How Great Leaders Make Time

Studies show that leaders who dedicate 20% of their time to coaching their people see measurable increases in employee performance and retention. So why don't they? Well, this brings me to the angst I have when it comes to the difference between managers and leaders. Both have people that are assigned to them. But there's two very distinct differences. Leaders make time for their people. Managers do not. Leaders consider and prioritize the development of their people. Managers are just concerned about getting the tasks done. Now, many of those managers share with me that basically they have no time. Is that a valid reason? Or is that just another excuse? Welcome back to Shading the Corporate Bitch. I'm Bernadette Boas, your executive coach and podcast host, and I'm so glad that you're here today because I am going to give you the download of what it really takes to be a time management leader. Because here's the twist. We're not just talking about checking tasks off of a to-do list, not even delegating, prioritizing, or setting boundaries. We're talking about transforming managers into powerhouse leaders. That know how to lead better, coach team members more effectively, and create space to develop and grow their people. By the end of this episode, I want you walking away with practical strategies you can start using immediately to invest your time in ways that boost both your career and your team's success.

Welcome to Shedding the Corporate Bitch, the podcast that transforms today's managers into tomorrow's powerhouse leaders. Your host, Bernadette Boas, executive executive coach and author brings you into a world where the corporate grind meets personal growth and success in each and every episode. Let's do this.

I posed a question at the beginning. Valid reason, or is it an excuse? What is a leader's number one responsibility and priority? What would you say that was? I hope you would say that it is to develop and grow, even advance your people, not to just get tasks off of a checklist. Your number one responsibility and priority is your people. Yet so many managers complain to me all of the time that they don't have time and I just have to call BS. If you want it, you will make the time. If it's important to you, you will make the time. And time management isn't just personal productivity. It directly impacts your team's growth and engagement by how you prioritize and manage your own time. Leaders who manage their time effectively can coach more. Can mentor more, and can create space for strategic thinking. So I want you really to be thinking about, as we talk through this, that time is a leadership tool. It is how you invest it that determines the growth and success of you and your team. Think through that as we get into giving you techniques and tools and strategies for how you can make time and really become a powerhouse leader. So first I want to dive right into what techniques and strategies and tips that you can be using. And so this is an opportunity and one episode you might want to have a pen and paper or your phone in order to capture some notes or just make sure you download this episode, share it with team members, have a conversation about it, and really utilize it to determine what tips and strategies you could be implementing today to really make a transformation in your career and as well your teams. So first, just like any other goal that someone might have, you have got to want to coach and develop your people. Why do I say that? Well, as a coach myself, many, many, many managers really struggle with knowing how to inspire and motivate and mentor and coach and develop their people. And yet that's not a reason not to do it because that's just skills you need to learn. And therefore you need to kind of make the decision that you want to do those things, yet you just might need help. In regards to how you go about doing it. And then once you want to coach, you really need to put the intention, the attention, and initiative into acting on it. So again, think about a goal that you might have, a personal goal. Say it's around losing weight or getting fit or doing a major marathon. You decide you want it, and then in order to pursue and accomplish it, you definitely need to put the intention into it, the attention to all the things that you need to do to accomplish it, and the initiative in order to get yourself up off that couch and do whatever it is that you need to do to get yourself in shape. So to speak, in order to pursue and achieve that goal. And lastly, you definitely need to make it a priority. If it is not a priority, it will not get done. So you might want it. You might have intention, attention, and even initiative, but yet if you don't prioritize it into your schedule, into your planning, into your review of obstacles that are getting in your way. And if you don't prioritize that goal over all of those things, then all of a sudden you'll find yourself deviating from that want that you had. And again, think about a personal goal that you might get, and unless you make it a priority, all those other things fall to the wayside. So let's ensure that you have the want. The intention, the attention, and the initiative along with the prioritization. Yet many people will say to me, that all sounds good. And yes, I want all of those things, but how do I keep myself mentally, physically, emotionally, organizationally kind of organized in order to manage all of that? So let's talk about some strategies you can be using. All right. As we referenced, the first thing you would want to do is make sure that you are setting those goals. And/or if you have the goals, those goals are great roadmaps, are great barometers, are great accountability partners in those goals itself. As far as what should you be doing on a daily basis? If you have a set of goals, they could be hard metric goals of the business. Or they could be personal professional development goals, like leadership development goals. Well, if all of a sudden they're on your performance review and you're going to be measured against them, let alone you're going to be compensated against them, well, you're going to ensure that those things get done, right? Well, something doesn't have to be on your formal performance review goal list in order for you to make it a priority and put that intention, attention, and initiative behind it. You need to want it, but start with goals. And if they're not formally defined for you, then kind of take a second sheet of paper and have side goals that you want for yourself as far as developing and growing your people and giving them time. As probably many of you already have heard over multiple episodes, I do a lot of focus group interviews of employees and their managers to understand, you know, how effective they are, how happy are they, and what is it that they need. And when I would ask the question, what is the number one thing you need from your managers? They will say, I need goals and I need feedback on those goals. So that's your number one opportunity right there. Make sure you have your own goals, make sure they have goals, and then use those goals and those measurements and those actions and the timeline that you're putting against them, making them SMART, and your why. In my world, it's SMART-E goals. And make sure that you're using those to set expectations. Set priority, and to set a milestone of check-ins that then allow you to get that one-on-one blocked out and initiate it with your team members. So your SMART goals are a great foundation for everything when it comes to you trying to be a powerhouse time management leader. All right. So that would be your number one thing. From there, Giving that, those goals at the priority, you can start time blocking your calendar. And so what I mean by that is focusing on creating as much white space as you can on your calendar by prioritizing the most important activities in a day, both personal and professional, quite honestly. That must get done in order for you to be accomplishing those goals or that side set of goals that you defined. So you would take your calendar and I typically recommend that someone looks at their calendar, you know, they can plan it out for a month, but look at their calendar on a Monday morning. Don't use your weekends. You know, you want to, you want to minimize that Sunday stress. Of preparing for the week and just my first thing Monday morning takes 5 minutes. Look at your calendar and make sure you've blocked out time for all the number one critical things that must get done. Be sure that those things include those major initiatives and projects based on the goals that you have. Make sure it includes time with your people, whether that's one-on-one or group team meetings, and I'm not just talking about status meetings that are just readouts. I'm talking about collaborative, engaging conversations and feedback and development ideas that your employees are looking for and make sure they're blocked out. Make sure there's time blocked out in your calendar for lunch, for taking a 5-minute break. Making sure your holidays and your vacations are blocked out proactively on your calendar. And then you visit that every day and just simply look at it going, has something changed from today, for instance, that will impact my schedule tomorrow or for the next several days that I have blocked out? Obviously you can block out all the way into the future with holidays and vacations and meetings or offsites, whatever the case might be. But ensure that you're time blocking major activities, one of which includes time with your people. Time blocking also ensures that you're keeping white space open, especially as a true powerhouse leader. You always need time for strategic thinking, for creating, innovating, planning. And you don't want the week to go by or the month to go by and you, you know, look back and say, I had no time to really think through strategically what my team should look like, where, what initiatives my team should be pursuing, what requests we might have to management for X, Y, and Z. You want to look at these things and plan for these things proactively and strategically. And block the time. Because keep in mind, when you make a doctor's appointment, you block it out on your calendar. 9.9% of the time, you're going to attend that doctor's appointment. You're going to make sure you're there. Well, treat everything else like that. Treat, you know, time with your people like that. Put a calendar notice out there, block it out so people don't book you into a meeting. Now, of course, people will, people will ignore the fact that you have your calendar blocked out and/or they're not looking at everyone's individual calendars and they put a meeting out there. Well, then we'll move on to the 4 Ds that you could be considering and to help you kind of reconcile what you do there. Okay. So time blocking is a powerful tool to save your sanity. Trust me. So let's move on to the 4 Ds. Very similar, but not exact to the Eisenhower Matrix that looks at urgency and importance. What I like to do is just simply the 4 Ds. It's an easy acronym to remember. You are either going to delegate, delay, delete, or you're going to decide to do it. Now, the Eisenhower Matrix, really roughly the difference is They'll look at that fourth quadrant as schedule. So you'll schedule it. I like to say do just because then you, you know that even though you need to do it, then that gets into the prioritization that we're going to talk about next. But first, delegate, delete, delay, or do. Now, now let's look at delegate. As a powerhouse leader, your number one priority is your people. What your people need from you is support in that prioritization. But what you need for yourself is also that prioritization of, and therefore, what are you going to delegate out, empower the team to do the tasks and the activities that maybe you typically do., but now it's an opportunity for them to, because you're, you shouldn't be a doer. That's a manager. You should be a powerful delegator and leader. So delegate, it requires you to really look over all the tasks and activities that need to get done, even your own, knowing your people's skillset and capabilities and how they can be stretched. And you, your number one objective is to then say, okay, what can I delegate out? You're not dumping. I don't put this D in there. You're not dumping, meaning you're just throwing tasks at people because you want it off your list. You are intentionally, uh, intentionally and taking initiative to really think through what are those tasks and activities that your team members are capable of taking on and therefore delegating to. The next one would be, okay, which ones don't necessarily have to be done right now, so I'm going to delay them. Now we're gonna talk about setting boundaries, but I'll say this right now. Not every priority and not every request that says I need it today has to be done today. So when we get to boundaries, we're gonna talk about that. So the next one in regards to delaying is then your job is to look over the same list that's now left over after you've delegated. And you need to say, all right, what can be delayed? What, you know, doesn't necessarily need to be hap— happen today, even this week. And therefore, let's make sure we're putting intention and attention to the fact that the workload of your people is already heavy and we don't want to overwhelm them and stress them. So we're going to prioritize and make sure that we're properly assigning deadlines for the tasks and activities that need to get done, and therefore everybody stays as sane as possible. Okay? So that's delegating and delaying. Then of course, a hard, hard, hard look has to happen when it comes to deleting. There are definitely some items on your list that you can delete. And yet clients will challenge me on this, not on a daily basis, but quite regularly that they can't. And then the next thing you know, I'm going through their to-do list and we're getting, you know, really hard and asking hard questions and finding that yes, indeed, some things can be deleted. I had a client many years ago and Bruce. And so we had this very sane conversation about his very long to-do list. I asked him for it and he hands me an 8.5 by 11 legal pad, yellow legal pad. And there had to be 3 or 4 pages of things he, he made note of based on an exercise I gave him of all the things that he has to do. Personally and professionally for himself, for the family, for his team members, whomever. And it was 3 or 4 pages long. I started hyperventilating. I was like, Bruce, there is no way you're going to get your business where you need it to go. If this is, if you're telling me this is your must-do list. So we just simply went through the 4 Ds. And made, made him really think through with intention and intention and make some hard decisions that at first he wasn't comfortable with, but recognized that in order for him to achieve his goals, he would need to do something. Something had to change. That want, that why, and therefore he was able to cull it down. I won't say it disappeared and I won't even say it got down to one page. At the same time, it got down to a manageable set of to-dos that he would either delegate, delay, delete, or do. Then there's the remaining of which you've decided because you put intention and attention to it that you need to do, and therefore you do it. Okay. So delegate, delay, delete, or do. You always have an opportunity to look at your to-do list. And make those decisions. Now, I'm gonna add a layer here. This is a definitely a one-on-one conversation you should be having with your people as well, because right behind them wanting feedback from you, they also want you to help them with their workload, help them with that prioritization decision-making because they can't get it all done. That's why there's so much stress and burnout in the workplace. That's why there's such high turnover. They just can't get it all done and they're wanting their manager to go, oh, let's have a conversation about what's on your to-do list and let's see what we could do to ensure that we are managing it appropriately. Do it for yourself and then take that same technique, those same 4 Ds, and do it with your team members. And then I mentioned prioritization multiple times throughout that piece. Prioritization. Not everything is a number one priority. Sure, you could have multiple team leads, multiple people coming to you and assigning you tasks, and each one of them say, it's my number one. And therefore I need you to work on each of them with the same priority of each other. It doesn't happen. It can happen. And if you want to lose a really good employee, put that type of pressure on them. They'll just love it. They'll just eat it up and then they'll walk out the door. What you need to do is, there's, it's a two-way street, by the way. What you need to do is have those conversations in regards to their prioritization and their workload. At the same time, they need to come to you. So you need to reinforce that they need to come to you and raise their hand and go, hey, I need help. Everyone's coming at me with you know, so to speak, number one priorities, and I'm not going to be able to manage it. I need your help to prioritize, move things around, resource it differently, whatever you can do. And then the other thing would be, and this touches on setting boundaries, the other thing would be that they need to, and you as well, need to question and challenge the deadline or priority that they've been given, even if it's from you or another senior member of the team. They need to be able to say, Sally, you want this by end of day today. It, you know, when will you be delivering it? When is it due? Is it, you know, necessary to have by day end today? Because I have these 4 other things I, on my list. And therefore I need to know what the real true prioritization is. And not all the time, but a good amount of time, more times than people realize, even senior leaders will all of a sudden say, you know what, I don't, I'm not even going to use it until next week. So take until Monday and then get it to me. And then the next thing you know, they just found 2 or 3, 4, 5 days. Extra in order to get it done. So you need to coach your end— your team members and yourself to challenge the prioritization that is given or deadlines that it's given on tasks or projects with the people that are giving them to you, because not all number one priorities, urgent priorities are true. And then another coaching that needs to be done with your people and then also with yourself is to really evaluate and learn how strategically you need to prioritize your list. So there's a lot of questions that you could be asking in order to really understand whether or not one item might, might have come in as a 2, for instance, and actually it turns out to be the number 1 priority simply because of how it's going to be used, when it's going to be used, by whom it's going to be used, you know, what the issues and risks are, what the dependencies are. A number of factors could actually impact any number of number one priorities. And therefore, also work with your team members and yourself to, to learn how you need to think about prioritization of any to-do list. Because it's not just a matter of going 1, 2, 3, and 4. There is some questions that need to be asked, some challenges that need to be made, and some thought process that needs to go into it. Uh, so if you can learn that yourself and then train your team members, all of you are going to be so far more efficient and effective, productive, and actually happy because you won't be as stressed. Thinking everything is a weight on their shoulders that has to be done yesterday. The next one would be setting boundaries. We already talked about being able to say, we already talked about challenging prioritization, but this also comes down to also learning how to say no. Not everything that is handed to you must be done by you. I'll say that again. Not everything that is handed to you, even from your boss or your boss's boss, is something that you should or can be doing. And for those people pleasers out there who take on anything and everything and because they wanna make everybody happy and they're afraid of saying no or pushing back, this is an area you really then need to work on and focus on cuz it's killing you and it's not helping those around you. Actually, you're enabling very bad behavior from those around you because of the fact that they know that, oh, Joe will do it because no one else wants to do it and he never says no. And that is not the perception or the behavior that you want from a team member. Everyone needs to learn how to say no. Now, what does that look like? Well, that looks like if someone hands you a task that doesn't fit into your goals, that doesn't fit into your prioritization, that doesn't fit into your role and responsibility, before you just automatically say no, you might give some thought to, oh, is this something that might stretch me? Is this something that might give me skills I don't have? Is this something that I can fit into my other work without impacting the quality of my work in those other areas? So there's things that you can certainly consider. You don't have to automatically say no. However, if you get to a point where it fits into a no, then you need to give that no. The role and the responsibility of whatever that task is needs to go where it belongs. And if that's not you, then you need to push back on it. And you need to be able to say, you know, I'd love to take it on. I have too many other things on my plate. It doesn't fit into what it is I'm working on. My goals will suffer as a result if I take on something different or new, and therefore I respectfully suggest that you look for another resource. There's various ways you can say it to where it doesn't come back and bite you or burn you in any way, shape, or form. You have to say no. And the people around you without ever saying it or admitting it want you to be able to say no. They don't want you to always say yes. They don't want you to be a doormat. They don't want you to be a people pleaser or a yes person. If that's an area as well that you need work on, then find the resources, the training, the coaching that you need in order to move beyond and setting those boundaries. Boundaries also means finding that balance between work and life. I actually call it blend, that blend between work and life. Setting boundaries also means that you have conversations with the people around you and with your boss and whomever around when you'll accept phone calls after hours, when you'll receive and respond to emails, what your vacation time looks like as far as I am out, or I'll look for, you know, emergency emails, but that's about it. Everyone deserves non-work time, meaning totally disconnecting and just living. And so setting boundaries also makes sure that you set those expectations with the people around you as far as how they can work with you and engage you outside of the boundary of which you, you want to be operating in. And those are only exceptions. They're not the rule. The conversations this morning went everywhere from, well, I make sure I have two phones, one for work, one for personal life. And the only person who has my personal phone is my boss. So if there is an emergency, he can text me on my personal phone. Beyond that, I turn that business phone off after I leave work. And the expectation was set from this individual with his team members and his boss And everybody's fine with it. Another aspect of boundaries I wanna make sure we touch on is those endless meetings that are on your calendar that make you start hyperventilating cuz you don't have any white space. You don't have any time for your people. What I want you to be sure you're doing is looking at those meetings. I don't care who put them on your calendar, the biggest, biggest boss or the team member, and looking at them to make sure it is absolutely a priority and critical for you to be there. Because I hear far too often that individuals have meetings put on their schedule that they really don't need to be at, that they were just put on the to when they should have been just a CC or not included at all. Many people use mass distribution lists instead of getting specific, and therefore the people feel that they have to be there when they actually don't have to be there, or they attend a meeting that they know there's a pattern that they're very inefficient. Lack value, lack any purpose or outcome, and therefore they should be deciding that, nope, I'm not going to be attending this meeting because it's never valuable for me. And again, very much like Bruce, I could probably go through someone's calendar of meetings and you can challenge me on this if you'd like. You can always email me at BernadetteBoas@ballofireinc.com and I will find at least 10%, 15%. Of the meetings on their calendars that could come off because they automatically put them on there. They automatically think they have to be there. The person that put it on there, you know, is X, Y, and Z, and therefore they have to be there. You ask the right questions of yourself and other people, and I will guarantee you that you'll all of a sudden find that no, you don't need to be there, and therefore you can remove it from your calendar. So that's, so that's another way you could be setting boundaries so you can keep your sanity, find white space, and even devote that 20% I mentioned to working with your people and developing your people. Now, another time management technique that I often will share with my clients is there's always an opportunity to reflect on your productivity, on your effectiveness, on your efficiency, on your happiness and satisfaction with the day you just completed. You wanna be reflecting on whether or not you were there and you showed up and you were present and you were actively listening and you were coaching and supporting and developing your people, or were you just heads down, task-oriented? And maybe that's okay for one day, but all of a sudden, if you start reflecting on your progress and on your productivity, and you see that there's a pattern, then you can get ahead of it before it gets too far off the tracks. Looking over and really reflecting on what did you bring to the team? What did you contribute? What value did you add? How was your, you know, your overall day? How were you supported? How were you, how were you motivated and coached and developed? Then building that self-awareness of your own leadership will then allow you to course correct or to continue doing what you're doing if it's really working well. The power of reflection is a powerful, powerful tool. All right. And lastly, one thing that you could be doing and touching on the reflection part is actually track your progress, track what you're getting done or not getting done, track the decision-making that you, you're going through, track how you're problem-solving, track how you are developing and coaching and devoting time to your people and ensure that you're doing that on a consistent basis. It's not like a one-off. Oh, all right. I got off this podcast and Bernadette said, suggest that I do this, so I'm gonna go and do it and I'm gonna do it once and I'm done. No, it's a consistent behavior, a consistent routine that then allows you to gain that self-awareness that I mentioned and embed, instill this practice into your everyday. And I can guarantee you by taking on even just 3 of these strategies I just gave you, You are going to transform how productive, how successful, and how happy you are at work. And your satisfaction is going to trickle down to your people, and everyone is going to be successful in enjoying their job while getting the work done and achieving the goals that have been laid out for them. So I have a challenge for you this week. Take on one or two of these time management strategies. And start working to put them into practice just for a week. Take time blocking, take prioritization or the 4 Ds, and just work on them on a daily basis for the next 7 business days and make note of any changes that you experience, any emotions that you experience, any of the experiences your people are having as a result of you making those changes, any comments that might be made to you or any observations, or, you know, just the fact that at the end of the day, when you are reflecting, you are feeling so much better about how you are showing up for your people and for the business each and every day. To recap, prioritize what drives your team's growth. Put your people first. It's your number one responsibility as a leader. Delegate effectively. Be brilliant at delegating. Use tools, use structured time blocks to really focus your own leadership and that of your people, and then reflect and adjust accordingly and on a continuous basis to see improvements. Small steps lead to big results. And so encourage those around you to also model these habits. And mirror what you, you are doing as a leader, and that will really cement you as a powerhouse leader. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with your colleagues, share it with your team members, have conversations about it, work together to identify some key tips and strategies that we discussed and work with each other to implement them and start tracking them and reflecting on them. And see and pay attention to the transformation that is happening for yourself and for them. Remember, managing your time isn't just about productivity. It's about creating space to grow your people and yourself. I'll see you soon.

Thank you for tuning into today's episode of Shedding the Corporate Bitch. Every journey taken together is another step towards unleashing the powerhouse leader within you. Don't miss any of our weekly episodes. Subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. And for those who thrive on visual content, catch us on our Shedding the Bitch YouTube channel. Want to dive deeper with Bernadette on becoming a powerhouse leader? Visit balloffirecoaching.com to learn more about how she helps professionals, HR executives, and team leaders elevate overall team performance. You've been listening to Shedding the Corporate Bitch with Bernadette Boas. Until next time, keep shedding, keep growing, and keep leading.