As an executive coach I often find the executive of today has lost the ability to manage time in a manner that gives the leader time to …… well……actually lead.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The world makes way for the person who knows where they are going” and this is as true today as ever. Ask any executive do you have a plan, a strategy and you’ll get some form of explanation that when run in parallel with the question, “How are you going to get there?”, normally ends in me listening to a ‘To Do List’, that can span from the short term, to plans over the next 5 years. Signaling to me: Action! Activity! Output! Do!
So I am looking for signs that leaders understand that SPACE is a key component of Time Management, the realisation that you can’t create more time and the more able you prove yourself to be the more work you will probably get, the more senior you become the greater the scope of concern. So ’space’ is a key factor:
- Space enables you time to think.
- Deal with un-expected.
- Demonstrate flexibility.
- Shows you have control of time and not time controlling you.
I have seen again and again the most demonstrably capable (that doesn’t mean those with the most talent), are the leaders that have learned to control time in a manner that gives them time to BE a leader. Jurgen Wolff the author of The power of targeted thinking surmises,”people have an inner voice that tells them, they should be doing 3 other things as well”. This is the road to personal doubt, inner tension and probably an ulcer.
If management is the ‘doing and output’ and leadership is the ‘thinking, direction and having presence’ then leadership needs time in the diary as well, not a block that says, “11-12.30 Leadership”, but space, buffers, moments that allow things to happen, create and occur. Leadership is at it’s best a natural occurrence born out of the ’space’ that occurs in the forming and reinforcing of relationships.
These are my observations from the executives that have this down:
- Control of your own diary or at the very least ensuring your PA creates ‘buffers’ between events and doesn’t run you back to back.
- Demanding expectations of all those involved, preparing for a meeting.
- Not continuing to the end of the allotted time, when it’s finished, close it. Keep doing this and people will love have meetings with you and will come well prepared, in order to get a quick release.
- Actually ’slow down’, give greater value to your interventions and in this way, you’ll clean up at the end of the month/year.
- Use IT to it’s best, understand what works well for you and determine in your own mind, that you are not a captive to the amount of emails you have. Adjust your mind set to “I’ll look at them when I have time to look at them”.
- Reward those that interact with you on a personal level, by focusing on them. Sorry to say it, but if another person is just emailing you (outside of you requesting it), then it’s a secondary focus.
- Build a culture of ‘call me, find me, let’s talk’, you’ll cut down on the email dialogue if you have sorted it out in a conversation.
- Empower others to make decisions. I noticed one executive training a new member of the team as such. “OK, what would you do if I wasn’t available?” “Right so from those options, which one would you choose if you had to?” ” Why?” “I agree” and/or ”What about this option” etc….. He felt that the sooner the two of them understood the way the other thought, the quicker he could empower the individual to act in a manner that took into account his thinking.
- Use your diary to post date follow up, on ‘positive’ output, as well as following up on problems.
- Understand that speed doesn’t indicate control, to increase ‘gravitas’ and to enable other to feel confident around you, you should set a ‘pace’ allowing others to align behind it, the words I have to describe this are: ‘poise, elegance, pace, control’.
When I work with a business on executive coaching, emerging leadership, assessment, talent management the truest indicator and one of the most consistent indicators of future success, is the individuals competence in the direction and control of time.
Filed under: leadership behaviour | Tagged: coaching time management, leaders and time management, leadershp capacity, managing time, senior managers and time management, time management
