@ DEREK NEIGHBORS

"Interaction should be natural not obligatory, scheduled or forced." Really? And if interaction doesn't come naturally should a manager just fire the offending employee and hire someone more like their spouse?

Interaction IS obligatory in an employee/employer relationship. Show me the workplace where employees aren't obligated to interact with their managers, or where employees who interact more with their managers don't have an advantage compared to employees who interact less with their managers.

I would argue that you also have an obligation to interact with your spouse, but there are several differences. 1. You have only one spouse (if you had 10, you might have a different opinion about the value of scheduling time with each of them). 2. You got to choose your spouse. 3. You probably chose them primarily based on the pleasure of interacting with them.

As a manager, you may have many team members. Maybe you got to choose them, and maybe you didn't, but even if you did, you probably didn't choose them based on how much pleasure you get from interacting with them. You probably chose them based on how well they could do the required tasks (of which, interacting with you is just one).

There is no reason to expect interaction to come naturally with ALL your team members. 1:1's may seem forced initially, but that's NOT because they're scheduled. It's because the relationship hasn't developed yet. It's only by scheduling time together, that a relationship can develop (to the benefit of the manager, the employee, the team and the organization).