Maybe it’s a cultural difference but to me that is just normal friendliness and ice-breaking. I’m quite happy for my manager to ask how am I and to have a 2 minute chat about life outside work before diving into the 1:1.
I dunno, I feel like I can be transparent with my manager when we ask each other that. I think it depends on your relationship with them and the company culture.
I hate it so much. My manager always asks it and presses the issue whenever I try to move past it with some generic response. As if I want to start having a deep "how are you" discussion with a business stranger, especially one with whom I do not share a geographical location, a culture or first language.
My manager does something even worse: we have a team meeting every Monday morning, and each of us is expected to give a brief report of what we did in our private lives over the weekend.
He lets me slide when I say "not much", fortunately, but I think it's an overly intrusive ask, especially in front of the whole team.
No, it doesn't. If this were between two friendly co-workers chatting on a Monday morning, sure. But in a team meeting, asking every person what they did over the weekend, when that is actually none of the manager's business? Not normal, not by a long shot.
I've been in this business for multiple decades, and I have never had a manager do that before. It's very unusual in my experience. A status meeting is a business occasion, not a social one. Asking for a status report about my non-work time is just very strange and intrusive in that setting. My time is my time, not subject to company review.
It's a world apart from talking over the water cooler, where it would indeed be normal social interaction.
I have seen this. Presumably it is done for team cohesion and it may work for a while, but as soon as someone sets the personal boundary and refuses to talk or says something generic it starts looking weird.
Bingo, if the meeting is geared for openness but people aren’t open, now you’ve got conflict. Of course if people aren’t open you might run into trouble anyway but there’s a grey area there
I had a manager that always started with "How are things?" and I thought that was a great jumping off point. "Not good, production is always down and I've been paged 700 times in the last day," is a potential answer to that question, and a 1:1 is a good way to start forming a plan on how to deal with that. Realistically, if you competently addressed all the pages that are coming in, they might not even know it's going on. So it's good to mention it and that it's bugging you!
Bad advice. It is not the problem with question when you feel it that way. It’s the problem with engagement of the manager. It’s perfectly normal to ask „How are you?“
Sort of. Questions are tools, tools can be used incorrectly. It doesn‘t mean that every manager asking „How is your wife?“ is an idiot or that is inappropriate question in all situations. It may take a lot of time working under idiots before you meet a decent person, but they will ask those questions at some point and you will be happy that they asked. Better to teach the appropriate use.