Her first question, on a cold lunch walk around the office park in January, was whether it was normal to feel behind on everything a few weeks into a new job. I told her yes, and that I'd felt that way for most of my first year. She looked so relieved that I nearly walked into a light pole.
She's the new associate project manager on our team. In early January she stopped by my desk and asked, "Would you be willing to meet once a month? I'd bring the questions." I said yes, with two conditions: she sets the agenda, and we walk. So once a month on a Thursday we do my 20-minute loop around the office park, then sit for ten minutes in the break room so she can write things down. We've met three times now: January, February and this past Thursday.
What we talk about, and what I don't say
She brings two or three questions each time, and they've been practical. How to run a status meeting that ends on time. How to write a risk so someone actually acts on it. How to tell a senior engineer that his estimate looks short. This week it was how to send bad news to a client, and we practiced the first line out loud on the walk, which earned us a look from a man in a fleece vest.
There are also things I don't say, on purpose:
- I don't talk about anyone's pay but my own.
- I don't give her my read on coworkers. I spent fourteen years in HR, and I know how unreliable a hallway reputation can be.
- I don't tell her what our manager thinks of her. That's our manager's conversation to have.
- I don't do her work for her, even when it would be faster.
From the HR side: I sat in on a lot of exit interviews for people who left in their first year. Very few left because the work was too hard. Most said some version of "I never knew if I was doing okay." A monthly walk won't fix that by itself, but it means at least one person at work is telling her the truth on a schedule.
Five things I wish I'd heard
When I started this job I was 37, new to the field and pretty sure everyone could tell. Here's what I've been telling her, which is mostly what I wish someone had told me:
- You don't have to be the most technical person in the room. You have to know who is, and how to get a straight answer from them by Thursday.
- Bad news on Tuesday is cheaper than bad news on Friday. A slip you report early is a scheduling problem. A slip you report late is a trust problem.
- Write the decision down before you leave the meeting. Send the recap within the hour. Whoever writes it down shapes what everyone remembers agreeing to, and it should be you.
- Start a brag document this week. I've kept mine since 2019. She started hers in January, and by our February walk she had six entries with numbers attached.
- What you did before this counts. Whatever it was, the habits you built there are part of why you'll be good here. You just have to translate them out loud. Fourteen years of HR made me a better project manager once I stopped apologizing for it.
Here's what I said to her in February, when she asked how I'd handled my first missed deadline: "I told my manager on a Tuesday, with a new date and the reason, before anyone asked. Then I fixed the thing that caused it." She wrote that down word for word, which made me want to go back and check that I'd actually done it that cleanly. Mostly I had.
And the one I'd tell my 37-year-old self specifically: ask about the number before you say yes to an offer, and expect the first year to feel like being behind. That feeling is part of the job, not a sign you picked wrong.
I get as much out of these walks as she does. Explaining why I do things makes me notice which ones I only do out of habit. Last month I dropped a weekly report nobody read, because I couldn't explain it to her with a straight face.
