[logicchop]

I don't disagree, but I think it's more about establishing a good rapport where statements like "let's talk" can be informative and not just confusing. If you trust your manager and have good communication with them, "let's talk" should get you worried. Management obviously has a power advantage, but good managers that communicate effectively know how to become reliable signals, even when they aren't in a good position to divulge more information. In other words, I take it that the problem OP raised is not "don't signal that bad news is coming" but rather "don't put out confusing signals." If you are a manager, and you say to someone "let's talk" and they can't figure out how to interpret that - they can't figure out whether they are about to be fired or whether you simply want to ask them about such-and-such - you have already done a bad job at establishing a rapport. A good manager, who has established good communication, can use a carefully placed vague statement to communicate that something unpleasant is coming.

[IggleSniggle]

And what, exactly, is the purpose of a manager communicating that something unpleasant is coming without actually giving context for what that domain is going to be?

If you’re going to tell me something unpleasant is coming, at least give me enough clues to steel myself for news about:

- technology problem

- customer problem

- team communication problem

- team performance problem

- personal performance problem

- litigation problem

- etc

Any of those things still might lead to me getting fired for any number of reasons, but at least my imagination can spin something potentially productive to bring to the meeting.

If you say only “let’s talk” all the time, it just becomes a background anxiety due to being acclimated to it, sure, but I don’t see how it’s productive.

This whole “you need to have anxiety now” makes absolutely zero sense to me. The meeting can be for the details that you’re not prepared to dig into right now, that’s fine, just give me enough broad context to hang a hat on.

Edit: I guess if there’s zero power imbalance, I might be fine with just “let’s talk,” but I still don’t see why providing zero context results in a better meeting.

[pydry]

>I don't disagree, but I think it's more about establishing a good rapport where statements like "let's talk" can be informative and not just confusing.

Can take years to establish something like that. That isn't a luxury most managers have.

Moreover, having enough empathy to understand the power imbalance and going out of your way to not be "spooky" when you first start working together is partly how a rapport like that is built.

[TheCoelacanth]

Even in intimate personal relationships "we need to talk" is frequently assumed to be something bad. You're asking for co-workers to have better rapport than a typical significant-other relationship, which is just not realistic for most working relationships.