Of course there is no trust, and this lack of trust is pouring from all these questions. Personally I encourage the people who report to me to always come to me with any issues they may have and never wait until a 1 on 1.
You have to distinguish between yourself as Mr. Nice Guy Manager™ and management culture as a whole where incentives are so ass backwards that people are cutting off their noses to spite their face and kowtowing to a bunch of geriatric co conspirators rather than advocating for the needs of the client relationship and their own so called subordinates this kind of behaviour is nothing more than a pyramid scheme where the prize is coronavirus for everyone
You can’t come to your manager at anytime when you have an issue. It’s not always because of lack of trust. They are busy managing. I sometimes need to schedule a meeting with my manager to go over a technical proposal and his schedule is busy all day with meetings. That’s not meant to be negative.
Also, I’m at a level now that I need to come to a manager with both problems and proposed solutions.
Of course, but in my case it's as simple as sending an e-mail "Could we talk at your earliest convenience?" Unless of course the issue is not really important - in that case it can wait for 1:1.
Actually this whole 1:1 thing is nothing but a prisoners dilemma played out over and over in various ways by people who claim to be experts in game theory but fail to recognize the game is playing them
