I am not a career expert: But this is the most important conversation you can have with your manager

Recently, I saw a very interesting article by a Harvard career expert. Even though it was very good and provided 5 useful questions for conversations between employees and managers, the questions were in my opinion too employer-centered.

As in any relationship that’s beneficial, effective communication means articulating both sides’ needs and wants. So, in order to provide balanced communication and bring some perspective from the employee side, I was inspired to come up with a similar set of 5 questions organizations can ask:

1. [My employee] helps [X people] to [do Y things] by [Z methods].

• In other words, how can we as an organization help you? This is called empowerment.

2. Recently, [my employee] has been [pursuing X] to [accomplish Y personal and/or career goals].

• How can we encourage you in your personal/professional development so you can become the best version of yourself?

3. [My employee] competes with [X barriers to work] because of [Y reasons].

• What barriers to your work can we remove?

4. As a(n) [employee in X position], the [the team, department/company] can help me accomplish [X goals] in my work.

• This is different than #2 in the sense these are micro-goals: goals for the next week, month, quarter, etc.

5. Company initiatives will be shared with [X people] by [Y methods] so it is prominently communicated in a timely manner.

What do you think? Are these conversations taking place often enough, or not at all?