I whole-heartedly agree that 6-monthly is no where near enough.

>If you don't know the names of your directs' (or manager's) spouse and kids then your relationship isn't good enough to trust the other with priorities at crunch time.

That's a bit far. You can have a great professional relationship with another person where there's both skill growth and career development without getting into their personal life.

I don't ask direct reports that much about their personal life beyond asking about weekend plans. Through that, I sometimes learn of their families and spouses through information they volunteer, but it feels invasive to go fishing for it otherwise.

I've also reported to people that have been great to work with, been fully invested in my goals, yet didn't know much about my personal life, because it's none of their business.

Through that, I've still felt a great deal of trust that they can deal with the aforementioned priorities.

Agree completely about it being invasive to ask. My point is that if my directs trust me with (volunteered) info about their most treasured non-work priorities, then they'll be more likely to trust me when I need them to reprioritize. I think we agree with each other; my point is descriptive rather than prescriptive.

Put another way: If I clearly don't care about their families, then I clearly don't care about their families.