Meetings in the diary with line manager are so stressful!

[Thesofathatwas]

With no context, just “meeting “.
It sends me into a complete spin.

Im super anxious about getting let go, I’ve got horrible imposter syndrome, a new line manger. This one is the 4th in 3 years.

1:1 meetings are pre booked in advance, always cut very short and she is picking me up for things that come out of nowhere.
Impossible to read, and gives nothing away. It’s like she is a HR person.

Theres a “catch up” meeting been put in for Monday. It was put in today, Friday. No other context. Me & another colleague are invited. (No one from HR has been copied in so it can’t be bad).

See what I mean! Spiralling. I’m going to be in a mess all fucking weekend now.

Hence my suggestion of 'tentative'

Sometimes it helps to set the agenda - ‘Thanks for the meeting invite. Can we use a chunk of the time to go over X, Y, and Z? I also need your input on ABC’. That way you may have headed them off at the pass and puts you in control of at least part of the meeting.

I put daily meetings in the diary with my team on projects, sometimes twice-daily if things are busy / fast moving.

I don’t know how else a manager is supposed to get updates or give feedback? Would you rather she waited until the end of a project to give you feedback?

She’s your manager and needs to keep abreast of what you and the rest of her direct reports are doing. Is this unusual in your workplace?

It’s fairly basic management tbh.

Where do people work where they can decline a weekly catch-up with their manager just because they don’t feel like attending?

This. If she says 'just a general catch up' then say going foward you would like to focus the catch ups to do exactly @ThirdStorm says. A catch up without a focus is not at all productive, and if she's a good manager she should know this - this is not revelatory stuff.

I don’t mind my 1-1s. But i think my LM is scared of me😂 hes young and im old enough to be his mother. Completely new to the role and tries to change things he doesn’t understand. Never worked my role. He also has another job within another department which is his main job.

hes come to the point of leaving the 3 of us in a senior role to carry on knowing the room is in safe hands. And i really prefer this situation.

the ones in the lower role are afraid of him any they complain that he picks on them. But they’re also taking the piss in waltzing in and out when it suits, one sits with headphones all day and uses adhd as an excuse to avoid calls, sleeps in and doesn’t call in.

the others is constantly texting her bloke and looks on her doggy cam to check on her yapper.

give me a room full of older folk any day.