:37:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T15:37:52","slug":"ongoing-conversations-a-secret-to-managers-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aom.org\/today\/ongoing-conversations-a-secret-to-managers-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Ongoing Conversations: A Secret to Managers\u2019 Success"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Butcher<\/a><\/p>\r\n

There\u2019s a simple best practice for managers to increase their effectiveness: having regular conversations with their direct reports and actually listening to what they say.<\/p>\r\n

Academy of Management Scholar Carol Kulik<\/a> of the University of South Australia said that, based on her own and colleagues\u2019 research, she encourages managers to have ongoing conversations with their employees.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cOne of the things that\u2019s happened in organizations is that so many interactions moved to Zoom or Slack, and these are both media where the conversations are very terse; the communication is very brief and short,\u201d Kulik said. \u201cIn a Zoom meeting, managers are conscious of not wanting to waste anybody\u2019s time, so they tend to stick with the agenda, and that\u2019s good; that feels very efficient.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cBut it means that you may not be having those chance encounters with employees, where you learn about skills they might be interested in developing or challenges that they\u2019re having at a very early stage where it\u2019s not a big enough problem that they\u2019re going bring it to their manager, but it might surface in a conversation,\u201d she said. \u201cSo we really need to encourage managers to have the catchups with employees.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

This piece of advice sounds like common sense, but Kulik said that it\u2019s surprising how often it falls off managers\u2019 radar. Many managers get caught up in other tasks and responsibilities and fail to prioritize one-on-one, face-to-face meetings with their team members.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cLine managers will always say that they plan to have catchups with their employees\u2014sure, they scheduled them at the beginning,\u201d Kulik said. \u201cBut line managers have these really big jobs; they\u2019re always trying to put out fires.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cThe first thing that goes is that catchup; it gets postponed or rolled into another meeting, so employees don\u2019t get the one-on-one interaction with their manager that could be so important for boosting their performance and career development,\u201d she said.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

A sample of Kulik\u2019s AOM research findings:<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n